4 out of 5 New Yorkers prefer subways to vampires

I love New York City. I love the craziness and the loud noises and the eccentricities that you can never get away from. I even love the tourists that crowd midtown, walking four across so you can’t maneuver around them. I love the fact that in the middle of such a crowded city, you can walk into Central Park and it’s big enough that you can feel as if you’re in an oasis rather than a metropolis.

But damn it, Ken Burns, you make me wish I lived in the wilderness. Last night was the premiere of his (inevitably) epic 12-hour miniseries on the National Parks. Having taken a once-in-a-lifetime cross country trip in 2004, I had visited the places that were highlighted last night (Yosemite and Yelllowstone), and had anticipated this series for weeks. He didn’t disappoint. To the contrary, the thought of running away from the city and getting lost in Yellowstone didn’t seem so radical by the end of the first installment. However, I’d want my adventures in the wilderness to go a bit better than those of Truman Everts. His story was new to me last night, but served to reinforce how beautiful, majestic, and expansive Yellowstone (and the entire National Park system) is.

Until last night, the concept of a national park didn’t seem unique to me. I appreciated the natural wonders that the government set aside for us to enjoy, but I hadn’t thought of the fact that this had been a foreign concept before Yosemite and Yellowstone. A park for the people? Not to be tampered with by private companies and to be free of tourist traps? Park admission costs that go right back to the maintenance of nature? I never thought about how radical that was, but now it strikes me as something that we’re even luckier to have. We should be grateful to the visionaries that put these ideas out there to the government, and to the government that accepted them and developed them into the National Park system of today.

I won’t be able to watch the rest of the series as it airs, but I’m thrilled to see that they’ll be available online afterwards until October 9th. I’ll be sure to watch each part, watching wistfully from my room and wishing that I could be looking out the window to see Old Faithful or Muir Woods instead of an endless reflection of apartments. I love the city, but I can only hope that I’ll be lucky enough to explore the parks I haven’t been to yet in the future.

Hot spring in Yellowstone, taken by me in 2004.