Washington Trails
Association
Trails for everyone, forever
Washington Trails
AssociationTrails for everyone, forever
Our national parks are a good idea, but are not without issues that must be faced. Before we can appreciate what is being protected, we must reconcile the bitter past of the marginalization of BIPOC communities on these lands. By J. Drew Lanham
For many, the idea of a National Park conjures up visions of the faraway wild: beasts of immense shaggy proportions and ferocity. Birds soaring on broad wings, or in still-abundant flocks wheeling above landscapes only they have the privilege of visiting at will. It is snowcapped peaks almost higher than imagining and canyons so vast, deep, and grand that time seems trapped within them. It’s blue haze on the rounded shoulders of Appalachia making those mountains smoky. It’s New England forests turning brilliant hues in autumn and Southwest deserts being painted by sunrises. It’s badlands that make us feel good or dust devils in great basins that slake our thirsts for wonder though there’s not a drop of water in sight. It’s the sweep of tall grass on Midwestern prairie and the sway of tall grass in Floridian wet glades. It’s getting our wandering priorities straightened out in big bending places. Millions of acres that give grizzly bears enough space to get lost and moose that are made to feel small under the gaze of glaciers. Fathomless depths that help us breathe more deeply. Whale song we dance to. It is the opportunity to love the wild, at a respectable and safe distance, while we get ever closer to discovering our innermost selves.
For every park there are stories.
Cover of "Tales from America's National Parks and Trails, Campfire Stories, Volume II". Illustration from Levi Hastings
Our national parks are, at first glance, a collectively good idea, but they’re not without some issues that still need to be faced. As we reckon today with how white-written history has given short shrift to aboriginal occupancy by First Nations and Indigenous people and the subsequent expulsion and genocide to occupy their lands as “new and wild discoveries” or how names on mountains matter, we need to more carefully examine park stories. At the same time, we must wrestle ethically with how Black people guarded sacred wild spaces in the beginning, but were then excluded from them, or how other people of color have been seen as unworthy of this “best idea.” Our parks become complex and sometimes cloudy places rife with sins we thought absent from the grand vistas.
These places, though visited by millions, often hold highly personal stories that singularly define their value beyond any policy ever written on paper. There is an opportunity in the natural world to reconcile the bitter past and present predicaments with opportunities for a better future. I believe this to be one of the great undiscovered, or at least untapped, functions of wildness in our national parks. For all the wondrous superlatives of height, depth, expanse, and abundance, it is the intensely personal relationships with land and space and time that offer opportunities for recognition of what was, is, and might be — reconciliation of past, present, and future desired conditions and, ultimately, eco-reparation in understanding that our place as humans is just as another cog in the wild wheel of nature. That is my hope anyway.
Ilyssa and Dave Kyu searched across the country to find the writers and stories herein. And they provide a large step forward in the Three R’s Process: to recognize, reconcile, and repair, in these desperate times of upset and angst with one another and the natural world, through some relationship with wildness. Through our place in and responsibility to the parks too, but even more so with the greater park we all inhabit called Earth.
So sit close by and melt some s’mores or lift a tin cup of whatever goes down best. Read with eyes, ears, and heart wide open to absorb these stories. Recognize a bird call but then, too, the call for seeing identity of those different than you. Reconcile your speck-of-dust insignificance in the shadow of a stone monolith, but then know that you are singularly worthy of all the wildness we share, no matter your color, hue, love preference, or faith. Repair from within what’s been torn apart. Find space to be quiet under a throw that will warm and cover a new collection of those gathered around the campfire. Snuggle up y’all. Let the frogs and night birds interrupt as they will. It’s okay to pause for falling stars. Enjoy.
Excerpted from the foreword of “Campfire Stories Volume II: Tales from America’s National Parks and Trails,” edited by Dave Kyu and Ilyssa Kyu (April 2023). Published by Mountaineers Books. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
Inspired by America’s beloved national parks, Campfire Stories Volume II is a collection of modern prose, poetry, folklore, and more, featuring commissioned, new, and existing works from a diverse group of writers who share a deep appreciation of the natural world.
About the editors: ILYSSA KYU is a design researcher focused on inclusion at frog design, a global creative consultancy, and the founder of Amble, a sabbatical program for creative professionals to take time away with purpose in support of nature conservancies. DAVE KYU is a socially engaged artist, writer, and arts administrator. Born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in the United States, he explores the creative tensions of identity, community, and public space in his work. They live with their two daughters outside of Philadelphia and are always seeking adventure and connection in the outdoors. Find them online at campfirestoriesbook.com and on Instagram @campfirestoriesbook.
About J. Drew Lanham: Birder, naturalist, essayist, poet, and recipient of a 2022 MacArthur Fellowship, J. Drew Lanham is the author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature. His writings have appeared in anthologies as well as periodicals including Orion and Audubon. Lanham is an Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology at Clemson University. He lives in South Carolina.
