Call a Place Paradise and Kiss it Goodbye

Wednesday was another tailgate training day with Barry out back. Instead of sitting at the usual picnic table, we now have made chairs and a table out of tree stumps right on our back porch. There are seven chairs and we have been joking about naming them after the seven dwarfs because they are so small. Instead, I think we should name them after seven joe-schmo tourons: brainless, ill-prepared, clueless, annoying, bear-food, etc.

This week's topic was radio communication along with the seven Leave No Trace Ethics. (Maybe we should just name the stumps after LNT) Whenever he talks with us, he always ends up on completely random tangents and this week was about the word "HUH."

If you think about it, it really is a simple word. Three letters. Even spelling out the word in sign language is the exact same shape of your hand for all three letters, rotated. The tone of the person saying that simple word can mean so many different things though.

If we get people to say the "huh" word in a pensive manner, we know that we've made an impact. It's the pensive-huh that lets you know people are really listening to you and soaking in what you are saying. This engaged response shows the impact of the education you are providing in the backcountry or even in the office about fires, fishing, bear-canisters, etc.

The other way people say the "huh" word is more of a question where people don't know what you are saying nor do they really want to understand. It's the "what"-factor, the time when the things you are saying just flies over their heads. The tourons who visit our park flock this place and completely disregard rules about staying off the tundra because it takes hundreds of years to grow back to what it is now or not feeding the chipmunks and squirrels because they won't be able to find their own food and starve in the winter.

The Eagles have a bunch of great lyrics about nature and "paradise" in their songs, and one of my favorites right now is the line, "call a place paradise and kiss it goodbye" in partner with the Counting Crows lyric, "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot." I've been reading some history books about the town and park that I borrowed from our office and the numbers of visitation before the area was a National Park more than quadrupled even in the very first year after it was named a Park, or paradise. The definition of a ranger is "the keepers of the royal land." That's a HUGE responsibility for people, but the education is what will help people still enjoy the Park while protecting it at the same time. That's also why we need to hear more of the pensive "huhs" rather than the questioning.

There's all of this magnificent beauty everywhere that people don't always truly appreciate. The colors of a sunset or the illumination of the sky during a thunderstorm or even the blue with white puffs drawn into the sky are just up above people but if they are too busy looking down at their feet all the time they will never see what's above them and vice versa. The whole picture is hard to take in, but you need to be willing to spend the extra time to see your whole surroundings rather than just the view that's directly in front of you. The people who come to the entrance gate and say they are "just driving though" and therefore shouldn't need to pay really shouldn't even come into the park. There are so many different levels and depths to the beauty of this area that I don't know if "just driving through" would really be worth it.