As evening rolls into my living room, I flip on the television to watch the news, lifting my remote from the rubble of newspapers that grace my coffee table. I feel a pang of regret as I glance at the Opinion pages and see Jeff Osgood’s headline, “Forget the outdoors: Where’s the remote?” To manage my temporary guilt and drown out the patter of light rain on the roof, I tap up the volume a bit. Osgood argues that video games, the internet, and television programs have become the best place for America to watch nature, citing a Nature Conservancy study that finds “the number of visitors to national parks is declining, and fewer people are hunting, fishing or camping.” I agree that I enjoy watching nature on DVD, Animal Planet, and nature programming in general and that I frequent internet sites thrilling with nature’s ambiance; yet I would argue that the Nature Conservancy could not possibly know that I am visiting national parks now more than ever. I haven’t hunted, fished, or camped for more than a year, and I haven’t registered these activities in any national park log. Apparently, the study only measured historical trends; more of us who are “quietly subversive on behalf of the land” (Tempest Williams) might be trailing our way into the backcountry from a neighbor’s yard or day-tripping on a well-marked trail rather than registering for a tent space on the measurable valley floor of a national park.
Twenty years ago, when the Nature Conservancy recorded healthy numbers of national park visitors, I was on the roster, too. I rented a campsite at the Buffalo National Riverway, along with some sixteen others, for a weekend retreat, using University of Arkansas rented camping gear. We had to explain where we were going and get the camping gear back on Monday morning. Everything about that trip required registration and planning. Fast forward to my life ten years later. I was living in the Trinity Alps, and the Trinity National Forest served as my view in every direction. When I left my property for a walk to the post office, I walked through national forest territory, as did the black bears who ambled down the mountain to eat blackberries beside the Trinity River. We often eyed each other from safe distances; sometimes, we were suddenly too close for comfort. Osgood states that people are staying home because “the media construct a reality for us that’s so dangerous we’d best leave these places alone.” I must be crazy: I not only visit wild and dangerous places more often than I used to, I do so without ever consulting a park ranger or registering for a hunting license.
I admit I am a bit of a stranger to contemporary life in 2008. While my friends are enjoying garage sales on a Sunday morning, or heaven forbid, gracing the pews of the local churches, I am most likely walking some city greenspace, having some hot coffee, and then packing for my day hike in Whiskeytown National Park. I have an annual pass, which I post just inside my windshield, but this pass is also good for a day hike in Lassen National Park or a day at Burney Falls. Typically, I could be heading into any of those places. I don’t know how the Nature Conservancy counts numbers. Each week, no matter how I vary my hikes, I see some of the same people on the trails. We are a group of people so addicted to state and national parks that we have chosen to live our whole lives close enough to one that we can walk right into it from our homes. My life plan becomes fitting in my work and relationships between my afternoons in national parks. Yet I haven’t counted as a number on any visitor’s roster for a very long time.
Let me think back. There was a time on Easter Sunday when my son was small that I drove to Big Sur and went horseback riding on the beach. I registered with the park service for the ride. When I later walked among the redwoods, I found myself among European and Japanese tourists. English was a second language, and all the American idealism about this beautiful place evaporated in the bump and bustle. I drove through Yosemite once, about seven years ago, paid the park fee and registered my vehicle. I could hardly get out of my vehicle in such traffic, and English was not the first language I heard. I hiked out of the Grand Canyon in 1992, finding one other American to hike with. Most of the people I encountered were European. If everyone in America is just like me, we have found ways to enjoy our national parks without feeling like we have just entered a major European metropolitan area at the height of international tourist season. I want my nature walks to be free of the need for translation. One day last summer, the summer of 2007, at a remote trailhead in Whiskeytown National Park that is close by a road, my hiking partner and I encountered a German couple and their ten-year-old boy. They asked how long the hike was to the falls. We told them. But they declined to force their son away from his Gameboy for the venture, saying to one another across the top of the rental car, “They look healthy.”
Maybe it’s not the cost of REI gear, the scary “wild places” the media portrayed, or even the seduction of television nature programming. Maybe it’s just that to hike to the falls requires a certain amount of stamina; and maybe you have to be part of the “Coyote Clan” Terry Tempest Williams organizes on her website, a part of the group of people who doesn’t want to be seen or spoken to all day while trudging miles into the woods. We are a rare breed. And we’re not on anyone’s rosters, if we can help it.
All that said, I own some expensive REI gear and a two thousand dollar mountain bike. I don’t have a Nintendo, cable or satellite, or any other video gaming available in my home. On cold, rainy nights in winter, I have watched Winged Migration and Grizzly Man on DVD, and I’m looking forward to watching Into the Wild. Still, my behavior has become more radically outdoorsy. I can only concede my behavior may not be observable or measurable in any way, as I prefer it. Osgood states that “a love for electronic media, namely the internet, television, and movies” are to blame for “97.5 percent of the decline in visits to national parks” (A4). Maybe I can love all that electronic media almost as much as anyone else in America and manage my two to ten miles a day on a trail in a national park at the same time, but no one may ever know that I am there.
I admit I have to have my critter fix up close and personal. Osgood asks, “Why go searching the Rocky Mountains for the sight of a bighorn sheep, marmot or pika when you can tune into an episode of ‘Meerkat Manor’ to get your critter fix?”(A4). Osgood misses the fact that many species are endangered. I spent a weekend in Death Valley National Park in the fall of 2005 and never sighted a bighorn. Television might be the only place I’ll get to see one. And mink are even harder to sight here in the Trinities, although they do exist. I know many people who have seen cougars, too, but I’ve only seen a tawny flank disappearing from my flashlight beam. On television, I have watched bighorns evade cougars; I have seen entire cougar families grow up; I have seen the mink moving through underbrush. No doubt, if I had been a trapper during the 1840’s in California, I might have seen all these critters with my own eyes. My real daily sightings in parks are less threatening and much more exciting.
Now I thrill to the osprey driven from its line of flight by an aggressive bald eagle. I see seagulls, Canada geese, crows and red tail hawks on their migration routes or nesting and feeding. I take my camera in the fall to see if I can snap one photo of a black bear that hasn’t been poached for its gall bladder. I live to glimpse a bobcat or follow a small band of wild turkeys. I heard the turkeys gobbling just yesterday, though I didn’t see them, and I frequently hear coyotes, though they are tough to sight. And coming up a slope, tired with ragged breath and near-heatstroke, I have almost ridden my mountain bike right into the knees of a twelve-point buck. I could never shoot one.
I sponsor my visits to the national parks greedily each year, happy to slap down my twenty bucks onto the counter for another annual pass. I don’t know if the Nature Conservancy counts that as one visit or 365. Either way, they’re still far from my truth. I visit my national parks sometimes twice a day for hours at a stretch. To me, they are our greatest national treasure. I am sorry no one seems to know about us, those of us who don’t even notice how much our hiking boots cost because we simply can’t find anything else to spend our money on. If Jeff Osgood and the Nature Conservancy are right, we are an endangered species. But we could also be behaving like hunted animals, “quietly subversive” and disappearing into the underbrush, leaving nothing but a glimpse of our tawny flanks.
Sources:
Osgood, Jeff. “Forget the Outdoors: Where’s the Remote?” Opinion pages, Redding Record Searchlight, March 26, 2008, A4.
Tempest Williams, Terry. Coyote Clan. Author homepage. March 25, 2008. 31 March 2008 http://www.coyoteclan.com
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