federal government feels the tax pinch, it might mean less money to administer Yellowstone. And so on.
There will be ecological changes as well, though no one can say exactly what they will be. It is likely that environmentalism will change too. That’s because if (when) human well-being declines, conservation priorities will shift from wilderness and wildlife protection to food production, water availability, and sustainable use of our forests. And if (when) things begin to contract economically, there will be an increased emphasis on 'local' - local food, local energy, local resources, local people - and local conservation.
These are just guesses. As I said before, prisms can be bewildering.
Sitting at the picnic table that day, however, I had to lift one more prism to my eye. I had been at this table before - twice in fact. In 2004, I sat here with my family, pretty much at the same time of day, eating the same sort of lunch, surveying a similar scene in the parking lot. The only important difference was that Sterling and Olivia were four years younger then, which for children is practically a lifetime. They had grown so much in the interim, evolving from giddy kids up to the edge of becoming thoughtful young people - passing from the gosling stage of childhood to something more independent.
A wave of sadness washed over me. I missed my goslings.
Life is all about change, I know - nothing stays the same. Yellowstone knows all about it too. Raising children means confronting this fact of life head-on. Eventually, it also means letting go - which is why, I suppose, memories are so important;
places too, especially if they mark the passage of time.
Visits to Yellowstone correlate with important stages in my life. I was here in 1990, conducting my own exploring expedition around the West. I vowed to return only when I had children. I passed through in 1986, during a tumultuous period of aimlessness and frustration. Gen and I camped here in 1980, on our way to college to begin our junior year together. It was a voyage of discovery for us - discovering the West, discovering each other. We were not yet twenty and the world was definitely our oyster.
But it was my first visit that refracts the strongest light. It was July, 1977, and I sat at the very same picnic table (or an earlier incarnation). I came to Yellowstone to backpack - part of a mind-blowing summer of hiking, camping, and traveling with friends that included Zion, Arches, Grand Tetons, Glacier, Sequoia, and Yosemite National Parks. I scarcely knew these places existed before that summer, and I was unprepared for what I saw. By the end of the last hike, I was transformed.
Sitting at that picnic table in 1977, I was vaguely aware that I had been handed a prism of unusual value. Eventually, I understood that its vivid colors had much to teach me - about beauty, open space, history, land and people, starting with our nation’s crown jewels. A British observer once declared that national parks were the "best idea" Americans ever had. At the tender age of sixteen, I couldn’t agree more.
Today, the colors are just as vivid, though they have shifted somewhat over time as subtler hues came into focus. Still, whenever I visit Yellowstone, I think of this prism.
I intend to never put it down.
