National Parks (cont.)

9/28/23

Headwater Lodge, WY

I’ve become largely anti-national park in the past couple months. I think I still like the ones I know (namely Joshua Tree), but I have little interest in visiting new ones. Contributing factors include:

• Learning that the wilderness we hope to find in National Parks is all a fabrication by the government because of all the indigenous people they had to move in order to make it into wilderness. After all, if these are the coolest places in nature, isn’t that were people would want to live? It makes me feel like it’s fake nature.

• The cost of entry and difficulty of camping feels like they’re gatekeeping the best that nature has to offer, or maybe the most beautiful.

• In doing so they also reduce the perceived beauty of places that are not national parks, because they don’t have the same prestige.
  

While all that is true, there is something to be said for, given the modern human desire to capitalize, the fact that at least NPs are doing so in a way that keeps these sections of nature intact. If that matters.

Of course, if it bothers me so much, why not avoid it completely? So that’s exactly what I did. While Hannah and her friend Shay drove into Yellowstone this morning to explore, I stayed right between Yellowstone and Grand Teton, in a little 10 mile by 10 mile square called the John D. Rockefeller National Parkway. Still owned by the government, but not part of either park. There, I could enjoy the, essentially identical, forest that exists in both parks, but for free (aside from the fact that to get to it you have to drive through one park or the other, or a very very long dirt road).

After a long morning enjoying the lodge’s wifi, water, coffee cups, and bathrooms, and after purchasing some Grand Teton Huckleberry Vodka, I grabbed my hat and poncho and wondered into the woods.

I found a trail that claimed to lead to a hot spring, and because it was called Huckleberry hot spring, and I was drinking Huckleberry vodka, I thought it could be a funny collaboration (I was also somewhat drunk by now).

The trail was beautiful. Stands of pine trees, tall grass blowing in the wind, a winding, narrow river, and low hills with mountains in the distance. When I hadn’t seen anyone for over an hour, I sat down on a log by the trail to rest, staring across a meadow at the trees beyond.

In my somewhat drunken haze, I imagined an old cowboy had emerged from the grass to guide my way, who might have also been my grandfather.

“What’re you doing?” He asked.

“Walking down this path, I suppose.” I responded.

“Know where it leads?”

“Hot springs, I’m hoping.” I said.

“What about that path?” He said, pointing off across the meadow, at the trees I was looking at.

I think a lot about the past, and what we were like before civilization. When we were just one of the creatures. I read about it, I talk about it, I try to teach about it. But I have no idea where that path leads. No idea what the goal is.

I sat on that log for a long time, talking to myself. I don’t remember most of it, but I think by the end the old cowboy was going on about love being the only thing left, once you get all the way down the trail.

When I got up, I walked down the path for a while until I realized it was the wrong path. Then I backtracked and found the right path, and ended up at the most lovely little hot spring I’ve ever seen. A small stream, maybe five feet at its widest, and two feet at its deepest, cutting through a grassy meadow. Hidden until you’re right on top of it. But every 10 feet or so, on either side, small springs of hot water fed into it, making the whole stream warm. Vapor rose from every part of it I could see.

I took my shoes and pants off and wandered up and down the stream for another hour, exploring each and every spring. Not another person or animal in sight.

I thought about my friend Will, who loves a good hot spring. I thought about my friend Finn, who loves to explore. And I thought that this might be one of the best outdoor experiences I’ve ever had, at least best with a hot spring. And that maybe that old cowboy was onto something.