Common ground

I challenge any of you to find a more wholesome way to spend time than hanging out at a national park. You won't be able to. You might say "church camp" if you didn't already know they are hotbeds of intrigue and sexual frustration. You might say "preschool graduation" if you didn't care to analyze the inaccessibility of high-quality preschool to much of the citizenry. Perhaps "senior citizen picnic on the 4th of July" may quality (though see the church camp sentence for possible issues). But the 4th of July is only one day of the American year. What are you going do the remaining 364?

Answer: visit national parks.

Though I'm sure Rush Limbaugh could think of something, there is nothing a sane person can say against the national park system. It is affordable, accessible, democratic, reliable and stunningly gorgeous. In fact, if you're 62 or older (as my mom is), $10 will buy you a Forever Card that will get you (and whoever else is in your car) into any national park free for the rest of your life! National parks are among the only things left that take the very, very best of something (in this case, the natural environment) and reserve it for everyone. At any time (weather and work permitting), we can go see our redwoods, our reliable geysers, our glaciers, our erupting volcanoes, our old-growth forest, our rugged coastline, red-rock vistas and dizzying canyons. While corporations have fully colonized the spacious skies and the fruited plain, most of the purple mountains majesty still belong to all of us. They are packed with campgrounds, ranger stations, free art classes, intimate museums, interpretive films, well-marked trails (some even wheelchair accessible) and evening campfire programs given in brown-benched amphitheaters under a dazzling carpet of stars.

I spent two days admiring our granite cliff faces, meandering rivers and plunging waterfalls in Yosemite Valley, the centerpiece of Yosemite National Park. I can report that a battalion of college-age workers is taking good care of our meadows and that our wildflowers are particularly lovely this year. My mom and I stayed in Curry Village, an old-fashioned camp (est. 1899) complete with tent cabins, a historic dining hall, an array of low-key snack bars and, of course, a campfire amphitheater. Back in the day, it had a bowling alley and a soda fountain. Today, it has a pizza patio and a latte machine, but not much else has changed. It's still a place people come from all over the country (and the world) to take in a ranger program, rent a bike or raft, walk a trail or climb a rock. The tent cabins are rustic, but you have a metal-framed cot instead of sleeping on the floor, and a shiny green bear-proof box right outside in which to store food and toothpaste. Like a traditional campground, you share the bathroom with your fellow campers. Unlike a tent campground, you have a light bulb in your tent for reading.

My fellow campers were truly a cross-section of America, from retirees in matching t-shirts to earnest church groups and boisterous family reunions. There was a rainbow nation of little kids running and biking and teenagers parading in outfits that screamed "Just because I'm camping doesn't mean I have to let myself go." Moms also tended to move in packs, collectively herding their offspring who were loudly debating whether to go swimming or play freeze tag, while the dads hovered or hauled the stuff.

One popular pastime was renting a raft and floating down the Merced River from Camp Curry to a point about four miles downstream. My mom and I did this and floated through some of the best scenery the valley has to offer. We didn't have to do much more than steer and look around at Half Dome behind us and Yosemite Falls, upper and lower, tumbling to our right. The valley was formed (as most are) from millions of years of tectonic movement and erosion, but what's really cool is that the granite towering over our little raft was originally under the prehistoric ground. It was only after all the sediment was washed away that the granite emerged. (This according to the Yosemite museum, and I'm sure I'm butchering it, but that's what I came away with.) It's mind-boggling to think of the time it must have taken for El Capitan (pictured below) to form and then grow out of the ground (so to speak), as it was gradually exposed by eons of rainfall, earthquakes and glacial melting. Whoa.

The abundance of good family fun and the laws of earth science aside, what makes Yosemite (and other national parks) so wholesome is the absence of the daily static of American life. In national parks, there are no billboards, no hard sell, no concern about your children turning on the TV to who-knows-what craziness. There are no honking horns, squealing brakes or traffic to speak of (Yosemite asks people to park then ferries them around in hybrid shuttle buses). There's no blaring music (it scares our wildlife) and no walking off trail (you could smoosh our native plants). Littering hurts us all, our landscape as well as our ability to enjoy a pleasant vacation.

This focus on preserving the natural environment removes a certain me-ness from even the most myopic vacationer, and, at the same time, keeping our national parks beautiful is one of the most self-serving things an American can do. After all, why would you mess up your own parks? Especially when they are so easy to love.