any years later, as his son faced the Mmountain goats, Dayton Duncan C’71 would remember that distant time when his own parents took him to discover the national parks. He was nine years old then, and nothing in his Iowa upbringing had prepared him for that camping trip to the touchstones of wild America: The lunar grandeur of the Badlands. The bear that stuck its head into their tent in Yellowstone. The muddy murmur of the Green River as it swirled past their sleeping bags at Dinosaur National Monument. Sunrise across Lake Jenny in Grand Dayton Duncan sees the national Teton, an image that would cause parks as the “Declaration his mother’s eyes to grow misty for decades to come … of Independence applied to the landscape.” Now he and Ken Burns have made an epic movie about them. By Samuel Hughes

34 SEPT | OCT 2009 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE THE PHOTOGRAPHPENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE BY SEPTJARED | OCT 2009LEEDS 35 Now it was the summer of 1998, and national parks, and a few weeks later Ken Burns film. For one thing, the Duncan had brought his family to spent three incandescent nights in national parks were a uniquely American Glacier, Montana’s rugged masterpiece Yosemite camping with the legendary invention; for another, their history was of lake and peak and pine. Having spent conservationist John Muir. After the rife with outsized characters and unpre- some blissful days there 13 years before president and the high priest of the dictable plot twists—and issues that still with his then-girlfriend, Dianne, he was Sierras awoke their last morning covered resonate today. That fall he decided to returning with her and their offspring: in snow, an ecstatic Roosevelt would tell broach the idea. 11-year-old Emme and eight-year-old Will. the crowds in Yosemite Valley: “This has “I wanted to come in fully loaded, with After switchbacking up the vertiginous been the grandest day of my life.” The ideas and an argument for it,” Duncan Going-to-the-Sun Road, they crossed the Bull Moose would go on to become the recalls. “It always helps to reference things Continental Divide at Logan Pass. Then, parks’ greatest champion. that we’ve done before. So I said, ‘We need from the visitors center, he and Will set Clearly, the national parks have touched to do a series that’s on a uniquely American out on a two-hour hike that culminated something deep inside people, whether it idea and invention, like baseball and jazz. in a near-mystical encounter with a fam- was the president of the United States at It springs from a democratic notion, just ily of mountain goats. the beginning of the 20th century or an like All men are created equal, written by “In that vast amphitheater of Nature, eight-year-old boy at the end. Thomas Jefferson.’ So I’ve already refer- some dim memory buried deep within “The notion that a national park is enced three films now. the DNA of all human beings was awak- the portal to a different experience was ened,” Duncan later recalled in an essay. very visceral to me,” says Duncan. “You As they walked back to the visitors cen- could feel this intersection of time and ter, father told son that, in honor of his place, the place being the same, which sure-footedness, he was giving him a again I think is part of what parks are new name in the Native American tra- about. They offer you the same place, dition: Goat Boy. in layers of time.” That night, in the old Many Glacier A couple days after his transformative Hotel on Swiftcurrent Lake, the elder moment in Glacier, he realized that the Duncan took a peek at the journal portal through which he had passed had entry Goat Boy had been furiously writ- led him to an idea that bordered on an ing just before falling asleep. It began: imperative: “Ken and I need to do a film THIS WAS THE MOST EXCITING DAY on the national parks.” OF MY LIFE. That, arguably, was the most reward- That would be Ken Burns, ing moment of Duncan’s. head of Florentine Films, arguably the “It really was overwhelming to me, nation’s most successful documentary Ted and John’s excellent adventure: reading Will’s little hand-scrawled diary filmmaking outfit. It’s not hard to schedule Roosevelt and Muir at Yosemite, 1903. entry,” he recalls. “I told Dianne, ‘You a meeting when you both live in Walpole, know, this is what this trip is about.’” New Hampshire, especially when you’ve “Then I said, ‘The first tentative expres- Duncan is sitting on a bench in been close friends and professional col- sion was in 1864 during the midst of the Lafayette National Park in Washington, laborators since the 1980s. They had Civil War, and’—and I think it was right stopping every 10 minutes or so to already made one very successful film— around the and that he said, ‘Yeah, let’s do relight his pipe, which keeps going out Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps this.’ So it took less than a minute. Because because he’s too caught up in answer- of Discovery (1997)—from a Duncan script, he got it, right from the start, and because ing questions to puff on it. Behind him, and another on the American West (1996) it is right in line with some of these other past an anti-nuke demonstration and a for which Duncan was co-writer and a major series that we’ve done.” wrought-iron fence and Pennsylvania consulting producer. (Duncan, the author On the other side of Walpole, in his Avenue, is the White House, shimmer- of 10 books, also served as a consultant on second-floor office in the converted ing soddenly in the D.C. humidity. Burns’ The Civil War, Jazz, and Baseball.) barn that is Florentine Films’ head- Certain occupants of that building have By 1998, the time of his national-parks quarters, the boyish, quietly high-rev- loomed large in the broader narrative epiphany, they were knee-deep in the ving Burns concurs. that Duncan has been exploring. Ulysses filming of Mark Twain. But since it had “This was right in my wheelhouse,” he S. Grant signed the bill creating the first taken 10 years to sell Burns on Horatio’s says. “It is really very much about what national park at Yellowstone in 1872, and Drive—an entertaining romp of a tale our friendship has been about—exploring eight years before that, Abraham Lincoln about the first automobile road trip the wild spaces of America. It’s what my had signed legislation protecting the across the country that was still in the whole life’s work has been about, trying to Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove. Florentine Films on-deck circle—he knew understand who we are. It’s very much an During a triumphant visit to Yellowstone he had to make his best pitch. American institution, and as he said, born in 1903, Theodore Roosevelt praised the He was certain that the story of the during the Civil War. By the time you say

“essential democracy” of the fledgling parks had all the elements for a classic Abraham Lincoln, you’ve got me.” DIVISION OF CONGRESS, PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS LIBRARY

36 SEPT | OCT 2009 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE “I love politics,” he says. “I mean, I love the purpose of it. I believe in it. I like campaigns because they’re exhilarating, as well as important.” One day he got a call from a young filmmaker from Walpole who had an assignment from the BBC to interview the governor about reviving old mill buildings and mill towns. Duncan agreed to the request, and when the time came, “this guy that looked like he was 14 years old walks in.” His name was Ken Burns. When Burns’ first film, Brooklyn Bridge, was nominated for an Academy Award a year and a half later, he invited Gallen and Duncan to attend a special screening in Hollywood, where the governor was using the success of On Golden Pond to promote the New Hampshire Film and Television Office. A friendship took root. Heavenly Reflections: Gallen died shortly before his term Mt. Rainier National Park. ended, at which point Duncan went back to writing. Neither he nor incoming ou know, I’m very parochial,” “I don’t get up on a soapbox, but I have a Governor John Sununu wanted much to Duncan is saying, sitting in point of view, and it often seeps through,” do with each other, so as an “excuse to “Ythe old clapboard house in he allows. “And I think my involvement in get out of New Hampshire,” Duncan Walpole that serves as his studio. “In the politics not only ignited but informs my decided to take a different tack. He would sense that the Fourth of July is, to me, the understanding of history.” retrace the Lewis and Clark Trail. most sacred holiday on my yearly calen- His first real taste of politics came In a sense, his exploration of democratic dar. My kids got tired at an early age of after graduating from Penn, where he landscapes began with Lewis and Clark, listening to me read the entire Declaration had majored in the unlikely field of who were the first to probe the continent, of Independence on Independence Day. I German literature. At The Keene Sentinel at a key moment of American history. believe that this is an experiment, here in New Hampshire he earned his stripes “That’s both an adventure story and a on this continent, that somehow came as a reporter and editor, sharpening his travelogue,” he says, “and it’s also a look at from us as a people—that we have been edge in a column called “Wooden Nickels” some possibilities that might have been, struggling to move forward a little bit to that was picked up by a string of New had we chosen a different path.” make it better. England papers. While some of those paths might “I’m also fascinated by this continent “We had a right-wing, somewhat luna- have led to a more peaceful relation- that we inhabit, and what an incredibly tic governor [the late Meldrim Thomson ship with the original inhabitants of varied, beautiful, and huge land it is,” he Jr.], who would do things like call for the the continent, Duncan takes a nuanced adds. “Most of my adult life has been National Guard to be armed with nuclear view of that history. spent either exploring that notion of this weapons, or lower the flag to half-staff on “Some historians are more interested in experiment, or exploring the land that we Good Friday,” Duncan recalls. “Made it saying, ‘Well, the history of the West is inhabit—and oftentimes combining both. easy to be a political satirist.” one unmitigated disaster after another And [The National Parks] is an exploration Thomson was defeated in the 1979 elec- wrought by white people,’” he says. “That’s of these wonderful landscapes—but it’s tion by Hugh Gallen, who promptly called the antithesis of what I was probably also an exploration of a very democratic Duncan and asked him if he would con- raised on as a young child, which was idea expressed on the landscape.” sider being his press secretary. this glorious, triumphant march of civ- Duncan himself comes across as a “At first I didn’t want to, because I ilization across the continent. Well, pretty democratic expression of Iowa, thought the purity of my journalism would neither of [those views] is right.” where he was raised, and New Hampshire, be forever soiled,” says Duncan dryly. But But politics wasn’t through with him where he has spent most of his working he quickly realized that it would be pretty yet, and as he was writing a magazine life. There’s a Midwestern openness interesting to work in the State House, piece about the explorers, he got a call about him that makes him a comfortable “trying to undo and rectify a lot of things from Walter Mondale’s presidential cam- and heartfelt interview, both on- and off- I didn’t believe in, with a guy who believed paign asking him to be its deputy press camera, and a writerly thought process in the things that I believed in.” Within a secretary. The next 16 months were spent that’s been honed by political campaigns, year he had become Gallen’s chief of staff— crisscrossing the country with Mondale,

NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION ARCHIVES NATIONAL both small-town and big-time. and a certified political junkie. who lost the 1984 election in a landslide.

THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE SEPT | OCT 2009 37 Around that time he and Dianne moved to Walpole, where he reconnect- ed with Burns, whose second daughter was about the same age as the Duncans’ Emme. It turned out that the two men had a lot in common. “At the dinner table, I would start tell- ing an excited story about Lewis and Clark, and my family would be rolling their eyes, and he’d be excited,” recalls Duncan. “And he’d start telling an excited story about Huey Long, and his family would roll their eyes. We learned that we both read the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July. So we realized that we had both a shared interest in storytelling, and in American history, and a belief in the purposes of our country, and democracy.” Burns even helped with the reporting for Duncan’s second book, Grass Roots: One Year in the Life of the New Hampshire Presidential Primary (1991), in which Duncan followed a volunteer from each of the presidential campaigns for the year leading up to the New Hampshire primary of 1988. By the time he had finished his research for that book, he had signed on as nation- al press secretary for the Dukakis cam- paign. (“My job was to say, with a straight face, ‘No, he doesn’t look ridiculous,’” he says, adding that some reporters took to grading his performances on an Olympic scale of one to 10, depending on the dif- ficulty of the task.) The election results weren’t any better this time. “After ruining two good Democrats,” he says, “then the party got together and said, ‘If we can just get Dayton to Dwarfed by Nature: A family in Sequoia National Park. stay out of this and go back to writing, maybe we can win the White House’— Park. “Usually I’m kind of standoffish, “You go first,” Baker says, in what has which they promptly did in ’92.” but this guy immediately got into become the wry gesture of hospitality. “It’ll By then he had expanded his maga- where I was at from a historical stand- give you some of the buffalo’s strength.” He zine piece about Lewis and Clark into a point. We kind of spoke the same lan- watches intently as I chew the slice of liver: book, Out West: An American Journey. guage. In fact, I liked him so doggone warm, a little crunchy, and surprisingly In retracing the route of the Corps of much that he babysat for my kids. sweet and strong tasting. Discovery in the mid-1980s, he met up “He asked a lot of good questions,” Baker also suggested that his guest with a raft of colorful characters. One Baker adds. “His interest was not just spend a night in an earth lodge in the was Gerard Baker, a Hidatsa Indian skin-deep. It was in his heart.” Knife River Indian Villages National who was then serving as district ranger Baker invited Duncan out to a sweat Historic Site near Stanton, North Dakota, at the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial lodge, even though in those days he was where the Hidatsa were living when the Park North Unit in the Badlands. “pretty closed to non-Indians doing that.” Corps of Discovery wintered in 1804-05. “One afternoon this guy shows up in an Later, when a bison escaped the park’s To make the experience more authentic old Volkswagen bug, and he’s researching boundaries and Baker was forced to (and help his visitor survive the sub-zero a magazine article about the Lewis and shoot it, he invited his guest to help with blizzard blowing in), Baker provided Clark expedition,” recalls Baker, now the butchering—and to partake of the raw Duncan with five buffalo robes—then

superintendent of Mt. Rushmore National liver. Duncan accepted the invitation. pulled out his own bedding, a down-filled PARKS NATIONAL SEQUOIA AND KINGS CANYON

38 SEPT | OCT 2009 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Eddie Bauer sleeping bag good to 20-be- Duncan recently declined an invitation headaches is the fact that you get to low, and informed his guest that it was from the Lewis and Clark Trail Foundation make a lot of decisions that, if you were the responsibility of the person with the to speak at Grinder’s Stand on the 200th just the writer, you wouldn’t get to make,” most buffalo robes to keep the fire going anniversary of Lewis’ death. “I just can’t,” he says. “So I do get involved in music; I all night. he says simply. “Maybe I got to know him do get involved in who we are interview- “Dayton was a true brother, because I too well, or something. But he is a friend, ing; I do get involved with the film trips, got along with him immediately, which and when he dies, he’s taking part of me of where we go, of being able to tell the means I gave him a bad time from the with him.” camera crew, ‘Let’s not concentrate on start,” says Baker, who makes an appear- “Dayton is the Yellowstone National this; over here is where we want to be.’ ance in The National Parks. “I took him Park of human beings—things bubble up “But it would be hard for me to produce back home, among my relatives, and oh, from the surface all the time,” says Burns. a film I didn’t write, because ‘In the begin- they’d be merciless on him. Tease and “He feels these stories very intensely, ning was the Word,’ as the Bible says. And tease, and he’d laugh and tease back.” and this is a story he knew and loved in the films that Ken makes, that we make Baker’s family later adopted Duncan for more than a decade. But there were together, the Word gets a lot more atten- into their clan. many other times in the film where he tion than in many other films.” The personal connection was enhanced began to tear up, and we just kept that That very deliberate, Word-driven style, by the fact that Duncan had read and off-camera—as we’ve done now in The he acknowledges, isn’t for everybody. thought a lot about the U.S. govern- National Parks. And you’ll see there are “We get accused sometimes of being ment’s history with the native peoples some incredibly moving parts as well.” fuddy-duddy and slow, because we don’t it was displacing. have a lot of quick edits and such,” he “There were a lot of things that hap- very now and then, when Duncan acknowledges. “We believe that by hav- pened between the tribes and the govern- and a Florentine Films crew had ing that extra time, if you’re looking at ment, and he had a really good under- E been up until midnight for the an image while you’re listening to John standing of that,” says Baker. “He was so fourth long summer day in a row, shoot- Muir, you’re more likely to absorb what open and honest. We had some really, ing in some wild corner of Montana or this guy’s got to say to you than if you’d really good discussions. [Out West] is actu- Alaska, knowing that they had to get up carved that shot into 25 shots.” ally a pretty damn good history book.” again a few hours later and wait for the In Burns’ view, it’s not so much that “What Dayton combines is a kind of sunrise, he would light his pipe and say he and Duncan are on the same wave- reporter’s ear for details and a good quietly: “Does anybody have to remind length as it is a matter of complemen- story with a historian’s rigor for scholar- the rest of us that we’re actually being tary talents and sensibilities. ship,” says Burns. “And then there’s a paid to be here?” “I bring certain things, he brings other new sort of x-factor, which is the person- “My job requires me to take a topic things, and they work really well” togeth- al. He’s a really emotional person, and he that I’m already interested in, and learn er, says Burns. “He’s an incredibly great feels these things as much as he thinks everything I can about it,” he says. “Read writer and producer, and he’s dogged in them and sees them and hears them. everything about it. Meet the people his determination to get it right and do That combines to make the writing not who know the most about it. Go to the the right thing. That’s invaluable, partic- only well rounded, but to make his over- places that are important to those sto- ularly nowadays as I’ve moved to work- all approach incredibly humanistic.” ries, then do research, and then return ing on several things at once. To know Nowhere is that more evident than at with a film crew. And my job requires that there’s somebody like Dayton on the the end of Lewis and Clark, when Duncan, me as a writer to write. ground, on a particular project, is to be speaking on-camera, describes the mental “And then my job requires me to work able to sleep at night.” breakdown and final days of Meriwether with a talented team of editors and my Lewis. When Duncan finally says, eyes best friend, who just happens to be the The National Parks: America’s brimming, “and then he shot himself,” best documentary filmmaker in America. Best Idea is both a six-part, 12-hour it’s an extraordinarily moving moment. So I have the best job in America—I truly film airing on PBS this month and a com- “With the death of Meriwether Lewis, I believe that. And on this one it was par- panion book published by Alfred A. Knopf. was talking about the suicide of a guy who ticularly true, because my job required It’s not much of an exaggeration to call is a friend of mine,” he says. “I don’t want to me to go to all 58 of the national parks— the film a hymn, and the book a lavishly sound too Twilight Zone here, but I got to and many of them many different times illustrated hymnal. Those who received know him pretty well over the long course in different seasons.” the wild’s call, like John Muir and Teddy of studying him, and went to all the places Over a six-year span they shot 800 Roosevelt—and Dayton Duncan—emerged that he did. And I can put myself there at rolls—146 hours—of film, collected some with a wilderness-revering passion that Grinder’s Stand, and can feel the isolation 13,000 still images from a vast array of borders on the religious. that he felt, of things crowding in around archival sources, and conducted 50 inter- “This is the morning of creation,” him—and understand his desire for his best views. Since Duncan is the producer on John Muir was heard to cry out during friend, William Clark, to be there at that this film as well as the writer, he’s respon- an early Sierra Club outing. “The whole hour of need, and realize that he wasn’t sible for a lot more than just the words. thing is beginning now! The mountains going to. And it’s a very emotional thing.” “As a producer, what makes up for the are singing together.”

THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE SEPT | OCT 2009 39 As with most Burns/Duncan collabora- of politically correct attempt to root it out— ■ George Bird Grinnell, the conserva- tions, there are plenty of outsized charac- that this was just an amazingly diverse tionist and Audubon Society founder who ters, whose stories are presented warts story, that is black, and brown, and red, and led the fight to create Glacier National and all. (Well, maybe there aren’t any yellow, and female, and unknown, as much Park. (He also teamed up with General warts on Muir, unless you’re put off by as it is male, and white, and well-known. Phil Sheridan, who had become so dis- the fact that he once drank the steeped And that makes for some good storytell- gusted by the slaughter of Yellowstone’s juice of sequoia cones in order to make ing.” (An ironic example of that diversity is wildlife that he dispatched a troop of cav- himself “more tree-like and sequoical.”) the fact that Yosemite and Sequoia nation- alry to oversee the park—a “temporary” “We’re old-fashioned historical-nar- al parks were overseen by the Buffalo measure that lasted some 30 years.) rative storytellers,” says Duncan. “We Soldiers in the first decade of the 20th cen- ■ Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the very much believe that you start here tury—“when more African Americans were Miami journalist and nature writer and you move through time. And we lynched than at any other time in our his- who led the fight to save Biscayne Bay. want to bring people to life because tory,” as Burns points out.) ■ Stephen Mather, the dynamic mar- that’s how history actually occurs— A sampling of characters includes: keting executive who pestered Interior with real people, not knowing how ■ Virginia McClurg, the champion of Secretary Franklin Lane (a college class- things are going to turn out, making Mesa Verde, who at the last minute changed mate) about the parks’ deteriorating con- decisions and doing things.” her tack from preserving the ruins as a dition until Lane told him: “If you don’t Take the second episode, which begins national park to having it become a “wom- like the way the parks are being run, come with a young New York politician reading en’s park run by her very exclusive women’s on down to Washington and run them a newspaper article about the destruc- organization,” says Duncan. “At the final yourself.” Mather spent a great deal of his tion of the buffalo herds and becoming moment, she couldn’t quite get to it becom- own money improving the parks, lobbied so upset about their looming extinction ing a national park, and everybody’s park, for the creation of a National Parks that he jumped on a train headed west. instead of just her park.” Service, and became its first director. His name was Theodore Roosevelt, and ■ George Melendez Wright, a natural- There are others, of course, ranging his goal on that trip was to bag a buffalo ist who in the late 1920s undertook—and from hardscrabble Civilian Conservation before the species became extinct. funded out of his own pocket—a wildlife Corps workers who built roads and planted “Teddy Roosevelt is just a force of nature, survey of the parks, which would provide trees during the Depression to early and a great exemplar of how nobody is the data and recommendations for put- Studebaker-driving park visitors to stereotypical,” says Duncan, whose film ting the wild back in wildlife. some amazingly poetic park rangers. on Mark Twain cast the president in a “We take it for granted today, but it All those stories “show a wide range of slightly less favorable light. “You love wasn’t always that way,” Duncan points the kind of people who fell in love with him as you’d love a boisterous nephew, out. “When I was visiting Yellowstone you these places,” Burns adds. “This is not knowing that he also breaks the china. could stop and feed the bears. There were just noblesse oblige; this is not just the As [historian] Clay Jenkinson says in our no wolves, because they’d all been killed.” province of the idle rich, but in fact a film, he has a little suspicion of anybody ■ U.S. Representative John F. Lacey of story of Americans from every stripe who wasn’t willing to kill a quadruped.” Iowa, author of some of the most impor- who fell in love with the place, and then While Roosevelt never lost his love of tant environmental legislation in the worked very, very hard to set it aside for hunting, “there was an evolution in his nation’s history. people they don’t know—meaning us.” own mind about what conservation was “Lacey was a very conservative Republi- “If you boil it all down, the story behind about, partly under the tutelage of George can, but he had a number of radical ideas,” each national park is that somebody says, Bird Grinnell,” adds Duncan, referring to says Duncan. “He saved the birds of the ‘Wow—what a wonderful place. We ought the conservationist and Audubon Society Everglades from being slaughtered. He to save it,’” notes Duncan. “Over time that founder. “Grinnell helped steer him wrote the law that gave protection to the could become a fairly boring, repetitive towards a larger view of conservation, and buffalo and the elk, and the natural fea- thing—except that each place is different, the result was the greatest president for tures of Yellowstone. And this conserva- and each person is different.” the national parks and conservation you tive Republican authored the Antiquities could ever imagine.” Act, which ceded to the president of the ot every character in The National Ask Burns about the film’s wide range United States an authority to act unilater- Parks is a hero, which is just of compelling characters, and he plays ally that no Congress in its right mind as well. Too much nobility and down the big names. anymore would ever do. It became the Nsequoia juice could be cloying. “It’s funny—when people bring it up they most important tool for conservation in The doppelganger of Teddy Roosevelt, for always say, ‘Oh, Teddy Roosevelt,’” he says. our history, one that activist presidents example, is Gifford Pinchot, the first “And I say, ‘Yes, and he’s fantastic, but he’s have used to the horror of Congress, and chief of the U.S. Forest Service and two- one part of our second of six episodes.’ Or to the outrage of local politicians—at the time governor of Pennsylvania. Though maybe you’ll have someone who knows Grand Canyon with Theodore Roosevelt, he professionalized the Forest Service, about John Muir, or John D. Rockefeller [Jr]. at the Tetons with Franklin Roosevelt, he took a utilitarian view of natural But what was so wonderful, and surprising in Alaska with Jimmy Carter, with Bill resources—that they should be developed for us, was the discovery—without any kind Clinton in the southern part of Utah.” and used, not simply set aside for people

40 SEPT | OCT 2009 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE to enjoy. That strain of the American The millions of people who visit the bison in Yellowstone and molten lava character has vied with the preserva- national parks each year encompass a snaking down the black rock of Hawaii’s tionist for control over the nation’s wild wide range of recreational preferences, Volcanoes National Park, the articulate spaces, and the tension between the two ranging from backcountry hikers to interviews with historians and park rang- camps—and others—is with us still. those who want what Duncan calls “the ers, the archival footage of presidents and “The tensions are not just, ‘Will the windshield experience.” And he is adamant early visitors—the audience responds with park get created or not?’” says Duncan. that both styles should be respected. a prolonged standing ovation. “We like to say it’s the Declaration of “I’ve stood at viewpoints and watched a Similar reactions have occurred at some Independence applied to the landscape, busload of people get off, and thought to other preliminary screenings around and that very notion sets in motion myself, ‘The most exercise those 50 people the country. “People come to us and tensions. If it’s open for everybody, if are going to have this year is getting off say, ‘How can we help?’ and ‘How do we everybody’s co-owner, can there be that tour bus and walking the 25 yards give money?’ says David Barna, chief of rules of what they can do? Are we sav- into the beautiful scenic view and say, public affairs for the National Park ing it just for this generation, or for ‘Wow, isn’t that something,’ turn around, Service, who thinks the film (which he generations yet unborn? If it’s for and get back on their bus. And that’s easy calls “stunning”) will provide a signifi- everyone for all time, then what do we to caricature. But those people, nonethe- cant boost to attendance. allow? Is it the scenery that we’re pre- less, will have been touched by that expe- “The park service gets about 275 mil- serving, or is there something more?” rience. And when somebody says, ‘They’re lion visitors a year,” Barna says. “That Those who want to create a national thinking of building a dam in the Grand number fluctuates some from year to park have often been at loggerheads with Canyon,’ they’ll say, ‘Don’t you let them do year, but this could easily push us over local people who don’t want to relinquish that!’ And they have as legitimate a stake the 300 million mark.” control of the land to the federal govern- as the person who’s going to do the two- Such a bump would not be without ment, he points out. Yet over time, that week backcountry, hard-core experience precedent. Burns tells his Bellows Falls local opposition has often morphed into where they can be by themselves in nature. audience how, after The Civil War aired a grudging approval. It belongs to all of us.” on PBS in 1990, he walked a battlefield “We have several of those stories, not at Gettysburg with the park superinten- only historical but in our lifetime,” dant. At one point, the superintendent says Duncan. “Someone who fought and leaned down to pick up a candy wrapper fought against the expansion of Grand and said dryly, “This is all your fault.” Teton National Park as a politician and “There is nothing Dayton and I would then, on camera, says he’s glad he lost like more,” Burns added puckishly, “than the battle. Someone in Alaska testifying to have every superintendent in every against the ‘Carter Monuments,’ as park in the country angry with us.” those national parks were called, and This past March, the National Park then on camera saying, ‘Well, it turned Service showed how it really felt. During out it’s been good for us.’” a ceremony at the Department of the Oddly enough, some of the most Rangers Ken and Dayton. Interior auditorium, acting director Dan nakedly commercial interests ended up Wenk read citations announcing that helping the parks’ cause. “What is this, a Phish concert?” Duncan and Burns had been chosen to “John Muir was an eloquent person, but asked a passerby. His confusion was be made honorary park rangers (a very the reason that those early parks were cre- understandable. The line at the Bellows select group, by the way). After praising ated was not his eloquence; it was because Falls Opera House this past July 1 was his work in researching and producing the railroad lobby was working the halls already a block and a half long, and the The National Parks, which provides of Congress,” Duncan points out. “They doors wouldn’t open for another half-hour. Americans with an “opportunity to thought, ‘Here’s a scenic attraction that The sold-out event featured a special reflect on the significance and value of will help our ridership,’ and eventually screening of excerpts from The National our national parks, the public lands that they said, ‘and maybe we can control what Parks and a Q & A session afterward with we collectively own,” Wenk announced goes on inside the park and make even Duncan and Burns. Since Bellows Falls, that Duncan had “demonstrated the more money.’” Vermont, is just across the Connecticut highest and best qualities of the park Every issue facing the parks today River from Walpole, and since the pro- ranger-interpreter.” He then presented has a precedent in the past, Duncan ceeds were earmarked for the Walpole him with one of the park service’s dis- adds. “The Army, when it was running Historical Society and the Student tinctive ranger hats. Yosemite and Sequoia national parks Conservation Association (which sends Duncan doesn’t attempt to hide his and there was a problem of poaching, student volunteers to work in national feelings about that honor. started confiscating people’s guns parks around the country), the filmmak- “When I’m at home, if I get cranky, when they came in. This was long ers weren’t exactly stumbling into enemy Dianne says, ‘Go put the ranger hat on. before this latest uproar about guns in territory. And indeed, when the excerpts Because you’re never in a bad mood when national parks became an issue.” end—the gorgeous shots of frost-bearded you’re wearing your ranger hat.’” ◆

THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE SEPT | OCT 2009 41