National parks: ‘America’s greatest idea’

Our national parks have been called “America’s greatest idea.”

And it’s very hard to disagree with that statement. With wildlife, scenery and recreational opportunities, not much out-does these American jewels. Our national parks are wonderlands waiting to be explored.

With the recent addition of Gateway Arch National Park to the system we now have 60.

I was lucky to work in Yosemite in 1987. I made beds and scrubbed toilets for a spring season. I lived in a tent cabin, in Yosemite Valley, with a wood floor, which I rented for $11 per week. I got to know the names of the local coyotes and I pulled trout from streams fed by the snow melt. I was indeed lucky.

What follows is some of what attracts me to these playgrounds.

• Mountains – Whether it’s Cadillac Mountain, where the first sunbeam strikes American soil at dawn daily in Acadia, Maine, or Mount St. Helens, Washington, where a mountain top was blown off, mountains are ohso impressive. The jagged Tetons in Wyoming rise 7,000 feet from plains and water. It’s not hard to imagine how the ice and snow sculpted the rock of Glacier, Montana, one small inch at a time.

• Desert The five Utah parks are super. The soft, sometimes reddish, brown of the desert is displayed in Bryce, Zion, Capitol Reef, Arches and Canyonlands. How do those arches and hoodoos of the southwest stay upright? You could almost walk across the Rio Grande, which separates the U.S. from Mexico, in Big Bend, Texas. The sound of silt hitting a floating canoe can be heard hundreds of yards away. The temperature in Death Valley, Calif., at 5 p.m., in the shade, on the day I visited, was 113 degrees F. I heeded well-meaning advice and drove across the desert with the air conditioning turned off, in a bid to not overheat and become stranded. Yes, the windows were wide open and I didn’t poke along.

• Grand Canyon – This park deserves its own category. The canyon is desert, with a river running through it, on the bottom, with pines on the rims. Hiking here, top to bottom and back up, with a backpack was my most difficult physical achievement ever. This might be the most spectacular park of them all. Just sit, wait and watch the colors change with the light.

• Plants – There is nothing that says the West like the cactus in Saguaro, Arizona, unless it’s the prickly pear cactus located in many western parks. Once you’ve seen a Joshua tree in Cal-

BILL RETTEW JR. – DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA Snow in the Utah desert at Capitol Reef National Park.

BILL RETTEW JR. – DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA With less water in the desert, trees have a tougher time at Capitol Reef National Park, Utah.

Bill Rettew Small Talk