Ode to the National Parks

An Ode to the National Parks…
inspired by Edward Abbey

“Beyond this, there be elephants, hippos, and cannibals!”
-Ptolemy’s Geographica, AD 150

“Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”

-Emma Lazarus


Yes, give them to me. Bring them to my park entrances, huddled and tired and poor, and let them breathe free.

But do not fear: I know they’re not yearning to breathe too free. Let them remain a little huddled. Keep them within a half-mile radius of a Ranger Station and Gift Shoppe at all times. Retain the idiocy, the obesity, the rampant selfie sticks, keep it close by. Let them think they’re breathing free. At all times let them think it.


 Give me a staff of rangers. Let them brainwash the people, let them allude to only bear attacks and barrenness beyond the safety of the few paved trails. Let the rangers appear as impressed by the small taste of freedom as the masses. Let them imply that the national park’s only worthwhile elements are contained within the narrow confines of that small network of paved trails, let them never breathe a word that there is true freedom, the wilderness! beyond…

Give me your suburbanites, your tourists from Asia, your middle Americans, your wretched soccer moms yearning to breathe free. Herd them in with your Mennonites, your family reunions, your unwashed and unshaved weary dads. Herd them in that they may only catch glimpses of the Park over one another’s heads. Should one of them suddenly have the inspiration to get beyond that half-mile radius of safety and capitalism, worry not. It is a common yearning, once they breathe a whiff of the free air.

Give them, then, one of your well-trained rangers. Give them a talk about the horrors of the wild. The bears, the lightning strikes, the lack of restroom facilities, and more importantly, the utter dearth of gift shoppes. Give them a cursory map that shows the paved paths to the nearest Wonders of the National Park and Cotton Candy Stand. Show them the middle of the wild Park, an area blank and inhabited by monsters, and let them think on it no further. Herd them gently in the direction of the tidily contained wilderness, and provide them with plenty of signage reminding them not to stray from the designated trails…


Let them wander within these confines. Let them think they’re breathing free. At all times let them think it.