Visiting vs Experiencing
There are three categories of National Park tourists.
The first is the worst: the tourist. The tourist blunders in with their fancy RV, stumbles off some cruise ship, or barrels in on a pair of Harleys. They make a bunch of noise in the visitor’s center, take a high-speed trip through the scenic drive, perhaps (at best) reading 2-3 roadside signs before giving up and barreling off to some picnic area to uncork a bottle of wine, unscrew a bottle of cheap whiskey, or unpack a fistful of juice pops before nearly burning down a campground via an over-butaned charcoal grill.
The second is the polar opposite: the wildlander. These are the folks who truly revel in the hard-core activities: spending days backpacking or river rafting across varied terrains; performing a multi-hour rock traversals up the cliff face; or otherwise reveling in the true wonders of the park: the wilderness. I have full respect for these intrepid travelers, but because I like traveling alone, it would be incredibly dangerous for me. Plus I’m an immense coward.
So I nestle inside the middle group.
Parks are to be experienced. If you’re in Acadia, you bike the carriage trails. If you go to Key Biscayne, you snorkel the reefs. And if you go to Kenai Fjord, you hike the glaciers* and you kayak the fjords. That’s the Middle Group: find activities that let you experience the park in the few days you have to spend, and enjoy the sh*t out of them.
*Well, you don’t hike *on* the glaciers, that’s dangerous AF. You hike *to* the glaciers. Play safe, everyone.
The kayaking I did at Kenai was one of the best times I ever spent in a park, and I’ve been to well over 200 of them. First, it was a gorgeous day. The sky was so blue, the wind was light, the air was the perfect temperature. Second, the people were fantastic. I typically avoid commercialized park tours, they tend to be too expensive and too lame, but these tour operators were awesome. They were friendly, and helpful, and gave good information, but also knew how to shut up so folks could just enjoy sitting on the water and watch the puffins dive.
My fellow kayakers were really cool, too. There were seven of us in all, three couples and myself, and we didn’t know each other (well, hopefully the people in the couples knew each other, but hey, who am I to judge). But everyone was so chill and so interesting and so much fun to be around. It was just us and the puffins and the eagles and the sea lions: the perfect trip.
After the kayaking, we went back to Fox Island. There was supposed to just be some standard lunch, but instead there was some special end-of-season event going on, so we got the full grilled salmon treatment. I rarely remember what I ate on my trips, but that was so memorable. It was all fresh and cooked to perfection and there was no spoiling that day. I was even on-point with my photography that day (a super-rarity).
After lunch, we hopped on a cruise boat for the standard, tourist trip through the fjords. That was … lame, but also hysterical. It’s kinda hard to get excited about tufted puffins or sea lions from 20′ up the side of a boat, when a couple of hours ago you were paddling right alongside them. So the group of us sat in the middle of the deck and chatted for the duration.
My trip to Alaska was, by far, the highlight of all my park trips. I need to go back, visit the panhandle, Aniakchak, and more. It’s a big state with a lot of parks, and I only hit the few with the most … tourists.
[The photos on this post are mine and copyrighted thusly].
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I had no grandiose plans for my Water Gap visit. I had an exciting, inspiring trip the prior autumn when I visited Alaska for the first time (a subject for my next post), but for my trip through Pennsylvania the following spring, I wanted to tone it down (although some might say you have no alternative but to ‘tone it down’ when you visit Pennsylvania, but, well, moving on …).
Now I have to be careful here: I am calling it “soulful laziness” for a very specific reason. It’s the ability to just stop, for a few minutes or a few hours or a few days, and relax. Find a quiet spot, at the beach or in a field or on your own back patio, and take a breather. Get away from the noise. Stop and smell the roses. Free your mind and the rest will follow. Let not only your body and your mind but the very fiber of your being, your soul (in both the theological and non-theological meanings of the word) take a rest.
Part and parcel with physical laziness is intellectual laziness, as evidenced by excessive TV watching, vapid internet surfing, pointless shopping sprees or chronic videogaming. Many people are too intellectually lazy to even ask questions of our leaders or their bosses or even their spouses. Fewer and fewer people read or write effectively, or even try to think their way out of problems, instead depending on others to bail them out or praying to God for salvation while having another box of Ring-Dings and watching Monday Night Football. How many people can’t even count change? Lots and lots.
What we need to do as individuals is occasionally enter that state that allows one to set aside all the petty, self-created stresses, and just sit there in a quiet, low-key space and watch the world go by for a few hours on the weekend, or a few days while on vacation. This type of laziness is a wonder and a marvel. It shuts off all the noise and all the crap that we either willingly enter or (far worse) create for ourselves. Now this brand of laziness must be earned and can’t be abused (you can’t live your life staring out into space or gazing into your own navel, that’s what puts you into “the home”), but, in moderation, this is what we need, what we all need, the entire country, for our own sanity and our own survival.
America In Context 