America's best known and probably most accomplished maker of documentary films -- Ken Burns -- popped in to The Oregonian yesterday for a short visit that made me realize how long it's been since I camped or even hiked in a national park or forest.
Sure, I do some long weekend runs in a local state or city park. But running on a heavily used trail is far different than the totality of experience in a grander, larger setting -- the sweet smell of trees, the panorama of a meadow, the chirping of invisible songbirds, the utter silence and black darkness of a night sleeping beneath the stars.
Even speaking off the cuff, Burns displayed an intriguing mix of intelligence, eloquence and wit during his half-hour chat. Accompanied by his longtime colleague, Dayton Duncan, he spoke with great affection about the history of our country's 58 parks and "the emotional archaeology" they unearthed in making their film, "The National Parks: America's Best Idea." The six-part series will air this fall on PBS.
"Nearly everyone in our film, including historians explaining this stuff, had connections with a park that woke them up, that set them on the path where they're going," Burns said. For him, it was recalling the memory of being a first-grader when his dad woke him up at 4 a.m. -- the first time he'd ever awoken in the middle of the night -- to take him camping at Shenandoah National Park outside Baltimore. Filming at California's Yosemite National Park reminded him "I'd had this treasure, focused on being with my dad."
Duncan said the appeal of the national parks is that "they belong to everyone and that they are a legacy that gets built up over time to get passed down, to be used and enjoyed now but also preserved, unimpaired, for people who aren't yet here."
It's inspiring to realize there was no top-down master plan in Washington, D.C., that led to creation of the national park system. Instead, it was bottom-up; the parks came into being one by one, as locals became passionate about saving the places they loved so much so others could love them too.
"That's a repetitive theme (in the film)," Duncan said, "but with different characters."
The film begins in 1851, but the first national park -- Yellowstone -- wasn't created until 1872. The Grand Canyon would have become the second in 1882 but, amazingly, strong local resistance squelched that effort (and again in 1886 and 1887) on grounds that grazing, mining and logging activities should be maintained. Not even President Theodore Roosevelt -- our best-known environmental president -- could make it happen. It wasn't until 1919 that the Grand Canyon finally became a national park. The irony? Arizona now calls itself the Grand Canyon State.
Tensions remain today over conflicting uses, ranging from wilderness to snowmobiling, something that Burns traces to "those American impulses that are extractive and acquisitive."
For all the majestic scenery that the parks conjure up today, you wouldn't think they have played an important role in our economy. Yet, in the midst of our contemporary economic crisis, Burns reminded us that one of first successes of FDR'S New Deal was in the national parks with the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps.
"Within three months, a thousand camps were up and running and young men were sending money to their families," Burns said. "They were making $30 a month and sending $25 to their families." The dignity on the faces of these workers was palpable, he said, and a reminder that these men, while building all sorts of projects in our parks, were also building human happiness.
As a creature of the city who spends way too little time communing with nature, I can't wait to see the documentary.
Check out The Oregonian's Q&A with Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan here.
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