The People’s Park
“There is nothing so American as our national parks…. The fundamental idea behind the parks…is that the country belongs to the people, that it is in process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us.”
-Franklin D. Roosevelt
(1936)
Creating the National Parks is one of the top three best things the U.S. government has ever done. Ending slavery and getting involved in WWII are the others, in my humble opinion. This year the National Parks Service is 100 years old. For 100 years the NPS, the shiny, forested gem of the Department of the Interior, has gone against the tide of human nature and not developed the land. Instead, they’ve kept it exactly as is. No flourishes, no adornments, no baubles, no upgrades, no change. As I mentioned in my last post, “no change” is appealing to a conservationist like myself. However, with this being a Centennial event, the Park Service is launching a new campaign. The slogan for this campaign is Find Your Park and it’s purpose is to encourage Americans to break out of the commonly held belief that national parks only exist out west and embark on a journey to a nearby national park/monument/battlefield/historical site/whatever. This has been pretty well received, with the notable exception of the Smokies. The most visited park in the nation has seen record breaking attendance this year and I’ve heard staff suggest changing the GSMR motto from Find Your Park to Find Another Park.
I’ve visited a number of national parks in my lifetime and I feel a sense of stewardship over all of them, but perhaps none more so than the Smokies, where I have now spent the most concentrated time. I want to bash in the skulls of litterbugs and kick the Tourons (tourists who are morons) out by the seats of their cargo pants. I had no qualms the other day about telling two guys who were getting assholically close to a bear to “back up and don’t make me get my badge out of my car.” I know what you’re thinking but I do have an NPS arm badge. It’s cloth. You can probably buy one exactly like it in the visitor’s center. They need never know.
I feel justified in this little untruth because I am a steward of the park. The Great Smoky Mountains has long been known as The People’s Park. It is unique in that it straddles both Tennessee and North Caroline and it doesn’t charge an entrance fee. It’s also the best game of prisoner’s dilemma ever played. The park was created directly from landholders who were all willing to release their claim on the land in order to preserve it for future generations- so long as everyone sold their land. Much of the land was bought from logging companies, the rest from individuals and families. Some people sold their plot right away, others made a deal with the park service to continue to live on the land, in accordance with park laws, up until their deaths. John D. Rockefeller put up the last of the land buying funds and with a fair few citizen residents, the park was opened by President FDR in 1934.
The People’s Park, or rather The White People’s Park, fell short in one gigantic way, being that the Cherokee people were expelled from this land and forced to walk the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma in 1838. Unlike the logging companies, they were not compensated for the move. However, just as the elk have been re-introduced to the park after being hunted down to the very last of their kind in the late 1700s, land abutting the park was set aside as a Cherokee reservation. People necessitated the creation of this park through mistreatment of flora and fauna and people have stepped up to made amends to the land and those who lived upon it. For better and worse, through care and neglect, it is The American People’s Park.
The mountains are called the “Smokies” because of the fog that often hangs over the range caused by vegetation exhaling certain organic compounds. I learned this and more from Robin Goddard, a volunteer who works at the Little Greenbriar Schoolhouse in the park. After the history lesson, she led her audience in an old school spelling bee that had more grammar rules than the AP Stylebook. I am oh so glad that I didn’t have to learn to read as part of a public contest like they did back in the day. I’d probably be illiterate based solely on performance pressure.
In addition to the landscape and the history, people come to the park to see the 1500 black bears that roam the woods or to see the as-of-2001 re-introduced elk in the Southern Cataloochee Valley:
Eager to get out to a less peopled part of The People’s Park after the spelling bee, I set about to hike to Andrew’s Bald late in the afternoon, which was still hours before sunset. I’d heard that there were flame azaleas along this trail and sure enough, right at the top:
Being here for a month has taken me through azalea season and into rhododendron prime. In Philadelphia I measure the passage of seasons in temperature; in my own bodily comfort from t-shirt weather to scarf season. Here, I am measuring time in the lifespan of flowers and the breeding season of fireflies. They are a part of a cycle of life outside of myself and still pertinent to my daily life. It is a time keeping devise that I will miss dearly. Cue Circle of Life and no I’m not crying I just have pollen in my eye.
Okay, I’m back. I spent the evening with Ben, one of my favorite people of the park, making pizza, drinking Ithacan Cider, looking up birds and flowers in Ben’s trail books, and adding to the rather extensive reading lists we’re compiling for each other. It was a day of pleasantries. Today, I was just one of the people in the park, learning it’s history, absorbing it’s beauty, and feeling grateful to have the time to internalize it. No major revelations, just peace, perspective, and enrichment. Special thanks today to the people who make this park happen and to America’s best idea: National Parks.
