Loving the National Parks

My oldest daughter visited us for the weekend, and yesterday we spent the day at Sequoia National Park.  I was reminded again how great our national parks are, and for so many reasons.  To start with, they preserve the rare and the beautiful.  The Giant Forest area of Sequoia, which includes the General Sherman tree, the largest living thing on earth, is about an hour and a half drive from home.  Without the national park idea, these trees would all be gone, cut down for lumber.  As it is, we have only three percent of the redwood forests that existed 150 years ago.  They would be extinct had they not been placed in a federal preserve as urged by John Muir and guarded by the "buffalo soldiers" beginning in 1890.


The parks preserve natural ecosystems, giving us baseline examples by which to measure the health of the natural world.  They give us welcome respites from the noise and grit of the modern world, and that in turn seems to bring out the best in the human spirit.  As Jeanette and I climbed Moro Rock or hiked the Alta Trail we came across people from many different countries.  We heard conversation in many tongues, both identifiable and mysterious, and  the common denominators were happiness and friendliness.  People were universally in a good mood, smiling and laughing, faces gazing upward to the canopy in wonder or to the sculpted horizon in awe.  Brotherhood reigned as folks shared their impressions, asked directions or shared sights and pictures with complete strangers in pidgin or gestures.  The atmosphere at a national park gives me hope that maybe someday international problems can be surmounted and we can all get along.  There is something about unspoiled nature that brings out the positive in people.