This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land...

How much land do you own?

If you rent an apartment, you might say none at all.  

If you live in the suburbs, you might estimate about a quarter of an acre.

  If you live on a Kansas wheat farm, you might say 600 acres or more.

The good news is, you're wrong!

If you are a citizen of the United States of America- whether you are homeless person living on the streets, a movie star, or a single mom shooing your kids outdoors to play on a lawn the size of a postage stamp- you own land.  You, and your children, and their children and their children.  A lot of it. 

Santa Elena Canyon in Great Bend National Park, Texas

In fact, you own 51.9 million acres of some of the most breathtaking land on earth.  

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Lake Superior, Michigan

You inherited it.  Me too.  It was left for us collectively in a trust, and hopefully, our children will inherit it from us.  

Grand Teton National Park

One of the joyful miracles of being an American is that you don't have to be royalty, the daughter of a politician, the son of a tycoon, or a jet-setting socialite, to have access to our nation's most beautiful places.

If it weren't for the visionary genius of an immigrant named John Muir, that might not be true.

Biscayne National Park

Before kings and popes claimed the divine right to bestow vast tracts of land to their buddies, before chieftains claimed millions of acres captured by their marauding armies, before school districts and HOAs and real estate lawyers-- the earth was not owned by anyone.  It was common land.

Death Valley National Park photographed by David Thompson

However by 1800, in most of the world, it was almost impossible to find a single square foot of dirt upon which to stand that wasn't owned by someone.

America pushed West with restless energy, feeding our voracious appetite for "progress" (and natural resources)

Brandywine Falls, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio

and by 1872, it was looking as if we would walk in European footsteps- every last acre securely tucked away for eternity into the coffers of whomever had the most power, money and political connections.

Blue Ridge Mountains, North Carolina

If you happened not to have enough power, wealth or political connections to grab some of that land for yourself and your heirs, well, too bad for you.

Bryce National Park, Utah

John Muir, however, championed a radical new idea that America's wild places belonged to all Americans.  As a young country with bright, democratic ideals, America, he believed, should "take care that our most pristine places not be snapped up by a few individuals to do with as they please."

John Muir, Yosemite Valley

He observed that an insatiable drive for money, along with shortsightedness, and a creeping disdain for fair-play would likely destroy our collective heritage if Congress did not take bold action to protect it.

A rare, nighttime "moonbow" hidden in the mist at the base of Yosemite Falls

In much of the world, the most stunning vistas, the ability to relax and recreate in gorgeous natural places, and the privilege of having sheer space- rare, peaceful and uplifting- was reserved for the wealthy. 

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Indiana

But John Muir insisted that "Everybody needs beauty,"

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, Photographed by Christine Korkalo

"Places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike."

Together with Robert Wood Johnson, he set about saving the Yosemite valley as one such place.

In 1855, Galen Clark, a California homesteader who had been diagnosed with tuberculosis and given 6 months to live, traveled to Yosemite's Mariposa Valley.  

He stumbled, awestruck, upon a grove of magnificent Giant Sequoia trees, some standing taller than a 25-story building, and more than 100 feet in circumference.  Clark was so moved by this natural cathedral, that he led a campaign against logging in the Sequoia groves.  Interestingly, he probably saved his own life too in the fresh, clean air and sunshine- he never did die of tuberculosis.

Enduring, ancient, breathtaking.  Giant sequoias are found naturally only at elevations of 4,500 feet to 7,500 feet in a narrow 15 by 240-mile strip of the western Sierra Nevada of central California.

America's Giant Sequoia trees withstood rain, wind, earthquakes and fire, some for as long as four thousand years.  

But it took loggers only two days to cut one down.  At first, lumber companies expected an incredible amount of timber volume from each tree. However, the Giant Sequoias age and size made these trees extremely brittle and they often shattered upon impact when felled.  

Entire groves were decimated before it was realized that harvesting the mature Sequoias produced no major financial gain.

One Canadian writer notes that the conquest of the big trees by cutting them down, was portrayed with the same triumphant, iconographic idiom as the slaying of wild animals.  

In both instances, the weapon that lead to the demise of the "prey" whether animal or tree, is usually prominently displayed in the photo.

Cathedral Lake, Yosemite National Park

Fortunately for us (and the world) long-term vision trumped short-term gain.

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

  

In 1864 President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant, which, for the first time in history, protected 1,500 acres of Yosemite valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias, first as a California State Park, and later...

as the first National park the world had ever known.

Sequoia National Forest

What speaks to the heart now, and probably then too, is the tenacity of these trees.  There is a National Forest trail in Big Stump Basin, California that leads to the "Sawed Tree."  More than a century ago, the loggers working on this tree inexplicably stopped sawing with only a few inches left to go. 

Bridal Veil Fall, Yosemite National Park

Today, it still stands and continues to grow, despite the gash that should have brought it down.   

Great Falls National Park, Maryland

National Parks were an American idea that was as radical to the rest of the world as our Declaration of Independence.

Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

The revolutionary, and self-evident idea that a nation's most sacred and magnificent spaces are owned inherently, collectively, by it's people, and should be protected for all.

Badlands National Park, South Dakota

For "public use, resort, and recreation ... to be left inalienable for all time."

Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia, Photographed by Jack Brauer

Today, 100 countries around the globe have followed our example and have established National Parks.  As civilization becomes more civilized, we are figuring out that nature has value far beyond cash, or what it can produce.

Katmai National Park, Alaska

It is widely accepted now that spending time outdoors is essential to the health and well-being of the human species.  

Haleakala National Park, Hawaii

In a whirling, techno-packed world, more of us long to escape the noise, congestion and the jaded weariness of a retail obsessed culture, to places where we can breathe clean air and stretch our legs.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park, South Dakota

It's not that humans ever completely disconnect from nature's vast, mysterious wildness.  We can't of course- we're intimately attached, made up of the same stuff.  We just forget.  Fortunately, we have our National Parks, 

and silent groves of 3,000-year old trees to help us find ourselves again. 

1.  Mount Rainier National Park, Washington 2. Glacier National Park, Montana 3. Everglades National Park, Florida 4. Tallgrass Prairie National Park, Kansas 5. 6. 7. Santa Elena Canyon, Great Bend National Park, TX 8. Pictured Rocks National Park, Michigan 9.  Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming 10. John Muir, National Geographic 11. Biscayne National Park, FL 12. 13. Death Valley National Park Photographed by David Thompson.  See his remarkable photos here. 13. 14. Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio  15. Blue Ridge Mountains, North Carolina 16. Bryce National Park, Utah 17. John Muir, Smithsonian Magazine 18. Yosemite Falls by moonlight, Smithsonian Magazine, photgraphed by Donald Smith 19. Indiana Dunes National Park 20. Rocky Mountain National Park, Photographed by Christine Korkalo   21.  Photographed for National Geographic by Andrew Coffing 22.  23.  Mariposa Grove 24. Mariposa Grove 25. National Park Images 26. Cathedral Lake, Yosemite National Park 27.  Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming 28. Sequoia National Park 29. Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite National Park 30. Great Falls National Park, Maryland photographed by Nikographer Jon on Flicker 31. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona 32. Badlands National Park, South Dakota 33. Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia Photographed by Jack Brauer  34. Katmai National Park, Alaska, Photographed by Ken Mellish for Florentine Films  35. Haleakala National Park, Hawaii  36.  Theodore Roosevelt National Park, South Dakota 37. Kit Gentry Tourist at Glacier Point 1902, Yosemite National Park, National Archives 

The PBS Special,  The National Parks:  America's Best Idea by Ken Burns, is a phenomenal video that will captivate everyone in the family.  I found it accidentally, surfing Netflix one evening, but you can also find it

Here...

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