Serenity: The Watchword of Crater Lake National Park
Fireside Talk: Serenity: The Watchword of Crater Lake National Park
J. William T. Youngs
9/28/2012
We studied Crater Lake for this week's assignment in the Burns and Duncan film and book, The National Parks. They tell us that in 1870 a young Kansan named William Gladstone Steele was skimming a newspaper "that had been used to wrap his lunch" when he ran across an article about a "sunken lake" in Oregon. Fifteen years later he actually saw the lake. He described it in this way:
Imagine a vast mountain six by seven miles through at an elevation of eight thousand feet, with the top removed and the inside hollowed out, then filled with the clearest water in the world, to within two thousand feet of the top...and you have a perfect representation of Crater Lake.(109)
By planning and coincidence I happened to be at Crater Lake in September, 2012, on the very day that my "History of the American National Parks" online course was beginning. I had been there before, camping a few miles from the rim. But this time I had stayed at the Crater Lake Lodge, right over the lake. In the morning the guests went out in the balcony alone or in small groups, and for each of us there was a sense of being in the presence of something extraordinary. For me the power of the lake was quite different from the power of the dramatic seashore of Maine, the towering peaks of the Grand Tetons, or the thunder of Yellowstone Falls. The essential quality of Crater Lake is a profound stillness. It seems to say, "I have no need for a showy display of pounding water or towering peaks. I am simply here."
Have a look at the little film I made that morning by the lake and decide what you think:
J. William T. Youngs
9/28/2012
We studied Crater Lake for this week's assignment in the Burns and Duncan film and book, The National Parks. They tell us that in 1870 a young Kansan named William Gladstone Steele was skimming a newspaper "that had been used to wrap his lunch" when he ran across an article about a "sunken lake" in Oregon. Fifteen years later he actually saw the lake. He described it in this way:
Imagine a vast mountain six by seven miles through at an elevation of eight thousand feet, with the top removed and the inside hollowed out, then filled with the clearest water in the world, to within two thousand feet of the top...and you have a perfect representation of Crater Lake.(109)
By planning and coincidence I happened to be at Crater Lake in September, 2012, on the very day that my "History of the American National Parks" online course was beginning. I had been there before, camping a few miles from the rim. But this time I had stayed at the Crater Lake Lodge, right over the lake. In the morning the guests went out in the balcony alone or in small groups, and for each of us there was a sense of being in the presence of something extraordinary. For me the power of the lake was quite different from the power of the dramatic seashore of Maine, the towering peaks of the Grand Tetons, or the thunder of Yellowstone Falls. The essential quality of Crater Lake is a profound stillness. It seems to say, "I have no need for a showy display of pounding water or towering peaks. I am simply here."
Have a look at the little film I made that morning by the lake and decide what you think:
