Why does anyone think we need a National Parks Week? To “celebrate” these treasures? No. Bogus. You don’t “celebrate” good wine or the Sistine Chapel. Yes, you acknowledge the joy they give us, so in that sense you celebrate them. But the main idea is that you are supposed to partake of them. Consume them. Enjoy them.
The best excuse for National Parks Week is that it reminds us of what is there. Right outside your door. Yes, your door. Ninety-five percent of the population is within a six-hour drive of a national park. (OK, I made that number up. But it’s probably true. It’s probably close to being true. Here’s how we check that: get a map, draw circles around all the national parks. Big circles, with a 300-mile radius. Now calculate how many people live outside those circles. A Recreati t-shirt to the first person who figures that out. Actually, I made that up, too. We don’t have any t-shirts. Still, I bet it’s less than five percent of the country. It doesn’t matter. The point is:) The parks are accessible but most of the country is at home watching Dancing With the Stars. If they are out, they’re eating at McDonald’s. (Fact: every day, 68 million people—about 1 percent of the world’s population—eat at McDonald’s.)
I think the point of National Parks Week is that it reminds us of the nearly miraculous beauty that lies (let’s say) six hours away from most Americans. So to close out the week, here’s another reminder. The Huffington Post has compiled what it calls The Best Viral Videos Of America’s Parks. Some breath-taking work here. You’ll lose a half-hour or more going through them and consider it time well spent.
Image: screen grab from Winter in Yosemite National Park, a film by Henry Jun Wah Lee.
