From a very early age, I have fond memories of road trips to innumerable locations throughout the Midwest and the Southeast. My father was the owner of the Chevrolet and Oldsmobile dealership in my small hometown of Baldwin, Wisconsin, and my mother was a teacher for decades in the elementary school there. Summers were a bit freer for our family than most. Because my grandparents lived in central Florida, and my father’s dealer trades took us everywhere in-between, I have had the great fortune of traveling throughout much of our incredible country. Throughout my life, I have benefited as the very lucky “only child” of intelligent people who understood the significance of travel, history, and, as I have just recently begun to discover, our country’s incredible National Park System.
“National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.” (Wallace Stegner)
For much of America’s early history, leaders attempted to secure land to protect it from private sale and designate it for public use (the earliest instances being Hot Springs in Arkansas, the Yosemite Valley in California, and Yellowstone in Wyoming). Of greatest significance in the fight to preserve the nation’s heritage, President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act on June 8, 1906, and later that year designated Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, El Morro in New Mexico, and Montezuma Castle and Petrified Forest in Arizona as the first National Monuments. (Of the original monuments designated by FDR, Zion in Utah, Acadia in Maine, and Petrified Forest become cornerstone national parks.) Forty-four years after the establishment of Yellowstone, President Woodrow Wilson created the National Park Service on August 25, 1916.
My personal “adventure in parkland” continued in the previously unexplored Southwest during a holiday road trip with my parents in December of 2014, ironically at one of the original monuments set aside by FDR. Atop Montezuma Castle, I unknowingly committed myself to visiting each of the 400+ designations at least once before the end of my life.
I have discovered, or perhaps reminded myself, that each park is full of unparalleled natural wonder, deep historic context, and absolute uniqueness. From the land of the first sunrise (Acadia outside of Bar Harbor, Maine), to the very southernmost part of California (Cabrillo in San Diego), and the origins of the Spanish American war in the Sunshine State (Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, Florida) to the great Olympics and Cascades of Washington State’s extreme northwest, I have seen this truth with my own eyes.
This past weekend, I had the great privilege of re-visiting Chaco Culture National Historic Park in northwestern New Mexico, which preserves one of the most important pre-Columbian cultural and historic areas in the United States. Inhabited between AD 900 and 1150, much is still unknown about the people who lived in Chaco Canyon because of major mistakes made in early excavations of the site. It was a major center of culture, consisted of fifteen major complexes that remained the largest buildings in North America until the 19th century, and was abandoned due to a fifty-year drought that began in 1130.
Part of the privilege of visiting Chaco was sharing the journey with my predecessor at Santa Fe Opera, Joyce Idema, the former Director of Media and Public Relations. While I have been in this business for a relatively short time, Joyce has a lifetime of experience in public relations and marketing, including the National Symphony Orchestra in D.C. and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The stories and wealth of knowledge shared as well as the candidness that comes from a strong personal relationship with this incredible woman were welcome accompaniment along the 3 1/2 hour car ride from The City Different. Indeed the drive itself was intoxicating, along the western edge of the Jemez Mountains, through some of New Mexico’s own badlands, and near terrain that occasionally looked eerily extraterrestrial.
Conversation turned to the inevitable waxing poetic about our national parklands. I described my lasting impression of Chaco, and so many of the wonders I’ve encountered, as my “church” … the place where I convene with nature and worship in its awesomeness.
Like a great cathedral, Chaco Canyon has towering sandstone buttresses reaching high over a knave carpeted with desert plants and flowers that conceal a dry arroyo that flowed once with ancient waters. Its transepts extend into distant valleys and a great stained glass ceiling of New Mexico’s signature blue sky extends overhead.
I am neither of the faithful nor of native ancestry, but this is my church … and these were my people.
the artful culturevore 