In Praise of National Parks
How Trump the sequel is threatening America's best idea.
Before I get on with it, allow me to quickly (and shamelessly) plug my latest video on fastpacking the Via degli Dei from Bologna to Florence. Watch it, give it a thumbs up, leave a comment –– all that fun stuff that tells the YouTube algorithm that, gosh darn it, people like me!
America’s Best Idea Is in Trouble
I haven’t written much of anything about Trump part deux (I mean… Trump part two. Don’t want to open myself to a cavity search for speaking foreign). My reasoning has been, now that I think about it, two fold.
First of all, where would I even begin? Jokes abound about how the first 100 days have felt more like years than days. I’ve often felt, as I’m sure many of you have, a mix of helplessness and powerlessness.
Basically, a lot of -lessness.
Second of all, I find the man and all of his enablers –– from the cowardly cohorts of elected officials who say they’re too scared to speak out to the ghoulish cretins actively cheering on his most inhumane policies –– enraging. And, friends, life isn’t all that long. I don’t want to spend every waking moment enraged by letting his fake-tan mug slip into my mind.
That said, I certainly don’t think burying your head in the sand is the answer either. I mean, if you expect this administration to be so damaging that you don’t even want to think about it, then what kind of world do you expect to be there once you do pull your head out?
If there have been moments where I’ve buried my head, even just a little, news of Trump’s plans for the US national parks has ripped my noggin’ right out of the sand. We’ve known from his first term that he didn’t care much for national parks, preferring to open up sensitive environments to development, drilling, and just about anything that could turn a buck. So what’s happening now shouldn’t be as surprising as, say, his apparent desire to send US citizens to a prison in El Salvador.
(Side note: National parks, with their popularity among tourists –– at least, the ones who will still come –– turn many-a-buck on their own.)
But like an actual Hollywood sequel, Trump has come back bigger and louder than ever before. And like an actual cinematic sequel, it’s worse. Besides the massive cuts in federal workers, many of whom work at the national parks, it’s just been announced that he wants to cut more than $1.2 billion in funding, sell some public lands, and opening these lands up to mining.
In the meantime, defense spending will increase by 13% to $1 trillion. The US already accounts for 34% of the world's military spending, followed by China at 12%, and our apparent new bestie, Russia at 6%.
The national parks (and Rust Belt cities) are what I miss most about the US. As much as I love national parks in Europe, it’s a much more densely populated continent. Tremendously remote, wild spaces without cell service are rare.
US national parks aren’t perfect and they certainly don’t have a squeaky clean history. But I do believe they are, as Wallace Stegner famously put it, America’s best idea. With the news changing every day so quickly you could get whiplash trying to follow the headlines, I wanted to chat with someone who deeply and intimately knows the national parks to find out what the latest threats are –– and how to fight back.
Enter: Emily Pennington.
I first started reading Emily’s work with her book, Feral, a memoir following her journey of visiting each and every US National Park. She also regularly writes for Outside Magazine and is generally a lover of all things that get people out of their comfort zones.
I wanted to chat with her, not only as a fan of her work, but because she’s been closely following everything that’s been going on with the national parks since Trump the sequel started –– and I wanted to understand what the administration is really planning for parks, what travelers can expect this summer, and what you, dear listener, can do to push back against these threats against America’s best idea.