Ken Burns' Best Idea

So have y'all been as glued to Channel 13 (KEET-TV) the past three nights as I have to Ken Burn's latest docu-series, The National Parks: America's Best Idea. After 26 years in the subject organization, I know I'm a bit biased, but not only am I learning a few things from Mr Burns, in many regards I'm feeling a renewed enthusiasm and energy for the work we try to do. Seems this profession has some merit after all.

A few random thoughts pulled from the depths of the easy chair as I watched the first three episodes:

Why can't I tell stories like Ken Burns? The guy's a genius storyteller. Hours of research, evocative music, compelling stories, intelligent and inspiring interviews. He does a better job of telling you about what we do than most of us do in doing the work that he's telling you about us doing. Of course, I'm just me with a computer and a tiny library and vast and glorious park to wander around. He's a multimillion dollar production company backed by huge corporate sponsors. Be he's just so damn good at spinning a great tale. I want to be able do that.

We do work in a noble profession after all. Though the days are too often bogged down in mind-numbing bureaucracy and frustrating drive-through tree tourists, it is for a worthy purpose that we do what we do. And Ken Burns isn't making a 12-hour history of the life insurance business, is he?

I need to read more on the transcendentalists. From the snippets I see in Burns and through recently read bios of John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt, the ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau inspired many of the most important 19th century environmental thinkers. I need to go back and read some of their original stuff. I'm beginning to wonder if literally, spiritually, intellectually, perhaps I'm more akin to Thoreau and Emerson than any of my own generation?

Your dad knows a little somethin' after all. It's been fun watching this with the kids and knowing the next piece of the story before Burns tells it. For once, I'm not their idiot dad but someone who's picked up a thing or two along the way.

Did the redwoods miss their chance to be among those first iconic national parks? What if the entire, two million acre redwood range, from Oregon to Monterey Bay, hadn't been stolen from federal ownership before the 1880s? Yosemite, Sequoia, Yellowstone, and Mount Rainier were available to be set aside as our first National Parks in large part because those lands were owned by the federal government, and not by states or private individuals. Jerry and Gisele Rohde have an interesting piece in this month's Humboldt Historian (Fall '09) explaining the land fraud that moved public lands through foreign syndicates and in to private hands in a matter of years. Would we have lost nearly all of this grand and ancient forest as we almost lost the bison had the feds prevented their theft?

Three more episodes and six more hours. A dozen more thoughts to come, at the very least.

And for those wanting more of our local story, KEET-TV received a grant through the Ken Burns' backers, to produce Redwood National Park: Preserving Ancient Forests, the story of the establishment of Redwood National Park. It'll air this coming Sunday, October 4th at 7pm on Channel 13 (then rebroadcast Thursday, Oct. 8 and Saturday, Oct. 10). We'll get the sneak preview at the office tomorrow. Assuming the Claire and Sam have any of the skills of Ken Burns, they will have expunged the rantings of a occasional blogger from their program, thus ensuring its success.

Redwood philately

Our backyard redwoods will be featured on the US Post Office's 2009 Priority Mail stamps available in January. (Yellowstone's Old Faithful graces the more expensive 2009 Express Mail stamps.) The illustration shows a pair of Eddie Bauer attired hikers (Does the woman look like Jennifer Aniston to you, too?) beneath the towering redwood canopy. The illustration is the digital creation of an Illinois artist under the direction of a southern California art director. These long-distance artists (no locals were available apparently) capture nicely the multi-layered canopy, fire scars, ferns, even an old dead top tree...all indicative of old growth forests. I'd love to find out which of our forests from Santa Cruz to Humboldt and Del Norte served as the model for the illustration.

Though I'm no where close to being a philatelic historian, the redwoods were last featured by the USPS in the 2006 Wonders of America series of 39-cent first class stamps. The only other redwood-themed stamp I've discovered in 12 minutes of exhaustive googling research is a 1964 issue honoring John Muir with redwoods as the backdrop. Though they could be the giant sequoias with which Muir has more of a stronger association, the shape of the trees and their proximity to one another makes 'em look a whole lot more like our neighborhood coast redwoods.

Here's a link to yesterday's USPS press release on the Redwood stamp including directions on where and where to get 'em when they're available: http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/2008/pr08_132.htm

Climate Change and Our National Parks

After a few years of tiptoeing around the issue, the National Park Service finally appears ready to tackle global warming, or global climate change, or whate’er you choose to call it. From an inside perspective, it’s not as if we were ever told to not talk about the issue, or to use veiled code words so as not to piss off the public, or to bury the discussion. Nothing ever came down from my local bosses nor the higher-ups in Washington telling us to stay quiet.

Internally, our collective reluctance was likely more about witnessing the Bush administration’s efforts at suppressing science across the government, at much higher levels than ours, especially when that science challenged the political perspectives of this administration. In that light, and behind closed doors, we wondered, “What can we say? What can we talk about that won’t get us in trouble? How far can we really go?” Our answer? Let's just wait a bit and see what happens when we get new management in 2008.

But the self-imposed muzzle on addressing global warming in parks appears to be coming off. You’re beginning to see a few parks taking the issue on more directly. The NPS has created a “Climate Friendly Park” initiative with several parks committing themselves to “greening” their operations and facilities. They’ve added climate change as a critical issue on the agency’s website. Regional groups are just now beginning to discuss how and where to incorporate these ideas into the parks’ interpretive messages.

All well and good, but the next step, the more critical step in my idiot opinion, is turning the parks’ rangers and publications and websites and visitor centers loose to advocate for significant behavioral changes amongst us humanoids to slow the inevitable. Our “Climate Friendly Parks” will serve as examples of sustainability for others to follow….but is that enough? Can we save the world by changing light bulbs and driving Priuses (Priae?)?

I don’t think so. I’m also not sure that the NPS is yet fully willing to jump into the contentious fray that argues for steering us away from our petroleum based lifestyle entirely; or to consider looking beyond scenic values or local wildlife preservation to accommodate giant wind turbines on mountain ridges or windy coastlines; or to challenge the existing Americo-Christian ethic that requires human dominion over the planet.

Just one guy’s view of the things we need to be thinkin’ about.

A workshop, presented by a guy we paid to fly down from Alaska last week (in jumbo jets and rental cars), is one example of this nascent attempt at educating us rangers. Unfortunately, it was light on real climate change information, not effectively presented, and didn’t create within our small group eager acolytes running into the streets to warn us all of our impending doom should we continue to drive around our neighborhoods gawking at blinding Christmas light displays from the faux leather captain's chairs of our overheated, middle-east fueled monster cars whilst sucking down corn-filled mega-coffees in plastic cups.

It was not a stellar seminar, but there were a few little nuggets of information or inspiration that found their way into my notebook, perhaps not thoughts original to the speaker, but worthy of filing away in the nether recesses of my feeble mind as we look at incorporating this critical message under the redwood canopy. A few of those quick and cheap revelations follow thusly, transcribed almost verbatim from my recycled paper notebook:

Our global climate has been in a relatively stable for the past 10,000 years. The past 10 millenia have also seen the rise and flourishing of human civilization. Coincidence?

Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for about 100 years. Even if we stop producing it tomorrow, the warming impacts we produce today will remain into the next century. We are still breathing the carbon dioxide emitted from Henry Ford’s first car.

Consider the social element of climate change. How do we, or will we, respond? Consider climate change not as a natural phenomenon, but as a cultural one.

What can we do? What must we be telling people? That we must be able to adapt to the inevitable changing environment, and, we must change the way we live.

It’s under our control. Will global climate change produce a moderate warming that we humans can adapt to, or will it be a catastrophic warming that will change life on the planet forever?

The stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. It ended because we discovered a better way to live.

We don’t need to destroy ourselves to make ourselves comfortable.