Thank you for subscribing!
Got it! Thank you!

This Land Is Your Land: A Conversation with Ken Burns about "The National Parks: America's Best Idea"

Ken Burns discusses his forthcoming television mini-series 'The National Parks' and argues that it is essential to the survival of the country that people use the park system.

Perhaps Woody Guthrie said it best in his folk song "This Land is Your Land," but director Ken Burns's series The National Parks: America's Best Idea, certainly pictures it best. Filmed over the course of six years, the 12-hour, six-part documentary stretches from Acadia to Yosemite, and hits the big ones -- Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, the Everglades, and the Gates of the Arctic in Alaska. Against the backdrop of stunning cinematography, it relays the inspired stories of the people who made the parks possible. It's enough to make you want to load up your backpack and lace up your hiking boots.

The National Parks won't air until September 27, but if you're curious, a preview video is on the PBS web site (www.pbs.org/nationalparks). The film postulates that the parks are "America's best idea," a sentiment attributed to historian Wallace Stegner, as a reflection of the country's democratic ideals. "We think the national parks are the Declaration of Independence, applied to the landscape. We've invented it, we've exported it all over the world," Burns told me during an interview in August.

As a travel destination, the parks form part of our collective experience in a way that perhaps other places in American cannot. They're not expensive. They make for a great day trip; there are 58 of them, with a presence in every state except Delaware. But most importantly, they offer respite from the cacophony of our everyday lives. Instinctively, attention shifts. You slow down and can pay attention to small details around you and the thoughts rumbling in your head.

The film's first two hours look at the initial spiritual impulses behind saving nature and the work of John Muir, an early advocate for Yosemite and Sequoia National Park and the founder of the Sierra Club. "John Muir once said that in order to go in, I have to go out," Burns says. When I relayed a story about triumphing over my fear of heights and stumbling into a love of hiking in Acadia, Burns says, "You discovered yourself."

It's Thoreau territory, indeed. The strong pull of nature lures us to visit these places again and again, but many of us don't think about their genesis. The history of the parks has not yet been told in this way; the timing of the series perhaps could not be more important. In the 1990s and 2000s, attendance declined. Recently the parks have suffered from underfunding. On a more local scale, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger has threatened to close 100 of the state's parks to cover a budget shortfall. "We're at a critical juncture. Fewer and fewer people are going to the parks. Partially it's because we spend so much time living virtual lives that we suffer from a nature deficit. The parks offer the real experience," Burns says.

More people are starting to look for that "real experience" -- and perhaps a cheaper one. Park attendance swelled during the Great Depression, Burns notes, and we're seeing a rise this summer thanks no doubt in part to the institution of free admission on the weekends. "I think in particularly tough times, we fall back on these questions of who we are, where do we come from. The national parks are our best idea and therefore, are the places where we can find the answers to those questions."

Economics aside, people come to the parks for different reasons and at different junctures. "For many of us of a certain generation, that trip to the national park in the childhood is an indelible experience. The national parks are where we have some of our best memories of ourselves." Burns relays his fond memory of going to Shenandoah National Park with his father when he was six years old, of small details such as salamanders they encountered.

Thus far, President Obama has proposed an additional $2.7 billion in funding to the 2010 budget to help secure more land for the parks. But that's only part of the picture, because, as the film asserts, "there are 84 million acres and all of them belong to you," we must be good stewards.

When asked if he thinks every American should purchase a park pass every season, Burns does not mince words. "I think it's essential to the survival of the country that people use and exercise their parks. Like anything that doesn't get exercise, it has a tendency to atrophy. We want people to go out and see their property. You own the grandest canyon in the world. All you have to is go out and visit it," he says.

The National Parks: America's Best Idea premieres September 27-October 2 at 8pm EST on PBS stations everywhere.

Talk with fellow Frommer's travelers on our Outdoor and Adventure Travel Message Boards today.


advertisement