What’s Your National Park Story?

Beautiful Bryce

This month the National Park Service celebrates 100 years, and I wanted to send a little note of appreciation.

Most of the park-going of my youth was the Adirondack park, the largest publicly protected area in the lower 48 (fun fact: it’s a combination of state and privately-owned land.) It wasn’t until I moved out to Arizona for grad school that I started spending quality time in our country’s national parks.

Specifically, the Grand Canyon. When you go to a grad school that schedules only introductory language courses on Fridays, you’re going to have three-day weekends pretty much from the second semester on. And it took 3.5 hours to drive from campus to the canyon’s South Rim. And all the cute boys were in the Outdoors Club. So suddenly, I was a capital-C Camper.

The first trip I signed up for, I didn’t know a soul. So the club president suggested I share a tent with another girl who had signed up and didn’t know anyone. I’ll shortcut it for you: within six hours of setting up our tent we were sharing makeup we’d surreptitiously snuck into our backpacks, by the following year we were sharing an apartment, and within five years we were sharing bridesmaid duties for one another. That first weekend in a national park was FORMATIVE, is my point. Our friendship took root as we camped in the snow on that first night at the South Rim, and blossomed as we hiked down into the canyon, shedding layers as the temperature climbed into the 70s. Hiking in a tank top and avoiding tarantulas, as I looked up to see tiny figures of tourists standing at the snow at the top, has to be one of my fondest memories of grad school, Intro to French notwithstanding.

There was another memorable Outdoor Club adventure into the Grand Canyon with the aforementioned club president, my then-boyfriend-now-husband, five other students, one professor, and me. The professor smoked hibiscus buds and drank aloe vera from glass bottles he’d packed down. On the second day, we hiked fourteen miles to the Colorado River and back from our campsite, divvying up the water to a few key people. Those key people ended up hiking together, unfortunately, while the rest of us struggled behind like lonely figures from an Andrew Wyeth painting. On the slow steep hike up the side of the canyon back to the rim, my then-boyfriend-now-husband said, “Ugh, this is boring, do you mind if I run?” and RAN to the top with a fully loaded backpack. I on the other hand walked with a guy who struggled uphill until he realized that if he uttered the word “SHIT” with each footstep, he felt better. (It’s true. It’s science.) I loved that trip. So weird. So funny. So beautiful.

During my last semester, my husband had already graduated and was working back east. He flew out for a long weekend to visit and a dear, sweet, gullible friend said, “Nance, take my car for the weekend if you guys want to do something!” Oh, did we want to do something. We wanted to bag some National Parks on what little time we figured we had left living in the Southwest. So we drove the borrowed station wagon north to Utah on a Friday and hiked in both Zion National Park and Bryce National Park before returning Sunday night, having put so, so many miles on his odometer that I still can’t really look that friend in the eye. Not even after we’d filled the entire back of his car with beer. Still worth the shame – every landscape was spectacular.

That was the trip on which I bought a little National Park passport with a goal to get stamps at every park I visited. I have zero idea where that thing went, and although I’ve visited more since – Olympic National Park in Washington, plus all the big NorCal parks like Yosemite, Alcatraz, Golden Gate, Point Reyes, Muir Woods, and Redwood – this 100 Year Anniversary has me mostly aware of where I haven’t been yet. I’ve never been to Yellowstone, or the Florida Everglades, or Glacier, or Denali, or Acadia…ugh. So many to see, so little time. So many adventures to be had.

So tell me: what’s your National Park story? And what stamp should I get first, if I ever find that passport?

Back in the day we always played Treat Her Right on our road trips, to National Parks and beyond. Best unappreciated blues band ever.