This Land is Our Land

On American majesty, staying upwind of bearspray and always getting the photo

Glacier National Park, Montana. (Photo by Reed Galen.)

Editor’s note: I’m happy to be launching

Reed Galen

’s latest offering, “This Land”, a regular column on the people of America, reported from the ground, across the nation, in a John Steinbeck style. Veteran watchers probably know Galen from his searing insights and refusal to parse language regarding this period in American history, particularly over at his Substack and podcast “The Home Front”. This column, which grew out of talks we had while he was traversing the country last year with his group The Union, reflects more salt-of-the-earth stories he heard from voters throughout the country. I hope you enjoy his dispatches as much as I do.

Cheers,

Tom LoBianco

Editor, 24sight News

I’m a National Parks person.

I’m not sure how many I’ve visited, but each of my trips has provided lifelong memories from the hilarious to the ridiculous to the flat-out bizarre. Each of the nation’s 63 National Parks has its own story to tell, as do the millions of people from all over the country and the world who visit them each year.

The park employees, from the Rangers to the guys maintaining the trails, to the volunteers have been, to a person, incredible. The Park Service does an incredible job getting kids excited about nature, swearing them in as Jr. Rangers, providing a workbook to complete, and rewarding them with a small wooden badge featuring the park’s name, logo, and the like. We have many of these around our house and the kids loved collecting them.

Our most recent visit was two weeks ago, right before thousands of National Park Service and Forest Service employees were laid off with no reason and less warning. Even with a record number of tourists visiting America’s national parks, the massive firings could stall out everything from collecting entry fees to cleaning the toilets.

When driving through Death Valley, the reason behind its name is impossible to miss.

From the salt flats to the Mars-like surface, to the endless sand dunes that served as Tatooine in Star Wars, it is a desolate, forbidding, unwelcoming place.

Where else can you race your daughters up and down those same sandy hills? Where else would you hear faint strains of, who is that? Enya? There atop one of the sandy hills is a group of several dozen Korean-Americans, part of a line dancing troupe from Los Angeles, all in matching shirts, holding up their banner and swaying along to the ethereal rhythm of “Sail Away.”

Last summer, we spent the 4^th of July in Montana’s Glacier National Park. I’ve been to a lot of places, but Glacier is, for my money, the most beautiful place on Earth. iPhone photos don’t do it justice.

We took the path over to Avalanche Lake, which has five (5!) waterfalls flowing. Most trails are accessible to folks of all ages and are a veritable United Nations as folks and families from all over make their way through the damp forest.

On our way back from Avalanche Lake, a woman told us all to stop because of a grizzly bear on the trail up ahead. Anyone with bear spray should come to the front, anyone without should move back to safety.

I proudly unhooked the can from my pack and joined the skirmish line. There about 100 yards ahead of us, the old bear ambled along, not worrying about us or much of anything.

One gentleman, though, excited by the sighting, squeezed off a quick burst of repellent. Two things happened: 1) The bear didn’t notice as the mist only travelled about 10 feet and 2) we were downwind and got a face full of pepper spray. Coughing, crying, and laughing out of the way, Glenn the Grizzly moved off and we went on our way.

Driving up Going-to-the-Sun Road raises your blood pressure both with its vistas and its narrow track (it’s just barely wide enough for two regular cars to pass one another.)

At the top, we hiked a glacier in shorts and tennis shoes, though some folks wore their Birkenstocks which didn’t make much sense then and less in retrospect. We came face to face with some mountain goats who didn’t seem to mind our presence.

My most memorable story, from Yellowstone, didn’t even happen inside the gates of the park. In the fall of 2019, we made our way up from Utah, through Jackson and into the park. It was the end of the season and right on cue, a blizzard dumped feet of snow from one end of Yellowstone to the other. We’d come in through the southern gate, but due to the snowfall, only the East Gate was open. The Rangers informed us that only those with snow tires or chains could travel on the roads. Luckily, I’d forgotten to take my snow tires off the previous spring, so off to Cody, Wyoming we drove.

The drive from Yellowstone to Cody is all things Wyoming: Simultaneously beautiful, breathtaking, and desolate. Along the 50 or so miles we saw ravaged forests, mountainsides stripped bare by avalanches eons ago, and mountain goats having their midday snack.

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Cody is an incredible town. The Buffalo Bill Center of the West is five museums in one. Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley, the Plains Indium Museum, the Cody Firearms Museum, the Draper Natural History Museum and the Whitney Western Art Museum. Each of them is worth a day all by themselves.

The real event was that evening, though. We ate at one of the two steakhouses in town (the new one, we were told.) We stuck out from the locals (Wranglers and snap button shirts) with our Patagonia puffies, beanies, and Blundstones. My wife made the discovery of the trip, though, when she saw none other than Kanye West, Ye himself, walk in and make his way to the bar in the back, accompanied by only an older white guy.

I must have a picture, I thought! But how? I employed my younger daughter, with the promise of dessert. She agreed despite (this is 2019 remember) still being upset about how West treated Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs (before she was born.) “Mr. West,” she said as I stood by, “My dad is a big fan of your music, would you take a picture with him?”

“Okay, little girl,” was Ye’s answer. This is before 2020. This is before Nick Fuentes. This was before Kanye had gone full National Socialist.

As you can see, he was thrilled.

We made our way home the next day, as we have on so many of these adventures. The trips to these gems, these national treasures, are worth all the time in the car, all the gas, all the screaming about who gets the iPad next, or who has to go to the bathroom (again.) It’s worth the sharing a bedroom at whatever small hotel or on-park inn is available. It’s worth the twisted ankles, the heat, being attacked by the cacti that jumped out and got me, all of it.

Our National Parks are incredible because they give us the chance to return to nature, with our family and friends (furry and otherwise) with people we didn’t know and will never see again, with our phones being good for only taking pictures, and the time together that all parents know goes far too fast.

This spring and summer, choose a park and get out and see it (while you can.) What we’re seeing in some places, like Zion National Park in Southern Utah, are the results of bad choices made by bad people. We cannot and must not let them take these magical places away from us, our families, and those who visit from all over. These lands are our lands and we must never forget it.

Reed Galen, is president of Join The Union, author and host of “The Homefront” and a veteran political staffer. He co-founded The Lincoln Project and has worked on numerous presidential campaigns, including John McCain’s 2008 race for the White House. He writes “This Land” regularly for 24sight News, with an eye on the stories of the American people written from the ground up.