National Parks Preserve Common Ground in a Divisive Time

By David Frey, 9-26-09

There I was, standing on the National Mall, when I found myself accidentally surrounded by the throng of protesters gathered for the Taxpayers March on Washington.

Around me were signs with President Obama painted up in white face like the Joker. There were signs questioning his birth certificate. There were lots of American flags and more than a few “Don’t tread on me” banners.

But what, exactly, were they protesting? Health care reform? Taxes? One thing was for sure. They had it out for all things public.

How lucky for them, I thought, that they had the manicured lawn of the National Mall to stand on while they protested America’s slide into the slavering jaws of socialism. The National Mall is a national park, one of 391 of them from Arcadia to Zion. Thank God for commie green space.

Just down the mall from this pale-faced crowd, hip-hop was playing on stage at the Black Family Reunion. Down the mall from them was an immigrant rights rally. In between were me, my girlfriend and her kids, trying to squeeze our way to the Smithsonian to look at rockets and stuff.

On the National Mall, we all found common ground that day, literally, at least. I’m not expecting it to happen figuratively any time soon.

That’s one of many beauties of our national parks, and it’s ground that filmmaker Ken Burns explores in his latest PBS documentary series, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, which hits the airwaves Sunday.

In a country that seems to be losing its sense of common ground by the second, we need national parks, and right now, maybe we need Burns’ series, too. Time after time, Burns has sought out our shared American experience, a bond that seems to be in particularly short supply nowadays. When our country was divided over the first Gulf War, Burns brought us together with his landmark The Civil War series. While our ancestors stood on different sides of that war, they bled together. When our nation turned on the documentary, we watched together.

Could The National Parks bring us together again? Can’t we find a shared sense of pride in these American landscapes?

“I just want to tell good stories,” Burns told me when he unveiled the documentaries at the Telluride MountainFilm festival earlier this year, “but I understand that history is a way in which people can come together. There is so much fractionalization in our world today that its important to find places that we can converse together. History is one of those places.”

Maybe national parkland is one of those places, too. Land is central to America’s identity. The founders fought for private property, but all the while it was wilderness that defined us as we pushed our frontier to the Pacific.

That sense of wildness is mostly gone now, but it remains – somewhat – past the highways that wind into our national parks. More than simply reserves for pretty landscapes and cute critters, national parks preserve in ourselves a sense of awe that could easily be swallowed up in the American land grab. From Yosemite’s falls to Yellowstone’s geysers, these places remain for each new generation to discover the wonders that help define America.

National parks are especially a part of the West, where family road trips are punctuated each summer by visits to park after park. Where the highway ends, the car doors swing open and families march into the landscape – for a weekend camping trip or just a five-minute peek – to experience the wildness that remains.

National parks are “the best idea we ever had,” wrote that great Western author Wallace Stegner in words that gave the series its subtitle. “Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.”

We could use that now. We need a reminder that across the political spectrum, we stand on common ground. Americans worked together to protect these beautiful places, and it was only through public efforts that they have been preserved.

Maybe we need Burns’ National Parks series to appeal to our higher natures. We certainly need the parks themselves, to remind us of the public places we share as a nation. In this superheated political climate, we could probably use a cool walk in the woods, too.