THE RIGHT BOOKS

Every other morning or so, from the front page of the Casper [Wyoming] Star-Tribune, I can plot the growth of the Yellowstone conflagrations—North Fork Fire, Shoshone-Red Fire, Clover-Mist Fire, etc.—as they advance upon and surround the works of man—West Thumb, Grant Village, the Old Faithful area with its cluster of concessionary hotels—in the park. My sympathies are with the fires (which were ignited naturally, by lightning strikes, and thrive on a combination of conditions believed not to have prevailed in the wider vicinity for 150 years). The Old Faithful Lodge is a nice old place, but it doesn’t belong there; as for the sanitized campgrounds, concession stands, hostelries, outdoor lavatories, parking lots, and Winnebago pads of industrial tourism, they deserve to be reduced to broken lava fields spiked with twisted, blackened metal. If nature had its way (and mine), Yellowstone Park would soon be back in the business of providing what is known as “a wilderness experience” (however scorched a one), concurrently with the development of fresh natural growth and an improved wildlife habitat. Unfortunately for radicals like me, the National Park Service, despite its controversial free-burn policies, isn’t going to see it this way.

It is nice that the folks at the NPS have been removing, since 1916, all that land from the talons of industrial expansion, population growth, and the Forces of Regress generally. On the other hand, it is not always nice what they have done to it. The most satisfactory national park in my experience, for instance, is Canyonlands in southeastern Utah. Canyonlands is a vast wilderness of desert rock with two (2) unconnected roads deadheading at a considerable distance from one another; at each end of the park, there is a ranger station consisting of a single house-trailer, and, at the southern end, a few developed campsites. Otherwise —nothing. But there is a reason for that nothing: the trillion-dollar deficit, which dissipated the Park Service’s dream of an elaborate tourist mecca, complete with hotels, hundreds of miles of paved roads, parking lots, visitors’ centers—the works. The concept behind such grandiose atrocities is known within the NPS as one of use as opposed to preservation, and, despite the assurances of former Park Service Director George B. Hartzog Jr., in Battling for the National Parks (Moyer Bell, $19.95), that the preservationist philosophy has prevailed since 1963, I have my doubts—along with Edward Abbey, the sardonic author of Desert Solitaire, who was once employed as a park ranger at Arches National Monument.

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Every other morning or so, from the front page of the Casper [Wyoming] Star-Tribune, I can plot the growth of the Yellowstone conflagrations—North Fork Fire, Shoshone-Red Fire, Clover-Mist Fire, etc.—as they advance upon and surround the works of man—West Thumb, Grant Village, the Old Faithful area with its cluster of concessionary hotels—in the park. My sympathies are with the fires (which were ignited naturally, by lightning strikes, and thrive on a combination of conditions believed not to have prevailed in the wider vicinity for 150 years). The Old Faithful Lodge is a nice old place, but it doesn’t belong there; as for the sanitized campgrounds, concession stands, hostelries, outdoor lavatories, parking lots, and Winnebago pads of industrial tourism, they deserve to be reduced to broken lava fields spiked with twisted, blackened metal. If nature had its way (and mine), Yellowstone Park would soon be back in the business of providing what is known as “a wilderness experience” (however scorched a one), concurrently with the development of fresh natural growth and an improved wildlife habitat. Unfortunately for radicals like me, the National Park Service, despite its controversial free-burn policies, isn’t going to see it this way.

It is nice that the folks at the NPS have been removing, since 1916, all that land from the talons of industrial expansion, population growth, and the Forces of Regress generally. On the other hand, it is not always nice what they have done to it. The most satisfactory national park in my experience, for instance, is Canyonlands in southeastern Utah. Canyonlands is a vast wilderness of desert rock with two (2) unconnected roads deadheading at a considerable distance from one another; at each end of the park, there is a ranger station consisting of a single house-trailer, and, at the southern end, a few developed campsites. Otherwise —nothing. But there is a reason for that nothing: the trillion-dollar deficit, which dissipated the Park Service’s dream of an elaborate tourist mecca, complete with hotels, hundreds of miles of paved roads, parking lots, visitors’ centers—the works. The concept behind such grandiose atrocities is known within the NPS as one of use as opposed to preservation, and, despite the assurances of former Park Service Director George B. Hartzog Jr., in Battling for the National Parks (Moyer Bell, $19.95), that the preservationist philosophy has prevailed since 1963, I have my doubts—along with Edward Abbey, the sardonic author of Desert Solitaire, who was once employed as a park ranger at Arches National Monument.