A Spot of Preservation, Please
Devil’s Postpile is a tiny little National Park System spot, especially when compared to nearby juggernauts like Yosemite, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Death Valley National Parks. It only covers about 800 acres, even Valley Forge NHS is bigger than that. It’s just there to save a singular geologic feature: a volcanic extrusion cooled in hexagonal basalt columns. Yeah, not too exciting, but hey, it’s not something you see every day. It’s just a tiny little spot of interest, preserved.
Which sort of brings up a point. How big of a deal is it for someone to look at something and say “hey, that’s pretty neat, we should save that.” Well, apparently, it’s a pretty big deal. Postpile took a bit of effort to save. Long hidden in the high-altitude mazework of the eastern Sierra Nevada, people didn’t even know it existed until the late 1800s. Of course, it wasn’t too long until water interests showed up wanting to blow these extruded columns straight to hell to build their dams. As usual, the happy ending here was a group of concerned citizens & environmental groups raising awareness leading to the salvation of this unique pile of rocks.
Yeah, I know, here we go again. Those naïve environmental whackos, sacrificing the public good and economic growth for worthless blind cave fish or piles of grey rocks. Why should we preserve all these unimportant things when people can’t put food on the table or get a drop to drink? Fair questions, I suppose. Fair questions, that is, until you realize that so many times this destruction is either for naught, or is ill-placed, or the fruits of that destruction is itself wasted, or, even worse, it’s realized after the fact that all this destruction has doomed us all.
Looking specifically at the economic collapse we find ourselves in, which seemingly marks the end of our nation’s economic prosperity, I have to ask myself: was it really worth destroying portions of our nation’s environment for “economic expansion”, when our own greed-driven stupidity has halted that very economic expansion and set us all down the road to ruin? Our wealth has evaporated, our jobs have moved overseas, our education and health care systems have collapsed, and all we have to show for it is a scarred landscape. There are parts of Texas that are forever ruined thanks to sloppy oil drilling. There are parts of West Virginia forever despoiled thanks to mountaintop removal mining. Long Island Sound will likely never recover from the damage caused first by New England mill towns and later from over-fertilized suburban lawns.
I know there’s a delicate balance between environmental preservation and economic expansion. I know NIMBY-ism prevents good projects, like robust electrical grids, light rail, and hydroelectric & geothermal power (two truly renewable energy sources), from getting completed. And there have been some very helpful projects like Hoover Dam and the TVA that have been done and resulted in vast improvements in the quality of life for millions. But what bothers me is the environmental damage we have wrought for absolutely no reason other than building over-large, unsustainable houses no one can afford to live, and mega-mall shopping complexes where no one can afford to shop. We’ve ruined our landscape and have nothing to show for it but a nation in economic collapse.
I’m just suggesting that anytime zoning boards or developers or the Dept. of the Interior or Congress considers destroying a chunk of our natural world for some special project, they need to seriously consider “is it worth it over the long term,” or is it simply some get-rich-quick scheme for some special interest group that won’t provide a lick of true economic growth for the nation. I suspect that as long as these groups can be easily bought off or deluded, we’ll never make those intelligent decisions.
At least we have places like Devil’s Postpile and other national, state, and municipal parklands. Well, for now that is, until some shyster convinces us that paving them over will lead to “economic prosperity”.
[Pics on this post are mine and copyrighted thusly. See my other Postpile pics here.]
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Links:
Devil’s Postpile National Monument
CIA World Factbook: Environment (yeah, I know it’s not directly related to the content of this blog post, but I stumbled across it and found it neat)
America In Context 
This is one small area where I think we really need to follow the UKs lead. The UK has done a great job providing secured areas for historical sites, natural sites, and letting institutions maintain and compete over those sites. Universities maintain and study them, people get to visit freely, etc.
There is plenty of “dead” land that can be used for economic expansion as needed.
Now, with that said, I think the way the US Government manages the lands needs to be overhauled. But that’s for another comment, on another day, ..
Cheers, -Pk
Nice post.
I haven’t made it to Devil’s Postpile yet – it seems to have a pretty short operating season, but I’m glad it’s there.
I’ve heard that there’s some scientific disagreement about how these actually form, whether that’s at Devil’s Tower in Wyoming (sidenote: why are these formations always evil?) or Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. As a fan of the Sierra Nevadas, I’m happy whenever any piece of that place is preserved as protected public land.
Interesting, PK. I haven’t studied the UK system. When you say “institutions”, are these government entities (like the U.S. National Park System and other organizations), or are they private entities, endowments, etc.??
Scot, don’t be daunted by the NPS website for Postpile. Their schedule is only when the bus operates. You can still go there by car until the snow falls. I went after the bus season but it was still long before snow & quite a site. 🙂
Barky,
Overall it’s the Government but they delegate like a beast to whomever has the best plan and most knowledge. So it’s all Nationalized in principle but outsourced to the best schools, private entities, etc. to manage them. What it does is keeps things fresh and really well maintained. And keeps history and park majors employed too. 😉
For example, In Northern Wales the people selected to maintain the henge sites were the most knowledgeable about Druidic history, Roman/Druid battles, etc. Not just some parks employees with pamphlets and rudimentary knowledge for a tour. In the Scottish Highlands it was the University groups and non-profits most familiar with all the unique geology of the area. At each Roman sites (and there are hundreds and hundreds across the country) it was the same.
I’m not sure how to explain it other than visiting any of their parks, no matter how small (and we’re talking less than an acre in some cases), is like visiting a Smithsonian display every time. Just so much attention paid to detail and well maintained. And some of these sites are in people’s yards, literally, and nobody minds in the least because it’s so richly done.
-Pk
Engaging web site Will definitely come back soon!