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The National Parks of North America.
Havens of the mountain spirits
of desert mysteries.
Living museums of nature's most profound beauty
and starkest contrasts.
The National Park is an American invention,
an expression of the American soul.
The parks are our treasures, our history,
our pride and our solace.
In their immensity of our diversity,
the provide us the fullest sense of who we are.
It is difficult to imagine a time
when these treasures were in danger of being overrun
by human progress.
Then, with the founding of the National Park Service in 1872,
we ensured that our footprint on these singular lands
would be a small one.
Men may bend, crumble and fade away
when subject to the undying power of Time,
weather, and Light.
But we may taste eternity,
if only for a moment,
as we explore our timeless National Parks.
America's National Parklands stand alone in the world.
They are the crown jewels in the North American landscape.
These places tell us the chronicle of Time,
and help us to understand the Earth's story.
By selling aside pieces of America's original wild land,
we have protected our birthright for ourselves
and given an enormous gift to the world.
Our National Parks represent us to the world with honor.
Within the parks,
managed wilderness offers us the perpetuity of wilderness.
It offers us hope and memory.
It offers us the earth as it was and,
so long as its protection remains intact,
as it will be.
These mountains rising to heights of 13,000 feet
in dramatic vertical displacement
are Temples of great wisdom and strength.
Breaking through clouds,
battling the high weather,
the mountains are symbols of our own quest
to rise and stand strong.
At Teton
sky and earth are united in more than 100 alpine lakes,
bearing the reflections of bold granite peaks,
clouds, and trees declaring the unity of all nature's elements.
In knowing this glorious land,
and in preserving it,
we also preserve the spirit within all of us.
In the American Southwest,
there is a slowness and a distance to things.
A patience.
An endurance.
There is time for snow.
There is time for the etching of great canyons.
The Colorado Plateau of the Southwestern United States
is the oldest land mass in the puzzle
that makes up the American continent.
This truly unique landscape is home to 15 of
our most spectacular National Parks.
There is barely a hint of this land's stories past
where millions of years ago,
it was an ocean floor.
These vast, petrified layers of sediment
are testimony to the eons of pressure
and sifting that were exerted by a turbulent ocean above.
Just as the needles of a cactus conceal the soft,
delicate plant hidden within,
so too does the rough external appearance of the desert conceal
a highly sensitive, and fragile ecology.
All this is measured by the delicate
beauty of this rocky land,
which has endured a long battle with the forces of weather.
In the desert,
the struggle to survive is what brings us closer
to the intangible mystery of Nature.
The old growth forests, lush meadows,
and pristine waters of the Pacific Northwest
offer us a palette of emerald beauty.
A sleeping volcano encased in snow and glacial ice,
Mount Rainier is the famous landmark of the Cascade Range
and dominates the skyline.
This portion of the Cascade mountains owes its beauty
to the rains that wash off from the Pacific Ocean.
But rather than dilute color,
these waters bring it to life.
Across the broad spectrum of nature's palette of forms,
Water occupies its own sacred position.
It is the source of life and the shaper of landscapes.
In contemplating water,
we are reminded of the essential lesson of Nature
that everything is connected.
This lesson of beauty and harmony
was not lost on our early conservationists:
Freeman Tilden,
the poet and advocate for our National Parks system,
once wrote:
"The early philosophers looked at the world about them
and decided that there were four elements:
fire, air, water and earth.
But as they grew a little wiser,
they perceived that there must be something else.
These tangible elements did not comprise a principle;
they merely revealed that somewhere else,
if they could not find it,
there was a soul of things
a Fifth Essence,
pure, eternal, and inclusive."
Denali: The word means "The High One,"
and is the name the local Athabascan people
ascribe to Mt. McKinley.
Its stunning mass reaching over 20,000 feet,
it is the rooftop of North America.
Denali stands at the apex of
the six-hundred mile long Alaskan range.
These mountains, with their surrounding glaciers
and lowlands make up North America's largest national park.
an area totaling more than six million acres.
Within this vast territory,
human influence is rendered meaningless
as the pattern of nature's artistry canvas the landscape.
From the low riverbeds that reveal swirls of earthen clay.
Through the Tundra,
a sub arctic wilderness of miniature plant life
turns into a Technicolor carpet in the fall
and into the deep, centuries-old forests,
Denali echoes the rugged independence
of a perpetual frontier.
The sands of the Pacific seashore along the Olympic peninsula
glimmer like molten gold,
as if to provide us with a hint of all the treasures that lie inland.
The place where ocean meets land,
is not to be overlooked
when we explore our protected national treasures.
Three distinct ecosystems co-exist in this park
from the Pacific shoreline to high sub alpine meadows
displaying spacious wild flower spreads.
A place that receives more than
12 feet of rain per year offers us,
in exchange,
a rare temperate rainforest with tall trees,
a sweeping canopy and a fine retreat.
Nearly 95% of Olympic National park is wilderness.
Besides a variety of Forests,
Meadows and Highlands,
the wilderness encompasses a 60 mile long Pacific coastline.
On the right day,
we can return to the Pacific Coast
as the tides recede across the of sands,
chasing the sunset westwards,
treading along the land-bound edges of our National Parks.
"Gateways to nature, to discovery,
to solitude,
to celebrate the beauty and infinite variety of our land."
That is how Parks Canada defines the country's National Parks.
What is it that impels us to respect the freedom
and majesty of the National Parks?
Is it something peculiar only to Americans?
That cannot be.
For soon after Yellowstone was created,
the Canadian government created their first national Park-Banff,
nestled in the heart of the magnificent Canadian Rockies.
Before winter would arrive,
the Northern Rockies' earliest human inhabitants
descended into the prairies and valleys,
escaping the approaching harsh winds
and unforgiving cold.
Days passed.
The Seasons turned.
The waters went from warm to cold,
as did the world they reflected on their surface.
And, thus,
the mountains were abandoned for six months or more,
left under cover of snow and ice, barren.
What is it that the mountains know in their solitude?
It is, perhaps something we can never understand.
Much as the earliest tribes who come here,
we too, know that these Northern Rockies promise
only a first taste of things to come.
They are a gateway,
an introduction to our diverse continent:
a warning and a welcome from the Spirit of the Mountains.
In contrast to the snow-capped Rockies,
we find the dry desolation of the desert lands.
The lowlands of the Death Valley Desert are rugged,
forbidding and almost unimaginably hot and dry.
Lying in the rain shadow of the massive Sierra-Nevada Mountains,
it receives less than 2 inches of rain a year
with temperatures reaching 120 degrees in the summer.
Elevations range from 280 feet below sea level
the lowest point in the United States
to 11,000 feet in the distant Panimint mountains
giving this land a wide variety of ecosystems.
In 1903, writer Mary Austin called Death Valley
"The loneliest land that ever came out of God's hands."
The artful balance of life and struggle to survive
is readily evident here in the desert.
The will to survive in this harshest of environments
teaches us much about the intangible mysteries of nature.
The 500 square miles of Utah's largest National Park
encompass the heart of the Colorado plateau,
a grand sweep of slick rock landscape,
whose massive rock layers have been sculpted by water
and polished by incessant winds.
"The Great Unknown."
This is what explorer
and geologist John Wesley Powell called this land.
In 1869 he led an expedition
into this unmapped 130,000 square mile region
shared by what is now Colorado,
Utah, New Mexico and Arizona.
He found a land of high desert plateaus
that in places rose nearly 2 miles above sea level.
Streams and rivers scored the land,
slashing awesome canyons
and scooping out amphitheaters
filled with fantastic rock formations.
Although shaped by water,
Canyonlands is desert dry,
receiving just 7 to 9 inches of precipitation a year,
much of that in torrential summer thunderstorms.
The Colorado Plateau is a land of standing rocks
and painted deserts
enclosing one of the greatest
concentrations of parkland in the world
nine national parks
and dozens of national monuments
and wilderness areas.
As the earth turns, and the days reveal themselves,
the cliffs and mesas of the Grand Canyon seem to shift
and change color
under the fluctuating quality of light.
Few spectacles in Nature challenge the human imagination
more than the Grand Canyon.
Over 200 miles long and an average of ten miles wide,
it is the indisputable titan of the Colorado Plateau.
The Colorado River is responsible for carving this canyon.
Even when you cannot see the river,
you are constantly reminded of the powerful force of water
and time to shape, sculpt,
form and re-form rock and earth and acknowledge
its awesome power to create.
Five millions visitors come from all over the world
each year to see this natural wonder.
Yet, for so many who see it,
it's unfathomable enormity,
it's layers of time,
it's mystery, color and silence,
it still remains beyond comprehension.
A million years ago,
glaciers sliding off the Nevada mountains
carved out the valley known as Yosemite.
With broad Sequoia groves,
thousands of streams, lakes and rivers,
and hundreds of species of wildlife,
Yosemite has long been known as the Californian
"Garden of Eden."
Yosemite occupied a special place in the heart of John Muir
who many consider to be the father of the National Parks.
In 1901 he wrote:
"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.
Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.
The winds will blow their own freshness into you
and the storms their energy
while cares drop like autumn leaves."
"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread,
places to play in and to pray in
where nature may heal
and give strength to body and soul alike.
Keep close to nature's heart
and break clear away once in a while
and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods.
Wash your spirit clean.
John Muir 1912."
Who would have thought that a ten square mile preserve,
set aside to protect a small hot springs complex
would mark the beginning of Canada's National Park system?
But that's what happened in 1885
with the establishment of the first National Park at Banff,
in a picturesque corner of the Rocky Mountains.
The Park system embraces more than 35 Parks
and in excess of 170,000 square miles.
Canada's vast National Park system
reflects the close relationship to the natural world
and supports the commitment Canadians have made
both nationally and internationally
to support the global environment.
Today, Banff,
and the adjoining Jasper National Park,
are prime destinations for eco-tourists
from all over the world.
Yet, if one strays form the beaten path just a little,
it is possible to believe that man has never been here.
And isn't that, at the end of the day,
the quest for all those who visit the National Parks?
To believe that there is a world out there that is higher,
and more majestic, that the world of men.
That, as time marches on,
the loftiest achievements of Man
will always be in competition with something as simple,
and elegant, as a serene Alpine lake.
When we visit the area of southern Utah,
we are reminded of the broad range of natural spectacles
offered on this great continent.
Broad flatlands give way to quickly rising mountains.
Greenery and water are sparse,
yet that does not prohibit us
form sensing that this place possesses a powerful energy.
Moving among these formations,
we feel as if we are approaching the walls of an ancient city.
We are dwarfed by their imposing nature,
made to wonder what Timeless force made all this possible.
When writer Edward Abbey saw this land,
he wrote,
"In this glare of brilliant emptiness,
in this arid intensity of pure heat
All things recede annihilating all thought
and all that men have made to spasms of whirling dust
far out on the golden desert."
Like the hoodoo and spires of the Bryce Amphitheatre,
we are spectators,
witnesses who, in passing,
have come to feel uplifted and renewed by this,
our National Parks Odyssey.
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