Legacy

One of the grandest things about our national park system is that it provides a continuing through line between the people of the past, and hopefully, forward through time to people we will never meet. These protected places have stories of their own, evolving ecosystems, and definitely don’t exist without contention. (The formation of every national park/momument/etc… is a story, sometimes of triumph, sometimes of sacrifice, and sometimes of hard-fought battles where it’s challenging to say if the right side came out ahead.)

Even writing simply about this topic, I find myself running into stumbling blocks, my mind conjuring multiple stories I could turn into full length novels, much less blog posts: The fight to turn Biscayne into a National Park. The cave wars of Mammoth Cave, which only intensified one the decision was made to make it a national park. The formation, and subsequent loss, of Fossil Cycad National Monument. The formation of each park is it’s own story. Or, more accurately, multiple stories, with many varying perspectives.

But I’m not writing about the formation of national parks today. Instead, I’m writing about what comes next. What follows after an area is protected and preserved for the public. (Another topic which could easily be expounded upon.) I want to write about the legacy our parks carry with them, because it’s interesting, important, and allows me to tell a very simple, (second hand) story.

What do we get when a national park forms? Hopefully a small piece of wilderness protected, a segment of history restored to the national/international consciousness, and stories shared between generations. Like the story my grandfather told me of his travel to Mammoth Cave National Park.

I’ve never had the best head for remembering dates, but this would have been sometime after the park’s founding in 1941. My grandfather, my grandmother, (not yet married,) and two friends took a road trip from Owensboro, Ky to Mammoth Cave to see the park.

Tours back then were very different, so I couldn’t trace their old route, but my Grandparents definitely would have gone though this room. Everyone going through the main entrance does. This is the Rotunda.

This is a trip I could make today in a couple hours, with stops along the way for fast food and gas. When my grandfather told me the story, it was his retelling of an adventure: replete with anecdotes, and even a couple of road bumps. He remembers it all, from packing the cooler and starting before dawn so they could be back at the end of the day, to the tour guide lighting naptha soaked cotton balls to illuminate different formations, to the flat tire that nearly stranded them overnight on their way back home.

I won’t regale you with his entire story, the story itself isn’t the important part, and it probably wouldn’t mean as much to you as it does to me. Some fun anecdotes from his tale do find their way into The Specters of Mammoth Cave but that that’s not the important part either, or maybe it is but only in a roundabout way. Because the point is that Mammoth Cave, even before it was founded, was a place of stories and legends to be shared, but what it gained once it became a park was a a level of reassurance that maybe, if we are lucky and do things right, those legends and stories will endure, and we can we can repeat the adventures others have had before us, and carry our own stories on to those who come after, who will then be able to repeat those experiences themselves, (or have their own,) long after we were gone.

It is fun to think, when I take a tour through parts of Mammoth Cave, that I am following in my own grandparents footsteps long before me, to recall parts of my grandfathers story, and to know that I can share some of those anecdotes with others, and find my own adventures in Mammoth Cave as well. And not just Mammoth Cave, my grandmother had her own stories to tell about their trip through Redwood, another adventure in and of itself, full of drama, logging, and baby formula.

It’s also fun to know their stories and know that I have a connection to national parks wholly separate from my father and mother’s park service careers. Growing up in national parks is a formative part of my life, but even without those incredibly important connections, it’s nice to know that National Parks would still be part of my family’s legacy.

Of course, there are all kinds of stories in national parks. Here are some old ones found on rotting newspapers, somewhere in the park. There are advertisements for $3.20 polo shirts, and mail order books to teach you to do-si-do.

I think that’s all I wanted to write today. I hope that you are able to have your own adventurous tales in and of National Parks, and that you share those stories with others.