The post that follows began life as a “Fireside Talk” in 2016 in my course on National Parks at Eastern Washington University. Posting in 2020 I want to make it available to a wider audience.
      Last week Hannah Bancroft posted the story of an artist named Andre Saraiva and his drawing on a rock in Joshua Tree National Park. Here is the image she included:

     Hannah wrote: "Though he was a popular graffiti artist, he was greatly criticized for his actions toward the nature of this park. Artists played such an important part in the National Parks, it is unfortunate that Andre had to use his artistic gifts in such a way that vandalized the landscape."
     Lauren and Kaitln replied to Hannah's post with more information and more examples of park vandalism. Aaron Ross also replied, but with a different take on park graffiti. Describing Mammoth Cave he wrote: "Historic signatures which adorn the ceiling in the 'Gothic Avenue' portion of the cave are preserved and viewed as part of the cave's tours. The historic graffiti displayed is called 'ceiling smoke writing' which is made using candle smoke to stain the whitish limestone. During the 1800s, visitors were encouraged to write their name on the ceiling of Gothic Avenue" Here is the picture Aaron posted: 
(By the way we hear a lot nowadays that writing is not taught as well today as it once was -- but 200 years ago could folks really show such good "penmanship" with a candle on a cave ceiling? I wonder!)

​    Most of the large blocks in the wall bear an inscription like this:

     These images were carved into the rock by crusaders, who had travelled more than one thousand weary miles, and probably fought several battles to reach the Holy Land. Most were likely illiterate, but there on this spot, near where Christ was crucified, they could leave their mark, a simple cross. Looking at these crowded marks, likely more than one crusader said what the Mexican War soldier said centuries later: "It was so full that I could find no place for my own mark."
    I was with a group of American army officers. (My friend and host Ryan Shaw is a colonel stationed in Jerusalem and was the official guide for this tour, which is how I happened to be along.) Several of the officers -- remembering perhaps the unruliness of some of their own troops, imagined the officers of that far-away time saying to their men: "Stop that! You're dulling your sword blades. We have more battles to fight!"
     Be that as it may, the crosses have stood the test of time: they bear witness to a constant human need to leave an enduring mark on their passage through life
     So the next time you see graffiti ask yourself, is this a piece of history deserving our respect -- or is it vandalism, plain and simple?
    The answer is not always easy to find. But in the mean time, I do not recommend painting any rocks in a national park -- unless you can go back in time for at least a century before posting your artwork!

Course Overview

   "Wilderness" is one of the most powerful and appealing themes in American life. The History of the American Wilderness is designed to tell you the story of human interactions with the wilderness beginning with Native Americans and pioneers and continuing to the present.
     We will explore the ways that human beings have "treated" the natural world from the days of Indians and pioneer farmers and fur traders to modern wilderness adventurers and environmentalists. We will study modern debates about nature in areas such as energy policy, global warming, and natural disasters.
     Our class tells the story of men and women at their most "heroic" -- heroic in the sense of digging deep into themselves to travel far into the wilderness (physically, mentally, and spiritually and then to find the words, paint the pictures, take the photographs, and make the films that nurtured our modern understanding of the American wilderness. In our class we will be the beneficiaries of some of these words, paintings, photographs, and films, as we make an educational journey into the wilderness.
    For perspective we will sometimes explore the idea and reality of wilderness in other regions of the world as well as in the United States.
    Throughout the course we will visit and revisit these four central themes:
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    1. Defining Wilderness: Just what is "wilderness" anyway? This may seem like a "no-brainer," but it isn't. I will ask each of you at the beginning of the class to write up your own definition of wilderness. Then we will consider whether there are different kinds of wilderness and different degrees of wilderness.
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How would this fellow define wilderness?!

 
​    2. Wilderness Stories: I'll bet this is what particularly interests many of you in this subject -- the stories of men and women confronting the wilderness. These episodes include accounts of explorers, mountain men, Indian captives, hunters, hikers, climbers, and tourists, to name a few.
     -- While studying such stories we will also be studying the kinds of "outfits" that men and women carried into the wilderness. Think about it: sometimes we are as excited about a new back pack, or fishing pole, or tent as we are about the actual outdoors where we will be taking that equipment!
     -- I will be using a lot of films to illustrate wilderness encounters. Additionally, I'll encourage you to draw on your own wilderness experiences in our discussions and other assignments. (These can be experiences from the past and also hikes and camping trips you take during this fall.)
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Forests as Board Feet of Lumber

Forests as Spiritual Resource

​Course Prerequisites     

Please bring with you to our class a love of learning, nature, history, reading, film-viewing, and discussion. Be prepared to increase your familiarity with "wilderness" as an important theme in American history. Expect to leave our class with a greater appreciation for actual nature and wilderness. If possible, plan on visiting some natural sites during your free time this fall. There are lots of wilderness areas around Cheney, including Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge just south of town. There you will find coyotes, moose, deer, elk, and possibly even a wolf--oh, my!
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Assessment and Grades

You will be assessed on the basis of your work on the quizzes, term paper, and discussions. Each week you will have carefully constructed assignments, encouraging you to build your knowledge and skills as the quarter unfolds.
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Instructor Information      

While teaching my wilderness-oriented, online courses I like to manage some of my postings, discussions, and grading while out in the wilderness myself.  Case in point: while recently teaching this class I was in Svalbard, far north of Iceland, deep in the Arctic Circle. The pictures below are from a hike I took across a glacier and up a mountain outside the town of Longyearbyen. I like to think that they make me seem like a rugged guy in rugged country -- suitable for our wilderness theme. But what you don't see is that while I was in remote Svalbard, thanks to the internet, I was still able to keep up with my classes in Cheney! During fall 2019 I will often be "on the road" in various parts of the United States and abroad, posting images, films, and comments and otherwise teaching the class from the great outdoors.
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Films and History

Each week we will view one film chosen for its ability to take us "into" the wilderness in story and thought. The possibilities are abundant; each film will provide perspective on major themes and events in the class. A few examples are: Never Cry Wold, The Revenant, and Dances with Wolves.

Readings

We have five assigned books in this class. Here is how they are arranged:

First, we have two books that we will be reading throughout the quarter: (1) Roderick Nash's Wilderness and the American Mind -- this is our textbook for the class, providing an overview of our subject; (2) Patrick McManus, A Fine and Pleasant Misery will give us some "light relief" each week with humorous essays on our relationships with wilderness.

Second, we will have three other books, each of which we will read in successive three-week sessions. (1) Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods -- a delightful account of hiking the Appalachian Trail, one of the nation's most famous wilderness trails; (2) John Muir, Nature Writings -- Muir was the George Washington of America's wilderness preservation movement, and his many beautiful accounts of wilderness scenes helped build support for wilderness preservation; (3) John McPhee, Encounters with the Archdruid, consists of three reports on meetings in the wilderness between David Brower (the great "tree hugger") and three men who wanted in various ways to "conquer" and utilize nature.
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That's the big picture, and now a closer view of each of those books:

     Wilderness and the American Mind is our "textbook" for The History of the American Wilderness. It provides an overview of human beings' relationship with nature from the earliest times to the present. And it sets forth an influential argument: Nash contends that humankind's love affair with nature is a comparatively modern phenomenon. He claims that ancient men and women feared and loathed wilderness as evil and thought it was only good to be tamed and exploited.
     Until recently a tree was seen, for example, only as an obstacle to farming, as board feet of timber, or as shelter for wild beasts and wild men. In the modern world, of course, we have learned to love trees, animals, and landscapes (whether rugged or pastoral) as valuable for adventure and inspiration -- and valuable also in their own right. Roderick Nash is our guide on that journey.

     Patrick McManus is America's best-known outdoor humorist-essayist -- and he is a former professor of journalism at our own Eastern Washington University. I have known and admired him for 35 years now, but one very memorable episode a few years back eclipses all my other impressions of his fame. I was in a hunting camp in Idaho and over breakfast in the big tent I listened as the cook and guides retold one McManus story after another. McManus's stories grew out of his own encounters with wilderness and in his delightful telling, they found their way back to the woods.
    I want us to read Patrick McManus for "light relief" but also because he is a thoughtful commentator on Americans and their wilderness experiences. At his core he is just as serious, even philosophical, as any other essayist writing about outdoor life. We will read McManus for light relief and also for valuable insights about our relationship to the wilderness.
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    We will be reading A Walk in the Woods as our assignment for weeks two, three, and four in the class. Bill Bryson tells the story of walking (part of) the Appalachian Trail, one of the most famous in America. In some ways, he and his friend, Stephen Katz, play the role, humorously, of modern frontiersmen facing all the classic challenges of the wilderness including rugged country, scary animals (maybe), hunger (lots), brutal storms, and exhaustion. While telling the story of his (mis)adventures in the woods, Bill Bryson also provides many valuable history "lessons" about the origins of this trail in particular and American attitudes towards wilderness preservation in general.
     Fortune favors our course, and as if by design, one of the great actors, directors, and environmentalists of our time, Robert Redford, has released a film based on the book. So it is "now a major motion picture." We will be watching the film along with reading the final assignment in the book.
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     John Muir is the George Washington of the modern American wilderness movement: ardent explorer, evocative writer, accomplished scientist, and leader in wilderness preservation. This volume features many of his writings including his accounts of boyhood in Scotland, his time at the University of Wisconsin, his 1000-mile hike through the South shortly after the Civil War, his first view of the Sierras, and his perilous (mis)adventure on an Alaskan glacier. I love this man and his writing, and I hope you will too! 

John McPhee, ​Encounters with the Archdruid

      John McPhee had a great idea: take the foremost wilderness preservationist in the country at his time, David Brower,"the arch druid," and arrange interviews where he would "square off" in three encounters with three men famed for subduing the wilderness for mining, real estate development, and dam-building respectively. Then McPhee made the great idea even better: he arranged these interviews to take place in the areas associated with each of the wilderness utilizers: the Grand Canyon, the Atlantic Coast, and our own Cascade Mountains. In this book all four men discuss many of the issues we cover in the History of the American Wilderness.
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.J. William T Youngs, "Fireside Talks"
(Note: these are not in a separate book. They are on line, free of course, with your weekly assignments.) 

Evening View over Central Park from the Park Lane Hotel, September 24, 2018  BY Photo

     As a national parks historian and having visited parks in the far corners of the globe, I am often asked, What is ypur favorite park? The answer is not simple: I have favorite trails, favorite views, and favorite lodges and campgrounds. Some of them are many thousands of miles from my home in Cheney, Washington. 

     The view above is one of my very favorite of any park. I was fortunate a few weeks ago to be staying in the Park Lane Hotel in Manhattan, on the twenty-fifth floor. This (above) is what I saw when looking out from my window. From hour to hour the view was always delightful, but never the same. While staying in New York, I was teaching my online course on National Parks at Eastern Washington University. When I was not walking in the park or the city streets, I sat at a desk in my hotel room, drafting assignments and grading papers. I could look out the big pane glass windows while working, and every few minutes I stood up and delighted in the view. Looking at the birds far below I felt a rush of pleasure such as I have felt at a glorious seashore or mountain overlook.

     A few years ago, overlooking Central Park from this same hotel perch, I wrote a post on this blog exploring the meaning of the word "wilderness" as applied to this urban park. It was one of a series of think pieces designed to engage my students and others in considering how we define wilderness. (View that earlier Central Park post.)

     This year, apart from simply enjoying the view, I was thinking of the man who designed the park and also wrote one of the foundational reports for the National Park System -- Frederick Law Olmsted.
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Frederick Law Olmsted, painting by John Singer Sargent [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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     Often regarded as the father of American landscape architecture, Olmsted was the designer -- along with Calvert Vaux -- of Central Park. He also designed Prospect Park in Brooklyn and many other urban parks across the United States, as well as the campuses of the University of Chicago and Stanford University. In view of his reputation as park-builder, his life between 1863 and 1865 seems an anomaly: facing  economic hardships he agreed to head west and manage the Mariposa Mining Estate in the Sierra foothills of California.

     In the mean time, in 1863, Abraham Lincoln had signed a bill setting aside the Yosemite Valley and the nearby Mariposa Grove as park land, under the supervision of the State of California. (Yellowstone became a national park eight years later, but arguably Yosemite led the way because Yosemite would have begun as a national park, except that California was already a state while Wyoming was a territory in 1872 when Yellowstone became a park.. (Yosemite is, of course, a national park today.)

     With no notions as to how a large region of scenic beauty should be administered -- how even it should be regarded -- California appointed a board of Commissioners to draw up a report with suggestions. It would seem unlikely that a mining manager would be the ideal person to head such a commission, but Olmsted was no ordinary businessman. In New York he had played a central role in creating a haven of nature in the midst of a busy city. In California in the Sierras, natural beauty was abundant in wonders such as Half Dome in Yosemite:
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Half Dome from Yosemite Valley, March 23, 2018.   BY Photo

​    The challenge for Olmsted and the Yosemite Commission was not to create a new natural setting, but to protect and enhance what nature itself had provided. Olmsted wrote the report and on August 9, 1865, delivered it to his fellow commissioners for their suggestions. The report vanished into the bureaucracy of the fledgling state of California and was only recovered, reconstructed, and finally published in the twentieth century. Nevertheless the report is a remarkable distillation of the thinking at that time by environentally-minded Americans about the importance of appreciating and preserving nature. One can see echoes of the same ideas in the Organic Act of 1916 that established the National Park system and in the challenges and opportunities for parks in America today.

     The Olmsted Report is one of the documents in the Library of Congress American Memory project. An unsigned introduction to the document contains this statement: "this Report offers one of the first systematic expositions in the history of the Western world of the importance of contact with wilderness for human well-being, the effect of beautiful scenery on human perception, and the moral responsibility of democratic governments to preserve regions of extraordinary natural beauty for the benefit of the whole people. The Report also includes characteristically thoughtful suggestions for managing the Park for human access with minimal harm to the natural environment."

     I have copied the report below, and hoping to make its wonderful insights and suggestions as clear as possible, I have added subheadings (in red) followed by summaries for each subsection (in green).

     What are my favorite views of nature? Among them are the view of Central Park from a high building, and the view of Half Dome from the Yosemite Valley. Influenced by the thought of a sensitive, nature-loving American, Frederick Law Olmsted, is part of the story of each.

            The Olmsted Report on Management of Yosemite (1865) 
 
The Civil War and Yosemite 

Summary: The Civil War brought progress in the arts, and an awareness of the natural beauty of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove. To secure these lands Congress authorized California to administer them through a Board of Commissioners.

It is a fact of much significance with reference to the temper and spirit which ruled loyal people of the United States during the war of the great rebellion, that a livelier susceptibility to the influence of art was apparent, and greater progress in the manifestations of artistic talent was made, than in any similar period before in the history of the country. The great dome of the Capitol was wholly constructed during the war, and the forces of the insurgents watched it rounding upward to completion for nearly a year before they were forced from their entrenchments on the opposite bank of the Potomac; Crawford’s great statue of Liberty was poised upon its summit in the year that President Lincoln proclaimed the emancipation of the slaves. Leutze’s frescoe of the peopling of the Pacific States, the finest work of the painter’s art in the Capitol; the noble front of the Treasury building with its long colonnade of massive monoliths; the exquisite hall of the Academy of Arts; the great park of New York, and many other works of which the nation may be proud, were brought to completion during the same period. Others were carried steadily on, among them our own Capitol; many more were begun, and it will be hereafter remembered that the first organization formed solely for the cultivation of the fine arts on the Pacific side of the Globe, was established in California while the people of the State were not only meeting the demands of the Government for sustaining its armies in the field but were voluntarily making liberal contributions for binding up the wounds and cheering the spirits of those who were stricken in the battles of liberty.
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It was during one of the darkest hours, before Sherman had begun the march upon Atlanta or Grant his terrible movement through the Wilderness, when the paintings of Bierstadt and the photographs of Watkins, both productions of the War time, had given to the people on the Atlantic some idea of the sublimity of the Yo Semite, and of the stateliness of the neighboring Sequoia grove, that consideration was first given to the danger that such scenes might become private property and through the false taste, the caprice or requirements of some industrial speculation of their holders; their value to posterity be injured. To secure them against this danger Congress passed an act providing that the premises should be segregated from the general domain of the public lands, and devoted forever to popular resort and recreation, under the administration of a Board of Commissioners, to serve without pecuniary compensation, to be appointed by the Executive of the State of California.

Commissioners Appointed for Yosemite

Summary: Commissioners were named for Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove -- they made visits and offer this report...

His Excellency the Governor in behalf of the State accepted the trust proposed and appointed the required a Commissioners; the territory has been surveyed and the Commissioners have in several visits to it, and with much deliberation, endeavored to qualify themselves to present to the Legislature a sufficient description of the property and well considered advice as to its future management.

The Commissioners have deemed it best to confine their attention during the year which has elapsed since their appointment to this simple duty of preparing themselves to suggest the legislative action proper to be taken and having completed it, proposed to present their resignation, in order to render as easy as possible the pursuance of any policy of management, the adoption of which may be determined by the wisdom of the Legislature. The present report therefore is intended to embody as much as is practicable, the results of the labors of the Commission, which it also terminates.

As few members of the legislature have yet visited the ground, a short account of the leading qualities to its scenery may be pardoned.

Description of Yosemite

Summary: Yosemite is, above all, a chasm, the floor of which features beautiful streams and vegetation. The valley floor is reminiscent of the East and of England. Great waterfalls flow over the cliffs into the canyon. The rocks show evidence of having been polished by glaciers. The valley receives ample rain, unlike the dry land below. Clouds and haze add to the beauty of the valley. The air is bracing and scented with flowering shrubs and herbs. The streams are clear and offer good swimming and fishing. There are many mineral springs

The main feature of the Yo Semite is best indicated in one word as a chasm. It is a chasm nearly a mile in average width, however, and more than ten miles in length. the central and broader part of this chasm is occupied at the bottom by a series of groves of magnificent trees, and meadows of the most varied, luxuriant and exquisite herbage, through which meanders a broad stream of the clearest water, rippling over a pebbly bottom, and eddying among banks of ferns and rushes; sometimes narrowed into sparkling rapids and sometimes expanding into placid pools which reflect the wondrous heights on either side. The walls to the chasm are generally half a mile, sometimes nearly a mile in height above these meadows, and where most lofty are nearly perpendicular, sometimes overjutting. At frequent intervals, however, they are cleft, broken, terraced and sloped, and in these places, as well as everywhere upon the summit, they are overgrown by thick clusters of trees.

There is nothing strange or exotic in the character of the vegetation; most of the trees and plants, especially of the meadow and waterside, are closely allied to and are not readily distinguished from those most common in the landscapes of the Eastern States or the midland counties of England. The stream is such a one as Shakespeare delighted in, and brings pleasing reminiscences to the traveller of the Avon or the Upper Thames.

Banks of heartsease and beds of cowslips and daisies are frequent, and thickets of alder, dogwood and willow often fringe the shores. At several points streams of water flow into the chasm, descending at one leap from five hundred to fourteen hundred feet. One small stream falls, in three closely consecutive pitches, a distance of two thousand six hundred feet, which is more shall fifteen times the height of the falls of Niagara. In the spray of these falls superb rainbows are seen.

At certain points the walls of rock are ploughed in polished horizontal furrows, at others moraines of boulders and pebbles are found; both evincing the terrific force with which in past ages of the earth’s history a glacier has moved down the chasm from among the adjoining peaks of the Sierras. Beyond the lofty walls still loftier mountains rise, some crowned by, others in simple rounded cones of light, gray granite. the climate of the region is never dry like that of the lower parts of the state of California; even for several months, not a drop of rain has fallen twenty miles to the westward, and the country there is parched, and all vegetation withered, the Yo Semite continues to receive frequent soft showers, and to be dressed throughout in living green.

After midsummer a light, transparent haze generally pervades the atmosphere, giving indescribable softness and exquisite dreamy charm to the scenery, like that produced by the Indian summer of the East. Clouds gathering at this season upon the snowy peaks which rise within forty miles on each side of the chasm to a height of over twelve thousand feet, sometimes roll down over the cliffs in the afternoon, and, under the influence of the rays of the setting sun, form the most gorgeous and magnificent thunder heads. The average elevation of the ground is greater shall that of the highest peak of the White Mountains, or the Alleghenies, and the air is rare and bracing; yet, its temperature is never uncomfortably cool in summer, nor severe in winter.

Flowering shrubs of sweet fragrance and balmy herbs abound in the meadows, and there is everywhere a delicate odor of the prevailing foliage in the pines and cedars. The water of the streams is soft and limpid, as clear as crystal, abounds with trout and, except near its sources, is, during the heat of summer, of an agreeable temperature for bathing. In the lower part of the valley there are copious mineral springs, the water of one of which is regarded by the aboriginal inhabitants as having remarkable curative properties. A basin still exists to which weak and sickly persons were brought for bathing. The water has not been analyzed, but that it possesses highly tonic as well as other medical qualities can be readily seen. In the neighboring mountains there are also springs strongly charged with carbonic acid gas, and said to resemble in taste the Empire Springs of Saratoga.

Description of the Mariposa Grove and Environs

Summary: The "other district" features the grandeur of the Sequoias in the Mariposa grove. Beautiful glens grace the "intermediate" region. Yosemite's scenery "recalls" [Alexandre] Calame's paintings of the Alps.

​The other district, associated with this by the act of Congress, consists of four sections of land, about thirty miles distant from it, on which stand in the midst of a forest composed of the usual trees and shrubs of the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, about six hundred mature trees of the giant Sequoia. Among them is one known through numerous paintings and photographs as the Grizzly Giant, which probably is the noblest tree in the world. Besides this, there are hundreds of such beauty and stateliness that, to one who moves among them in the reverent mood to which they so strongly incite the mind, it will not seem strange that intelligent travellers have declared that they would rather have passed by Niagara itself than have missed visiting this grove.

In the region intermediate between the two districts the scenery generally is of grand character, consisting of granite mountains and a forest composed mainly of coniferous trees of great size, yet often more perfect, vigorous and luxuriant the trees of half the size are ever found on the Atlantic side of the continent. It is not, however, in its grandeur or in its forest beauty that the attraction of this intermediate region consists, so much as in the more secluded charms of some of its glens formed by mountain torrents fed from the snow banks of the higher Sierras.

These have worn deep and picturesque channels in the granite rocks, and in the moist shadows of their recesses grow tender plants of rare and peculiar loveliness. The broad parachute-like leaves of the peltate saxifrage, delicate ferns, soft mosses, and the most brilliant lichens abound, and in following up the ravines, cabinet pictures open at every turn, which, while composed of materials mainly new to the artist, constantly recall the most valued sketches of Calame in the Alps and Apennines.

Variety of Plant Species

Summry: Summary: The region boasts a huge variety of plant species. Yosemite's beauty includes many subtle facets, and a wide variety of features.

The difference in the elevation of different parts of the district amounts to considerably more than a mile. Owing to this difference and the great variety of exposure and other circumstances, there is a larger number of species of plants within the district than probably he found within a similar space anywhere else on the continent. Professor Torrey, who has given the received botanical names to several hundred plants of California states that on the space of a few acres of meadow land be found about three hundred species, and the that within sight of the trail usually followed by visitors, at least six hundred may he observed, most of them being small and delicate flowering plants.
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By no statement of the elements of the scenery can any idea of that scenery he given, any more than a true impression can be conveyed of a human face by a measured account of its features. It is conceivable that any one or all of the cliffs of the Yosemite might be changed in form and color, without lessening the enjoyment which is now obtained from the scenery. Nor is this enjoyment any more essentially derived from its meadows, its trees, streams, least of all can it he attributed to the cascades. These, indeed, are scarcely to be named among the elements of the scenery. They are mere incidents, of far less consequence any day of the summer than the imperceptible humidity of the atmosphere and the soil. The chasm remains when they are dry, and the scenery may be, and often is, more effective, by reason of some temporary condition of the air, of clouds, of moonlight, or of sunlight through mist or smoke, in the season when the cascades attract the least attention, than when their volume of water is largest and their roar like constant thunder.
 
There are falls of water elsewhere finer, there are more stupendous rocks, more beetling cliffs, there are deeper and more awful chasms, there may be as beautiful streams, as lovely meadows, there are larger trees. It is in no scene or scenes the charm consists, but in the miles of scenery where cliffs of awful height and rocks of vast magnitude and of varied and exquisite coloring, are banked and fringed and draped and shadowed by the tender foliage of noble and lovely trees and hushes, reflected from the most placid pools, and associated with the most tranquil meadows, the most playful streams, and every variety of soft and peaceful pastoral beauty.

"Taken by Surprise"

Summary: Yosemite boasts a union of the "deepest sublimity" and the "deepest beauty." No photograph or painting can "faithfully represent" Yosemite. Congress has decreed that Yosemite shall never be private property.

This union of the deepest sublimity with the deepest beauty of nature, not in one feature or another, not in one part or one scene or another, not any landscape that can be framed by itself, but all around and wherever the visitor goes, constitutes the Yo Semite the greatest glory of nature.

No photograph or series of photographs, no paintings ever prepare a visitor so that he is not taken by surprise, for could the scenes be faithfully represented the visitor is affected not only by that upon which his eye is at any moment fixed, but by all that with which on every side it is associated, and of which it is seen only as an inherent part. For the same reason no description, no measurements, no comparisons are of much value. Indeed the attention called by these to points in some definite way remarkable, by fixing the mind on mere matters of wonder or curiosity prevent the true and far more extraordinary character of the scenery from being appreciated.

It is the will of the Nation as embodied in the act of Congress that this scenery shall never be private property, but that like certain defensive points upon our coast it shall be held solely for public purposes.

Tourism in Switzerland and Bavaria
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Summary: Switzerland has shown the way beautiful landscapes can foster tourism and profits.  Neighboring Bavaria has had similar success by building "artificial objects attraction."

Two classes of considerations may be assumed to have influenced the action of Congress. The first and less important is the direct and obvious pecuniary advantage which comes to a commonwealth from the fact that it possesses objects which cannot be taken out of its domain that are attractive to travellers and the enjoyment of which is open to all. To illustrate this it is simply necessary to refer to certain cantons of the Republic of Switzerland, a commonwealth of the most industrious and frugal people in Europe. The results of all the ingenuity and labor of this people applied to the resources of wealth which they hold in common with the people of other has become of value compared with that which they derive from the price which travellers gladly pay for being allowed to share with them the enjoyment of the natural scenery of their mountains These travellers alone have caused hundreds of the best inns in the world to be established and maintained among them, have given the farmers their best and almost the only market they have for their surplus products, have spread a network of rail roads and superb carriage roads, steamboat routes and telegraphic lines over the country, have contributed directly and indirectly for many years the larger part of the state revenues, and all this without the exportation or abstraction from the country of anything of the slightest value the people.

The Government of the adjoining Kingdom of Bavaria undertook years ago to secure some measure of a similar source of wealth by procuring with large expenditure, artificial objects of attraction to travellers. The most beautiful garden in the natural style on the Continent of Europe was first formed for this purpose, magnificent buildings were erected, renowned artists were drawn by liberal rewards from other countries, and millions of dollars were spent in the purchase of ancient and modern works of art. The attempt thus made to secure by a vast investment of capital the advantages which Switzerland possessed by nature in its natural scenery has been so far successful that large part if not the greater part of the profits of the Rail Roads, of the agriculture and of the commerce of kingdom is now derived from the foreigners who have been thus attracted to Munich its capital.

Future Tourism in Yosemite 

Summary: Tourism will bring similar wealth to California and to the nation as a whole. Tourists are already visiting Yosemite.

That when it shall have become more accessible the Yosemite will prove an attraction of a similar character and a similar source of wealth to the whole community, not only of California but of the United States, there can be in doubt. It is a significant feet that visitors have already come from Europe expressly to see it, and that a member of the Alpine Club of London having seen it in summer was not content with a single visit but returned again and spent several mouths in it during the inclement season of the year for the express purpose of enjoying its Winter aspect. Other foreigners and visitors from the Atlantic States have done the same, while as yet no Californian has shown a similar interest it.

The first class of considerations referred to then as likely to have influenced the action of Congress is that of the direct pecuniary advantage to the commonwealth which under proper administration will grow out of the possession of the Yosemite, advantages which, as will hereafter be shown, might easily he lost or greatly restricted without such action.

Recreation and the Pursuit of Happiness

Summary: The government has a duty to protect its citizens in the pursuit of happiness. The occasional contemplation of nature nurtures health and intellect. The absence of such recreation leads to many disorders. English leaders recreate often and are active into their 70s and 80s. In the US women and farmers particularly need recreation.

A more important class of considerations, however, remains to be stated. These are considerations of a political duty of grave importance to which seldom if ever before has proper respect been paid by any Government in the world but the grounds of which rest on the same eternal base, of equity and benevolence with all other duties of a republican government. It is the main duty of government, if it is not the sole duty of government, to provide means of protection all citizens in the pursuit of happiness against the obstacles, otherwise insurmountable, which the selfishness of individuals or combinations of individuals is liable to interpose to that pursuit.

It is a scientific fact that the occasional contemplation of natural scenes of an impressive character, particularly if this contemplation occurs in connection with relief from ordinary cares, change of air and change of habits, is favorable to the health and vigor of men and especially to the health and vigor of their intellect beyond any other conditions which can be offered them, that it not only gives pleasure for the time being but increases the subsequent capacity for happiness and the means of securing happiness. The want of such occasional recreation where men and women are habitually pressed by their business or household cares often results in a class of disorders the characteristic quality of which is mental disability, sometimes taking the severe forms of softening of the brain, paralysis, palsey, monomania, or insanity, but more frequently of mental and nervous excitability, moroseness, melancholy, or irascibility, incapacitating the subject for the proper exercise of the intellectual and moral forces.

It is well established that where circumstances favor the use of such means of recreation as have been indicated, the reverse of this is true. For instance, it is a universal custom with the heads of the important departments of the British Government to spend a certain period of every year on their parks and shooting grounds, or in travelling among the Alps or other mountain regions. This custom is followed by the leading lawyers, bankers, merchants and the wealthy classes generally of the Empire, among whom the average period of active business life is much greater than with the most nearly corresponding classes in our own or any other country where the same practice is not equally well established. For instance, Lord Brougham, still an active legislator, is eighty eight years old. Lord Palmerston the Prime Minister is eighty two, Earl Russell, Secretary of Foreign affairs, is 74, and there is a corresponding prolongation of vigor among the men of business of the largest and most trying responsibility in England, as compared with those of our own country, which physicians unite in asserting is due in a very essential part to the habitual cares, and for enjoying reinvigorating recreation.

But in this country at least it is not those who have the most important responsibilities in state affairs or in commerce, who suffer most from lack of recreation; women suffer more than men, and the agricultural class is more largely represented in our insane asylums than the professional, and for this, and other reasons, it is these classes to which the opportunity for such recreation is the greatest blessing.

"the operation of scenes of beauty upon the mind"

Summary: Few will fail to be impressed by the beauty of Yosemite. Some, less civilized, individuals are less able than others to appreciate and benefit from beautiful scenery. In day-to-day life we are, unfortunately, preoccupied with "laying up wealth" and other future plans. In contrast, the enjoyment of nature "employs the mind without fatigue" holding it in the the present and "enlivening it." Historically great scenery was available only to the wealthy -- in Great Britain and Ireland there are 1000 private parks, but only 1 in 6,000 has such access to such grounds.

If we analyze the operation of scenes of beauty upon the mind, and consider the intimate relation of the mind upon the nervous system and the whole physical economy, the action and reaction which constantly occurs between bodily and mental conditions, the reinvigoration which results from such scenes is readily comprehended. Few persons can see such scenery as that of the Yosemite and not be impressed by it in some slight degree. All not alike, all not perhaps consciously, and amongst all who are consciously impressed by it, few can give the least expression to that of which they are conscious. But there can be no doubt that all have this susceptibility, though with some it is much more dull and confused shall with others.

The power of scenery to affect men is, in a large way, proportionate to the degree of their civilization and to the degree in which their taste has been cultivated. Among a thousand savages there will be a much smaller number who will show the least sign of being so affected than among a thousand persons taken from a civilized community. This is only one of the many channels in which a similar distinction between civilized and savage men is to be generally observed. The whole body of the susceptibilities of civilized men and with their susceptibilities their powers, are on the whole enlarged. But as with the bodily powers, if one group of muscles is developed by exercise exclusively, and all others neglected, the result is general feebleness, so it is with the mental faculties. And men who exercise those faculties or susceptibilities of the mind which are called in play by beautiful scenery so little that they seem to be inert with them, are either in a diseased condition from excessive devotion of the mind to a limited range of interests, or their whole minds are in a savage state; that is, a state of low development. The latter class need to he drawn out generally; the former need relief from their habitual matters of interest and to be drawn out in those parts of their mental nature which have been habitually left idle and inert.

But there is a special reason why the reinvigoration of those parts which are stirred into conscious activity by natural scenery is more effective upon the general development and health than that of any other, which is this: the severe and excessive exercise of the mind which leads to the greatest fatigue and is the most wearing upon the whole constitution is almost entirely caused by application to the removal of something to be apprehended in the future, or to interests beyond those of the moment, or of the individual; to the laying up of wealth, to the preparation of something, to accomplishing something in the mind of another, and especially to small and petty details which are uninteresting in themselves and which engage the attention at all only because of the bearing they have on some general end of more importance which is seen ahead.

In the interest which natural scenery inspires there is the strongest contrast to this. It is for itself and at the moment it is enjoyed. The attention is aroused and the mind occupied without purpose, without a continuation of the common process of relating the present action, thought or perception to some future end. There is little else that has this quality so purely. There are few enjoyments with which regard for something outside and beyond the enjoyment of the moment can ordinarily be so little mixed. The pleasures of the table are irresistibly associated with the care of hunger and the repair of the bodily waste. In all social pleasures and all pleasures which are usually enjoyed in association with the social pleasure, the care for the opinion of others, or the good of others largely mingles. In the pleasures of literature, the laying up of ideas and self-improvement are purposes which cannot he kept out of view. This, however, is in very slight degree, if at all, the case with the enjoyment of the emotions caused by natural scenery. It therefore results that the enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it, tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind over the body, gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration to the whole system.

Men who are rich enough and who are sufficiently free from anxiety with regard to their wealth can and do provide places of this needed recreation for themselves. They have done so from the earliest periods known in the history of the world; for the great men of the Babylonians, the Persians and the Hebrews, had their rural retreats, as large and as luxurious as those of the aristocracy of Europe at present. There are in the islands of Great Britain and Ireland more than one thousand private parks and notable grounds devoted to luxury and recreation. The value of these grounds amounts to many millions of dollars and the cost of their annual maintenance is greater than that of the national schools; their only advantage to the commonwealth is obtained through the recreation they afford to their owners (except as these extend hospitality to others) and these owners with their families number less than one in six thousand of the whole population.

Private Parks and Public Parks

Summary: So in many places access to "the choicest natural scenes" is a kind of monopoly. In contrast, they should be "laid open to the use of the body of the people."

The enjoyment of the choicest natural scenes in the country and the means of recreation connected with them is thus a monopoly, in a very peculiar manner, of a very few very rich people. The great mass of society, including those to whom it would be of the greatest benefit, is excluded from it. In the nature of the case private parks can never be used by the mass of the people in any country nor by any considerable number even of the rich, except by the favor of a few, and in dependence on them.

Thus without means are taken by government to withhold them from the grasp of individuals, all places favorable in scenery to the recreation of the mind and body will be closed against the great body of the people. For the same reason that the water of rivers should be guarded against private appropriation and the use of it for the purpose of navigation and otherwise protected against obstructions, portions of natural scenery may therefore properly to guarded and cared for by government. To simply reserve them from monopoly by individuals, however, it will be obvious, is not all that is necessary. It is necessary that they should he laid open to the use of the body of the people.

The establishment by government of great public grounds for the free enjoyment of the people under certain circumstances, is thus justified and enforced as a political duty.
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Such a provision, however, having regard to the whole people of a State, has never before been made and the reason it has not is evident.

Exclusion of "Humble Toilers" from Parks

Summary: "Humble toilers" are usually excluded from the parks. God has "implanted" in all men a capacity for exercising the "aesthetic faculties."

It has always been the conviction of the governing classes of the old world that it is necessary that the large mass of all human communities should spend their lives in almost constant labor and that the power of enjoying beauty either of nature or of art in any high degree, requires a cultivation of certain faculties, which is impossible to these humble toilers. Hence it is thought better, so far as the recreations of the masses of a nation receive attention from their rulers, to provide artificial pleasures for them, such as theatres, parades, and promenades where they will be amused by the equipages of the rich and the animation of crowds.

It is unquestionably true that excessive and persistent devotion to sordid interests cramp and distort the power of appreciating natural beauty and destroy the love of it which the Almighty has implanted in every human being, and which is so intimately and mysteriously associated with the moral perceptions and intuitions, but it is not true that exemption from toil, much leisure, much study, much wealth are necessary to the exercise of the esthetic and contemplative faculties. It is the folly of laws which have permitted and favored the monopoly by privileged classes of many of the means supplied in nature for the gratification, exercise and education of the esthetic faculties that has caused the appearance of dullness and weakness and disease of these faculties in the mass of the subjects of kings. And it is against a limitation of the means of such education to the rich that the wise legislation of free governments must be directed. By such legislation the anticipation of the revered Downing may be realized.

American Parks: the "Destiny of the New World"

Summary: The preservation of Yosemite for the people is an expression of "Republican Government" and the destiny of the New World.

The dread of the ignorant exclusive, who has no faith in the refinement of a republic, will stand abashed in the next century, before a whole people whose system of voluntary education embraces (combined with perfect freedom), not only common schools of rudimentary knowledge, but common enjoyments for all classes in the higher realms of art, letters, science, social recreations and enjoyments. Were our legislators but wise enough to understand, today, the destinies of the New World, the gentility of Sir Philip Sidney, made universal, would be not half so much a miracle fifty years hence in America, as the idea of a whole nation of laboring men reading and writing, was, in his day, in England.

It was in accordance with these views of the destiny of the New World and the duty of a Republican Government that Congress enacted that the Yosemite should be held, guarded and managed for the free use of the whole body of the people forever, and that the care of it, and the hospitality of admitting strangers from all parts of the world to visit it and enjoy it freely, should be a duty of dignity and be committed only to a sovereign State.

The Duties of the Park Commissioners

Summary: Yosemite has been treated DIFFERENTLY than other parts of the public domain because of its "natural scenery." This is for the benefit of all.  Goal: the keep the scenery as natural as possible.

The trust having been accepted, it will be the duty of the legislature to define the responsibilities, the rights and the powers of the Commissioners, whom by the Act of Congress, it will be the duty of the Executive of the State to appoint. These must be determined by a consideration of the purposes to which the ground is to be devoted and must be simply commensurate with those purposes.
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The main duty with which the Commissioners should be charged should be to give every advantage practicable to the mass of the people to benefit by that which is peculiar to this ground and which has caused Congress to treat it differently from other parts of the public domain. This peculiarity consists wholly in its natural scenery.

The first point to he kept in mind then is the preservation and maintenance as exactly as is possible of the natural scenery; the restriction, that is to say, within the narrowest limits consistent with the necessary accommodation of visitors, of all artificial constructions and the prevention of all constructions markedly inharmonious with the scenery or which would unnecessarily obscure, distort or detract from the dignity of the scenery. 

In addition to the more immediate and obvious arrangements by which this duty is enforced, there are two considerations which should not escape attention.
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Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove Desecrated

Summary: Problem: trees and plants have already been endangered by man. Indians have built fires. Grafitti and ads appear on the rocks.

First; the value of the district in its present condition as a museum of natural science and the danger — indeed the certainty — that without care many of the species of plants now flourishing upon it will be lost and many interesting objects be defaced or obscured if not destroyed. To illustrate these dangers, it may be stated that numbers of the native plants of large districts of the Atlantic States have almost wholly disappeared and that most of the common weeds of the farms are of foreign origin, having choked out the native vegetation. Many of the finer specimens of the most important tree in the scenery of the Yosemite have been already destroyed and the proclamation of the Governor, issued after the passage of the Act of Congress, forbidding the destruction of trees in the district, alone prevented the establishment of a saw mill within it. Notwithstanding the proclamation many fine trees have been felled and others girdled within the year. Indians and others have set fire to the forests and herbage and numbers of trees have been killed by these fires; the giant tree before referred to as probably the noblest tree now standing on the earth has been burned completely through the bark near the ground for a distance of more shall one hundred feet of its circumference; not only have trees been cut, hacked, barked and fired in prominent positions, but rocks in the midst of the most picture picturesque natural scenery have been broken, painted and discolored, by fires built against them. In travelling to the Yosemite and within a few miles of the nearest point at which it can be approached by a wheeled vehicle, the Commissioners saw other picturesque rocks stencilled over with advertisements of patent medicines and found the walls of the Bower Cave, one of the most beautiful natural objects in the State, already so much broken and scratched by thoughtless visitors that it is evident that unless the practice should be prevented not many years will pass before its natural charm will be quite destroyed.

Protecting the "Rights of Posterity" in the Park

Summary: Crowds have swamped Scotland, the Alps, and the White Hills. "Hundreds" now visit Yosemite annually. Soon there will be thousands, then millions. The Commission should be "clothed" with authority to prevent abuse of the park lands.

Second; it is important that it should he remembered that in permitting the sacrifice of anything that would be of the slightest value to future visitors to the convenience, bad taste, playfulness, carelessness, or wanton destructiveness of present visitors, we probably yield in each case the interest of uncounted millions to the selfishness of a few individuals. It is an important fact that as civilization advances, the interest of men in natural scenes of sublimity and beauty increases. Where a century ago one traveller came to enjoy the scenery of the Alps, thousands come now where even forty ago years one small inn one small inn accommodated the visitors to the White Hills of New Hampshire, half a dozen grand hotels, each accommodating hundreds are now over-crowded every Summer. In the early part of the present century the summer visitors to the Highlands of Scotland did not give business enough to support a single inn, a single stage coach or a single guide. They now give business to several Rail Road trains, scores of steamboats and thousands of men and horses every day. It is but sixteen years since the Yosemite was first seen by a white man, several visitors have since made a journey of several thousand miles at large cost to see it, and notwithstanding the difficulties which now interpose, hundreds resort to it annually. Before many years, it proper facilities are offered, these hundreds will become thousands and in a century the whole number of visitors will be counted by millions. An injury to the scenery so slight that it may be unheeded by any visitor now, will be one of deplorable magnitude when its effect upon each visitor's enjoyment is multiplied by these millions. But again, the slight harm which the few hundred visitors of this year might do, if no care were taken to prevent it, would not be slight, if it should be repeated by millions. At some time, therefore, laws to prevent an unjust use by individuals of that which is not individual but public property, must be made and rigidly enforced. The principle of justice involved is the same now that it will be then; such laws as this principle demands will be more easily enforced, and there will he less hardship in their action, if the abuses they are designed to prevent are never allowed to become customary but are checked while they are yet of unimportant consequence. It should, then, be made the duty of the Commission to prevent a wanton or careless disregard on the part of anyone entering the Yosemite or the Grove, of the rights of posterity as well as of contemporary visitors, and the Commission should be clothed with proper authority and given the necessary means for this purpose.

This duty of preservation is the first which falls upon the State under the Act of Congress, because the millions who are hereafter to benefit by the Act have the largest interest in it, and the largest interest should be first and most strenuously guarded. 

The Need to Make Yosemite More Accessible

Summary: "The duty of preservation" is the paramount responsibility of the state. Unfortunately, Yosemite is still a "rich man's park" because it is so hard to get to it. Here are the costs of travel. This situation would be improved with better roads and camping provisions. A good road would facilitate conveying timber for building in Yosemite. A road would serve as a fire break for the Mariposa Grove. Here are our suggestions  for an unobtrusive road system. Commissioners suggest five cabins for lodging and rental of tents and utensils for camping -- caretakers would rent these.

Next to this, and for a similar reason preceding all other duties of the State in regard to this trust, is that of aiding to make this appropriation of Congress available as soon and as generally as may be economically practicable to those whom it is designed to benefit. Had Congress not thought best to depart from he usual method of dealing with the public lands in this ease, it would have been practicable for one man to have bought the whole, to have appropriated it wholly to his individual pleasure or to have refused admittance to any who were unable to pay a certain price as admission fee, or as a charge for the entertainment which he would have had a monopoly of supplying. The result would have been a rich man’s park, and for the present, so far as the great body of the people are concerned, it is, and as long as the present arrangements continue, it will remain, practically, the property only of the rich.

A man travelling from Stockton to the Yosemite or the Mariposa Grove is commonly three or four days on the road at an expense of from thirty to forty dollars, and arrives in the majority of cases quite overcome with the fatigue and unaccustomed hardships of the journey. Few persons, especially few women, are able to enjoy or profit by the scenery and air for days afterwards. Meantime they remain at an expense of from $3 to $12 per day for themselves, their guide and horses, and many leave before they have recovered from their first exhaustion and return home jaded and ill. The distance is not over one hundred miles, and with such roads and public conveyances as are found elsewhere in the State the trip might be made easily and comfortably in one day and at a cost of ten or twelve dollars. With similar facilities of transportation, the provisions and all the necessities of camping could also be supplied at moderate rates. To realize the advantages which are offered the people of the State in this gift of the Nation, therefor, the first necessity is a road from the termination of the present roads leading towards the district. At present there is no communication with it except by means of a very poor trail for a distance of nearly forty miles from the Yo Semite and twenty from the Mariposa Grove.

Besides the advantages which such a road would have in reducing the expense, time and fatigue of a visit to the tract to the whole public at once, it would also serve the important purpose of making it practicable to convey timber and other articles necessary for the accommodation of visitors into the Yo Semite from without, and thus the necessity, or the temptation, to cut down its groves and to prepare its surface for tillage would he avoided. Until a road is made it must be very difficult to prevent this. The Commissioners propose also in laying out a road to the Mariposa Grove that it shall be carried completely around it, so as to offer a barrier of bare ground to the approach of fires, which nearly every year sweep upon it from the adjoining country, and which during the last year alone have caused injuries, exemption from which it will be thought before many years would have been cheaply obtained at ten times the cost of the road.

Within the Yosemite the Commissioners propose to cause to be constructed a double trail, which, on the completion of our approach road, may be easily made suitable for the passage of a single vehicle, and which shall enable visitors to make a complete circuit of all the broader parts of the valley and to cross the meadows at certain points, reaching all the finer points of view to which it can be carried without great expense. When carriages are introduced it is proposed that they shall be driven for the most part up one side and down the other of the valley, suitable resting places and turnouts for passing being provided at frequent intervals. The object of this arrangement is to reduce the necessity for artificial construction within the narrowest practicable limits, destroying as it must the natural conditions of the ground and presenting an unpleasant object to the eye in the midst of the scenery. The trail or narrow road could also be kept more in the shade, could take a more picturesque course, would be less crusty, and could be much more cheaply kept in repair. From this trail a few paths would also need to be formed, leading to points of view which would only be accessible to persons on foot. Several small bridges would also be required.

The Commission also propose the construction of five cabins at points in the valley conveniently near to those most frequented by visitors, especially near the foot of the cascades, but at the same time near to convenient camping places. These cabins would be let to tenants with the condition that they should have constantly open one comfortable room as a free resting place for visitors, with the proper private accommodations for women, and that they should keep constantly on hand in another room a supply of certain simple necessities for camping parties, including tents, cooking utensils and provisions; the tents and utensils to be let, and the provisions to be sold at rates to be limited by the terms of the contract.

Appropriation Request

Summary: Here is what administration will cost.

The Commissioners ask and recommend that sums be appropriated for these and other purposes named below as follows:

   For the expense already incurred in the survey and transfer of the Yosemite and Mariposa Big Tree Grove from the United States to the State of California
$ 2,000.

   For the construction of 30 miles more or less of double trail & foot paths
3,000.

   For the construction of Bridges
1,600.

   For the construction and finishing five cabins, closets, stairways, railings &c
2,000.

   Salary of Superintendent (2 years)
2,400.

   For surveys, advertising, & incidentals
1,000.

   For aid in the construction of a road
25,000.
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   [Total]
$37,000.

The Commissioners trust that after this amount shall have been expended the further necessary expenses for the management of the domain will be defrayed by the proceeds of rents and licenses which will be collected upon it.

Encouragement for Art and Science in the Park

Summary: The state should promote arts and science in the parks.

The Yosemite yet remains to he considered as a field of study for science and art. Already students of science and artists have been attracted to it from the Atlantic States and a number of artists have at heavy expense spells the Summer in sketching the scenery. That legislation should, when practicable within certain limits, give encouragement to the pursuit of science and art has been fully recognized as a duty by this State. The pursuit of science and of art, while it tends more than any other human pursuit to the benefit of the commonwealth the advancement of civilization, does not correspondingly put money into the hands of the pursuers. Their means are generally extremely limited. They are likely by the nature of their studies to be the best counsellors which can he had in respect to certain of the duties which will fall upon the proposed Commission, and it is right that they should if possible be honorably represented in the constitution of the Commission.

Future Role of Park Commissioners

Summary:Among the future commissioners four should be "landscape artists" or "students of natural science." Yosemite is a "trust for the whole nation."
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Congress has provided that the Executive shall appoint eight Commissioners, and that they shall give their services gratuitously. It is but just that the State should defray the travelling expenses necessarily incurred in the discharge of their duty. It is proposed that the allowance for this purpose shall he limited in amount to four hundred dollars per annum, for each Commissioner, or so much thereof as shall have been actually expended in travelling to and from the ground and while upon it. It is also proposed that of the eight Commissioners to be appointed by the Executive, four shall be appointed annually and that these four shall be students of Natural Science or Landscape Artists. It is advised also that in order that it may be in the power of the Governor when he sees fit to offer the slight consideration represented in the sum of $400 proposed to be allowed each Commissioner for travelling expenses as an inducement to men of scientific note and zealous artists to visit the State, that he shall not necessarily be restricted in these appointments to citizens of the State. The Yosemite being a trust from the whole nation, it seems eminently proper that so much liberality in its management should be authorized.

     While teaching a course called "The History of National Parks" at Eastern Washington University, I am continually impressed with the language of the parks. I have travelled tens of thousands of miles to study parks around the world, and everywhere I go -- from the Norwegian Arctic to the Australian desert, to national and state parks of many descriptions -- I see similar patterns in park management and culture. Around the world, for example, park personnel are wrestling with approaches to invasive plants, endangered species, indigenous peoples, and effective interpretation.

     Recently, for example, I have spent several days in a small sailboat at a dock at Blake Island Maritime State Park in the Salish Sea (aka, Puget Sound) about five miles from Seattle. The entire island is a park with almost a square mile of forest. In the image below, the island is in the lower section of the chart, just above the word "Route."

     Below is a map of the island from the ​Blake Island Marine State Park web site. As I write this, I am hunkered down in a boat with a cold wind blowing outside. The docks are depicted at the top right hand corner of the map.

     Here is my floating cabin (bottom right) at dock at Blake Island at nightfall.

​     During three days at the park, I walked most of the trails -- about ten miles in all. Here is an example:

     I grew acquainted with some of the residents of the island including:

• a pestle of people
• a herd of deer
• a forest of trees
• a hive of wasps, and
• a gaze of raccoons 
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​     I was particularly impressed that Blake Island was a creature friendly park to critters that might have been 
disparaged, even destroyed, in other places.

     I was intrigued by this sign when I first came ashore. Mounted on a saw horse, it covers a couple of feet of a wooden walk way. It reads: "Emergency Closure--Active Wasp Nest--Please Walk Around."
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​     I needed no further coaxing and walked actively around the nest, but I carried with me a curiosity about the sign and the nest. In our National Parks History class we study extensively the evolution of park-friendly approaches to wildlife, including protecting such animals as Dahl sheep in Dinali and reintroducing the wolf and the grizzly in Yellowstone. But wasps?! Have they now acquired standing as natural residents of a park? Or was the sign there to protect visiting tourists rather than resident wasps? I talked to another boater who thought the wasps should be eliminated. But I wasn't sure who or what the park was protecting.

​     Fortunately, I had become acquainted with Alicia Burkey, a park staffer, who helped me dock my boat when I cruised into the harbor off the Salish Sea earlier that day. In the evening after my first walk I sent her an email asking whether the sign was intended to protect the wasps from the visitors or the visitors from the wasps. Here is her answer:

In response to your questions about the wasp nest. Yes to both. The Park Ranger tried to remove the nest earlier this summer, but it was too far under the boards to reach. He decided it would be best to block off the area to protect our visitors and let the nest exist. The wasps would be forced out eventually by the rain if we just let nature run its course and he liked that idea better than causing unnecessary harm to the wasps by forcing them out early. 

     I liked that answer, and it was an introduction to other manifestations at Blake Island of a sensitivity to nature -- letting nature run its course.

     At Blake Island there is a big open area near the docks with campsites, a horseshoe pit, bathrooms, and in the evenings, lots of deer. Here is one of them, looking particularly noble:
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     Ten or fifteen other deer were browsing nearby. I watched them for a while as the sun was sinking, and then I saw this startling sight:

     I imagined that this poor deer must have suffered a recent injury, and in my email to park staffer Alicia Burkey, mentioned above, I sent a copy of this film and wrote: "This evening I noticed a deer near the docks who was having a lot of trouble walking. The park staff may already know about this, but just to be certain, here is a little film I made." In her reply Alicia wrote: 

     "I see you've spotted our 'special deer'. The staff are delighted when she is brought up, because it reassures us that others are watching out for her as well. She was born last spring with a disability (we think her hips), which is why she walks a little wonky, but she is healthy and thriving on the island. The staff and visitors keep a close eye on her to make sure she has plenty of space to forage without feeling intimidated."

     I take special pleasure in the phrase where Alicia notes the park staff's "delight" that "others are watching out for her as well."

     A couple of days later I was walking in the forest at nighttime, and I came across a mother deer and two fawns. I did my best to capture their pictures in the low light, talking to them in my version of Deerish. Then much to my surprise....

 
     Note to my students in History of National Parks: this story needs a strong conclusion tying the post as a whole into a great quotation on park values from our studies. Please post a suggested conclusion below in the comments. You will receive extra credit in this week's quiz, and I will select the best for the actual conclusion to this post!
-- On further reflection, I liked all of the "suggested conclusions," and so instead of choosing one to post here, I will keep all and any more that appear. So far they are all far "above average"!

Multiple Sensations upon the Occasion of a Close Encounter with a Moose in Idaho
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      Several weeks ago I was "camping" in Harrison, Idaho. After settling in following the beautiful drive from Cheney Washington, I set out on my bicycle for a ride of 15 miles or so along the lovely Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes. Late in the afternoon, I turned back, hoping to get to my RV before nightfall. I was hurrying along, but nature compelled me to pause and take this picture:

And this one:
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     So basically, I was enjoying the scenery as night was falling. Then suddenly just in front of me, I came upon a mother moose and baby moose browsing in front of me, blocking my progress on the trail. This presented a dilemma: turning around to detour would likely set me back ten miles. I pondered the situation:

1. I recalled that more folks are killed by moose than by bears in Alaska.
2. Trampled to death.
3. Moose, like bears, dislike having humans get too close to their progeny.
4. So I got off my bicycle and paused about 40 feet from the pair, and waited helplessly for them to stop browsing beside MY trail and move on. (I figured that if the mother turned on me, at least I would have my bicycle between me and her -- but that was not entirely reassuring.)
5. When they continued browsing (child indifferent to me, mother alternatively browsing and eying me) I attempted to reason with them.
6. My conversation, or rather my monologue, went something like this:

-- "Heloooo, Mooses. How are you this evening?"
-- "I mean you no harm."
-- "Could I just pass by, on this side of the road?" (gesturing)
-- "Mrs. Moose, your calf is Bea-uti-ful!"
Repeat, repeat, repeat

      This went on for about 20 minutes, with Mother Moose browsing and eyeing me. 
     Finally they both went into the deeper woods to the right. I had about five seconds to breathe a sigh of relief; then I heard a crashing in the brush where the moose had disappeared. My first thought was that Mother Moose had chosen this moment to attack. But instead of trampling me, she was trampling through the bush.
     I rode on cautiously, then faster. In about a mile I saw two bears in the distance, right on the trail. But no, they were just a man and woman taking a walk. 
     I stopped to tell them about the moose, now back a mile or so. "Oh, no," they said. "We heard about the mooses and were hoping to see them!"
     Back at my camp I tried to recollect the various sensations I had experienced while taking part in this little vignette of wild nature. That's one of the things we are studying this quarter in my class on the History of the American Wilderness -- our reactions to wilderness experiences. In the first place I felt pretty calm at the time, but I was definitely not going to get any closer to the moose. My main worry was that this stand off might go on for hours, and it was getting cold and dark. (darker than the image below suggests -- in post-production I brightened it so that you could see the baby moose more clearly.)
     My default sensation was a combination of analysis and caution. But reading myself more deeply I discovered these sensations deep inside: 1) fear ready to come to the surface of my consciousness. Had I been a dog, the hair on my back would have been standing up; 2) even deeper, like faint clouds on my mental horizon, I had a sensation of wonder: here it was, what my students and I have discussed again and again this quarter; the awe-some-ness of wild nature.
     So thank you Mother Moose.... And, yes, your child is beautiful!

Cover Page: More information on the book appears after this excerpt.

  I became interested in polar bears after a trip to Svalbard in 2015. Soon after that trip I posted an article on the death of a polar bear -- which many people there, myself included, viewed as a tragedy. So I was delighted to see that Michael Engelhard recently published a history of polar bears in the popular imagination and in actual history. The excerpt from the book, posted below, was prepared by Mr. Engelhard and it includes samples from one of the best set of images I have ever seen in any historical publication. Herewith the excerpt:
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Today, no animal except perhaps the wolf divides opinions as strongly as does the polar bear, top predator and sentinel species of the Arctic. But while wolf protests are largely a North American and European phenomenon, polar bears unite conservationists—and their detractors—worldwide.  

​In the new millennium’s politics, polar bears play the part whales played in the 1980s. From a theatrics-as-protest perspective, their shape lends itself better to impersonation than that of a rainforest or whale. Activists take advantage of this. Dressed as polar bears, they show up in the most unlikely places—the Kremlin, or Ottawa’s Parliament Hill—as nonhuman “climate refugees. In an act billed as “part protest, part performance,” Greenpeace paraded a mechanical polar bear the size of a double-decker bus through central London, as part of its Save the Arctic campaign. Fifteen puppeteers operated Aurora the bear, which had an articulated head and neck, a mouth like an ice cave, and the real bear’s “slightly lazy” ambling gait. 
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Greenpeace activist at London’s Horse Guards. The bear’s shape and behavior make it particularly suited for impersonations as part of political “theater.” (Courtesy of Elizabeth Dalziel/Greenpeace.) 

When climate change became a pressing political issue, zoos that had closed polar bear exhibits or were planning to do so because of their high costs reversed course, making sure polar bears were on hand. In part, this reflected zoo visitors’ growing interest. But zoos also stepped up their breeding programs when the species was listed as threatened—many of their bears were well past the reproductive age. They soon increased their holdings also with abandoned cubs and “problem” bears removed from the Arctic. 

Like captive breeding programs and reintroduction efforts in general, science-assisted interventions in the field raise the question of what constitutes wildness, or the bearness of polar bears. One of several emergency actions proposed to relieve starving bears has helicopters airlift food to the “most accessible” ones—at a cost of thirty-two thousand dollars per day. (Similar programs already exist for intensely managed animal species and populations such as the California condor, black bears in Washington, and brown bears in Eastern Europe.) Other last-ditch efforts biologists suggest include relocating bears farther north, where sea ice will last longer; moving more bears to zoos; and even euthanizing those unlikely to survive on their own. Some Inuit who decry even the radio-collaring of polar bears as disrespectful to the animals and who are tired of “outsiders” meddling say to just let them be.  

Already, polar bears used to humans and to associating humans with food have become nuisances in communities such as Kaktovik on Alaska’s Beaufort Sea coast. Villagers there and elsewhere have killed polar bears in defense of life or property, sometimes on their doorstep. The temptation for locals to feed bears to attract them and the subsequent tourist dollars also is great. 
 
With the polar bear caught in the media’s limelight, some Canadians began to consider it a more fitting national emblem than the beaver. In an attempt to oust the official signature animal—“the dentally defective rat”—one senator reminded her fellow citizens that a country’s symbols are not constant and can change over time. The polar bear would be perfect for the part, with its “strength, courage, resourcefulness, and dignity.” An opponent countered that “you can’t beat a beaver for stoic hard work and industry,” a perfect metaphor for the pioneering Canadian spirit. Such resistance shows the difficulties of rebranding, with brand loyalty in this case entrenched for more than thirty-six years. 
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When the senator pitched it as a new national symbol, the polar bear had already reinvigorated Canada’s oldest trade, which the animal rights movement’s stance against wearing fur had previously damaged. Since the bear’s numbers were thought to have declined and restrictions on hunting it consequently increased, its value as status symbol rose, to a level comparable to its first appearance in Europe during the Middle Ages. Sports hunters now pay up to thirty thousand dollars to shoot a polar bear in Canada. In the last five years, the price of pelts alone doubled, with the best selling for twenty thousand dollars or more. Even in small amounts, legal polar bear hair, used in fly-fishing, is hard to obtain. Like real flies, lures made with the hollow hairs settle gently on water. There is no equivalent, and patches of pre-treaty skin with hair sell for six dollars per square inch in the United States.
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A store that sells fur garments on Quebec City’s Rue du Petit-Champlain, North America’s oldest commercial district, is also a taxidermy business. The price of this polar bear skin was $ 12,000. (Photo by Julia Pelish.) 
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All this encourages poaching, especially in Russia, where forty to two hundred bears are killed each year. Their skulls and skins enter the market with false Canadian documentation, the forging of which itself is a lucrative business. The resurgent demand for fur rugs, claws, carved masks with polar bear fur, and similar items comes largely from Russia and China, where a growing middle class spends money on status symbols that are passé in the West. South Koreans, on the other hand, buy dried polar bear gallbladders for “medicinal” uses, at three thousand dollars a piece. 
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Canadian politicians say that initiatives to outlaw such trade or hunting are based more on emotion than on science and that the hunting quotas are sustainable. (Inuit and trophy hunters kill about six hundred polar bears per year.) In the feelings it awakens, this controversy resembles the “seal wars” of the 1970s and 1980s, when big-eyed, white “baby” harp seals clubbed on sea ice caused furor and even French sex symbols became activists. Impassioned appeals, however disguised, come from both sides. “A ban would affect our ability to buy the necessities of life, to clothe our children,” an Inuit representative at the 2013 CITES conference said. “We have to protect our means of putting food on the table and selling polar bear hides enables us to support ourselves.” Perhaps by intention, this statement counts on our empathy, on our instinct to nurture and protect the human young and frail. 
​

Polar bear hide strung up to dry on a house in Upernavik Kujalleq, Greenland.
​(Photo by Kim Hansen / Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)   

​The same Native spokesman redirected the discussion toward the root cause of the polar bear’s plight. He accused the United States of compensating for its lack of action on climate change and pollution of the Arctic from drilling and mining, of using the polar bear as a blunt tool, because it is “the perfect poster child.”  

Contradictions abound. Matters quickly get complicated. These days, art itself can no longer be apolitical or unaware of social currents, if its mission is to change public perceptions or to transcend established practices. Inspired by the Nazca lines and children’s drawings, another Icelandic artist, Bjargey Ólafsdóttir, used organic red food dye to paint a gigantic polar bear outline on Langjökull Glacier, as part of a concerted effort by artists and environmentalists to call attention to the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun. It looked as if Earthlings had made a statement for extraterrestrials, showing them that they care about bears. 
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  The Icelandic artist Bjargey Ólafsdóttir painted this outline on Langjökull Glacier to draw attention to                 activists’ demands to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from its current level of 400 parts per million to below 350 ppm. (Photo by Christopher Lund.) 
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Less than half a year later, coast guard personnel killed a real polar bear stranded on Iceland’s northern coast—as bears have since Norse times—because it might disappear into the fog, wander into more densely populated areas, and there pose a risk to the public. A fraction of said public was very upset by the killing. It suggested marooned bears be outfitted with radio-collars and monitored—and restrained only if they became dangerous. Or they could be tranquilized and transferred to the Reykjavík zoo. Or officials could catch, cage, and repatriate strays to Greenland, where, of course, they might also get shot, as part of that country’s hunting quota for Natives. The polar bear killing in Iceland in 2010, like one in 2008, garnered attention domestically and internationally. Many people thought it “unfortunate” that Icelanders were killing bears when most of the world (and some prominent Icelanders) felt that the bears needed special protection. A rich Icelandic businessman offered the use of his private jet, and to pay for the polar bear’s relocation. 
​
A 2011 pie chart by the Canadian government lies at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum. In a kind of moral mathematics, it calculates the dollar value of polar bears: four hundred thousand dollars per bear. While the chart mentions “intrinsic” and “cultural, artistic, and spiritual values for Aboriginals,” only the bears’ economic worth is given in dollars—it takes up two thirds of the pie chart. “Intrinsic value,” a mere sliver of the pie, is the “bears’ non-utilitarian role in the ecosystem and their right to exist.” In all fairness it must be said that the report also determined how much Canadians would spend to preserve the charismatic species that graces stamps, coins, and, as polar bear–shaped license plates, cars. Canadians were willing to pay what was then the price of an iPad—508 dollars per household—to avoid losing the country’s polar bear population, estimated at fifteen thousand. Considering the price of a trophy hunt or a skin, a dead bear is valued much more highly by a few people than a live one is by many. The less “attractive,” more “alien,” but no less threatened St. Lawrence Estuary beluga whale was worth a fifth of a polar bear to the average Canadian. Even wildlife researchers are not immune to ranking North America’s bear species according to their cultural, social, and economic value. For many biologists, brown bears are a notch above black bears. And polar bear biologists think their subject is “the cat’s meow.” A bear population’s numbers and status—“threatened” versus “common”—and the funding available for studying it doubtlessly influence this attitude. But more significant, perhaps, is an ever-elusive quality: the animal’s perceived “charisma.” 
​

Polar bears in the possessive—political statement at a house in Windsor, Ontario.
​(Photo by Nancy Rae Gilliland.) 

​Like the bear Viking merchants traded to Europe’s nobility, the emblem of nature conservation is precious as a commodity and as a pawn in political maneuvers. Even if we never reach the point where polar bears are fed bear kibble from helicopters, bears today, managed and marketed, no longer seem quite “pure” or genuinely wild. While the blending of consumer logos and wildlife might strike some people as odd, it is also no longer limited to the corporate sector. The president of Polar Bears International, a former marketing director, is dedicated to turning the bear into a recognizable environmental brand, “spinning” its image on guided tours outside Churchill. Still, overexposure and a desensitized public could weaken the message and the “Lord of the Arctic” fade to a new cliché. Some critics think polar bears have already begun to disappear in the white noise of our culture. “The polar bear has lost a lot of its cachet,” the writer Jon Mooallem said in an interview. “It’s become too political. It doesn’t really resonate with environmentalists anymore and it ticks off everyone else.” Summing up the dilemma of image, Mooallem claimed that, “In the twenty-first century, how species survive, or go to die, may have to do more with Barnum than with Darwin.”  

It may have to do even more with Konrad Lorenz, Marshall McLuhan, and Jean Piaget. It has to do more with Lorenz, because he ferreted out 
the dynamics between market forces and ecological catastrophes (outlined in his 1973 book Civilized Man’s Eight Deadly Sins); with McLuhan, because he realized how the medium shapes the message; and with Piaget, because he stressed learning from the past and teaching our children well. These three figures supersede Barnum, as better promotion of the polar bear will only get us so far. What really is needed is a drastic restructuring of our society, or at least, our economic system. 

With our tendency to mess things up and then try to fix them—culminating at present in desperate schemes of geo-engineering—we find it hard to accept that perhaps the polar bear’s time is running out. And that ours could be too. 

Michael Engelhard, Photo by ​Tuti Minondo 
​

Michael Engelhard is the author of a new essay collection, American Wild, and of Ice Bear: The Cultural History of an Arctic Icon, from which this essay has been excerpted. He lives in Fairbanks, Alaska, and works as a wilderness guide in the Arctic. Ice Bear​ was published recently by the University of Washington Press. The book is thoughtful and beautifully written with a remarkably engaging and useful illustrations. The book's web page at the University of Washington Press provides more information. 

            National parks have been described as America’s “best idea.”  In 1872 there was only one national park in the entire world, Yellowstone – see above. Today there are more than 500 parks in the United States and roughly 7,000 world-wide.
 
            Students in History 498 will focus on the American parks while learning also about comparable parks and park systems around the world.
 
            The course structure is as refreshing as the wilderness itself!
 
1) History 498 is an online class so you can do the weekly assignments anytime you like, day or night. You can even participate in the class while visiting a park yourself.

​Sunset Over Walden Pond, The Spiritual Home of the Preservation Ideal

​Monuments like the Statue of Liberty are also part of the park system.

​Youngs with his trusty Spider motorcycle “Swoop” --  used for park explorations.

4) Your professor, Dr. Bill Youngs, has studied parks from Australia to the Arctic and will be teaching segments of the class with his films and articles via the internet while on location in American and foreign parks.
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​Svalbard in the North Atlantic – 1000 Miles North of Iceland!
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                               How to sign up for the course:

   If you are enrolled in classes at Eastern Washington University, simply go to the courses listed in EagleNet for the History Department, click on "History 498: Seminar" and select "National Parks." If you have questions for the instructor, Dr. Youngs, you can email him at [email protected]. He will do his best to answer you immediately -- even if he is busy exploring a national park!

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A few days ago the Republican Party drafted a platform, which required new National Monuments to have the approval of Congress and state legislatures before being signed into law by the president.
 
Why should we care?
 
History provides the answer.  But first, a brief primer on parks and monuments:
 
National Monuments are units of the National Parks Service. You sometimes hear that there are fifty-nine national parks in the United States. At this writing the actual number is more like five hundred. 
 
Confusion arises from the fact that the National Parks Service, created in 1916, is a collection of parks with many different designations. We have national monuments, battlefields, cemeteries, historic sites, seashores, lakeshores, rivers, recreation areas, parkways, and trails, among designations.
 
If a park is called simply a “National Park,” it is one of an elite fifty-nine, often esteemed more than the other parks. Recently, for example, Pinnacles National Monument in California became Pinnacles National Park. In describing the change, newspapers referred to Pinnacles as having been “elevated” to its new status.
 
But this pecking order does not always make sense. Is Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas really more grand than Devil’s Tower National Monument in Wyoming? Is Shenendoah National Park more inspiring than Cape Cod National Seashore? Sometimes the designations seem quite arbitrary.
 
National Monuments range greatly in size and content.  Some are famous landscapes: Devil’s Tower, Mount St. Helens, Canyon de Chelly, and Muir Woods, for example. Others are historic places such as buildings associated with George Washington, Booker T. Washington, and George Washington Carver.  One National Monument is literally a monument, the Statue of Liberty.
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​Today there are more than 100 National Monuments in the United States. Moreover, many of the fifty-nine National Parks began as National Monuments. Here are some of those modern parks with the dates of  their initial designation as “monuments,” followed by the date of  their transition to “parks.”
 
Grand Canyon (1908, 1919)
 
Arches (1929, 1971)
 
Death Valley (1933, 1994)
 
Pinnacles (1908, 2013)
 
Dry Tortugas (1933, 1994)
 
Grand Tetons (1929, 1943, 1950)
 
The Tetons are a special case: the mountains themselves became a National Park in 1929. John D. Rockefeller Jr. and others wanted to include the beautiful valley known as Jackson Hole in the park, but they faced stiff local resistance. So by executive order President Franklin Roosevelt set aside the valley as a National Monument in 1943. Eventually in 1950 the monument was folded into today’s more expansive Grand Tetons National Park.
 
The ability of presidents to create national parks by executive order is exactly the power being challenged by the current Republican presidential platform. National Parks require congressional approval as well as a president’s signature. In contrast, the president has a free hand in creating National Monuments—except in Wyoming, by the way, but that’s another story.  Additionally, the Republican Platform calls for requiring state legislative approval of new monuments.
 
But again, why should we care?  Shouldn’t “the people” control the park designation process?

Let's go back one century. History provides the answer. Let’s take the Grand Canyon,or example–surelyone of the most national-park-worthy sites in the world. Wasn’t it obvious that it should become a National Park?
 
Well, no.
 
Back in the day, at the beginning of the twentieth century some folks wanted to use the canyon for mining, others wanted private control of tourist access, and some wanted both. The canyon was in danger of being diminished before it could become a park. A new law came to the rescue....
 
In 1906 during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt,  Congress passed the American Antiquities Act, which declares:
 
“The President of the United States is hereby authorized, in his discretion, to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be national monuments.”

Theodore Roosevelt Staring Down the "Lumber Trust"

​Theodore Roosevelt, arguably the greatest conservation president in American history, was eager to protect the canyon. “Let this great wonder of nature remain as it now is,” he declared during a visit to the canyon. “You cannot improve on it. But what you can do is keep it for your children, your children’s children, and all who come after you, as the one great sight which every American should see.” In 1908 he used the Antiquities Act to declare the Grand Canyon a National Monument.  
 
In all Roosevelt established eighteen national monuments including all or part of landscapes that later became Olympic, Lassen Volcanic, Pinnacles, and Petrified Forest National Parks.
 
Then and now there were persons who opposed such measures, arguing in the name of “the people” that the lands should be open to exploitation. Of course, with the National Parks movement we have adopted a more broad and generous definition of "the people," that includes more than “developers” and more uses than extraction. The people and the parks have come to be synonymous. And over time, again and again, local opponents of a particular park have come to see the economic and scenic value in conservation.
 
The Antiquities Act granting the president the power to create National Monuments has often protected American landscapes and historic sites for the greater good of us all.
 
So as we celebrate the centennial of the National Parks Service this year, we should remember also the centennial-plus-a-decade of the Antiquities Act—and the good work of the Republican president and great conservationist, Theodore Roosevelt in putting it to work!

This image, including caption "This Book Features Images of Smiling Slaves" is from BBC.Com

After enduring a storm of criticism over its new children's book, A Birthday Cake for George Washington, Scholastic Publishing announced this week that it would halt distribution of the book. It tells the story of George Washington's cook, Hercules, and his daughter, Delia, facing the challenge of baking the President a birthday cake without sugar.
​
I would like to describe the book more fully, but Amazon and other distributors no longer sell it, and "scalpers" are asking as much as $1,500 for a copy. Apparently though, Delia and her Dad are pictured smiling throughout the book, and Hercules is said to be proud of his work as chef to President Washington.  And therein lies the problem.

The author is at pains to argue in an afterward that slavery was wrong, despite those smiles, and notes that Hercules actually ran away to freedom. (By the way, the author, illustrator, and editor of the book are all African American.) Nevertheless some reviewers have criticized Birthday Cake as an incomplete, even a dishonest, portrayal of slavery. So Scholastic backed down and effectively censured the book from further review.

And that is a shame for scholars, students, and children alike, all of whom might have learned some important lessons from  A Birthday Cake for George Washington.  I have been studying ways of telling the slavery story for more than 50 years--ever since I attended a class at Berkeley in 1965, where Kenneth Stampp lectured on the themes in his immensely important book, The Peculiar Institution. Before Stampp, the master narrative on slavery in America emphasized the humane owner and the happy slave. Stampp revealed the bankruptcy of that narrative, particularly in his use of runaway slave advertisements, which invariably identified slaves by describing their whipping scars.

We needed then, as we still need today, to be reminded that slavery was forced--often savagely--on an unwilling people. But the fate of a children's book about a black chef and his daughter suggests that we may be diminishing the portrait of slavery by banishing stories that do not fit exactly into the master narrative of unrelenting oppression.

I am teaching a research course this winter on slavery, and we are currently reading Solomon Northup's 12 Years a Slave as well as viewing the movie. Arguably no narrative and no film provide a more devastating indictment of the cruelty of slavery. And yet the real-life victim of kidnapping and torture, Northup himself, includes in his narrative accounts of solicitude by his master, a slave's desire to repay kindness with kindness, and happiness among the slaves. Today in class we read several accounts of the "Birthday Cake" news, and reviewed Solomon Northup's narrative. Among other episodes we recalled:
-- Slave-owner William Ford riding a horse while Northup walked and urging Northup to trade places,
​-- a grateful Northup volunteering to work in the Ford garden when not required to do so.

12 Years a Slave makes reference often to a capacity for happiness among slaves. Northup lived a "comparatively happy life" with William Ford. The slave Patsey is capable of "rejoicing in the mere sense of existence." Northup enjoys playing the violin when he is "joyful."  And he finds at least five ways to indicate how happy the slaves are during the three-to-six day Christmas holiday. They exhibit "unalloyed and exulting happiness." Happiness "sparkles" in their eyes. And they are "as happy looking mortals as can be found on the face of the earth."

Solomon Northup does tell us that these happy times are but an interlude in a year characterized by toil and fear. But those joyful days are part of the variegated story of slavery, and he chose to include those days in his narrative. We would hardly do justice to Northup if we were to expunge those moments from his written account--as the script does from film version. 

By giving into pressure to confine the master slave narrative to a kind of straight jacket, Scholastic Publishing has denied us and our children a valuable avenue into comprehending the rich complexity of the slave experience. This is a shame for modern readers, and arguably it is even unfair to that almost-forgotten father and daughter, Hercules and Delia.

The National Elk Refuge outside of Jackson, Wyoming, boasts one of the largest elk herds in the world—about 7,500 animals. The refuge was established in 1912 to protect the herd, which had thrived in Jackson Hole before the arrival of cattle and the depletion of grasses needed by the elk. The refuge has set aside an area of about 25,000 acres, which has helped the animals thrive during more than a century.

Arriving in Jackson in December, 2015, I learned that animals had begun coming down from the nearby mountains for the winter. Along the highway, I could see hundreds of elk near the fence:
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All photos in this post are by Bill Youngs

I was staying near the refuge, and late in the afternoon of December18 I decided to take a walk along a road on the eastern side of the refuge. As night fell, I navigated by moonlight and the lights of an occasional passing car or truck.
​

​About a mile into the refuge, I decided it was time to return home. Up in the hills on the east side of the road I could hear coyotes and an indistinct rustling—a sound that I can only describe as a restlessness in the forest. Then a truck came past and halted about 50 yards ahead. In its lights I could see one elk, then another two or three, than dozens—a veritable river of elk flowing down from the mountainside, across the road, and into the refuge. The truck slowly moved on through the herd, and several thoughts flooded my mind?
-- Would I be able to walk through the flowing elk?
-- Should I wait for another vehicle and hope for a ride?
But at that moment the herd split: those across the road continued into the refuge. The others, now seeing me, vanished back up the mountain. I had walked on only a few yards when I saw a moose directly in front of me beside the road. My mind raced through a succession of quick thoughts:
-- In Alaska more people are killed every year by moose than by grizzlies.
-- If I was in danger, I might as well continue walking toward the moose as flee in another direction.
Somehow I was not particularly worried, but I was deeply interested in what would happen next.
A few more steps forward and I had the answer: my "moose" was simply a park sign beside the road! 
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Before you laugh at my mistake, consider this. It was dark—very dark, as evidenced by a photo I took of the sign:
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It looks just like a moose—right?!
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