Terry Tempest Williams - The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks

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For
Steven Barclay

My heart found its home long ago in the beauty, mystery, order and disorder of the flowering earth.

LADY BIRD JOHNSON

Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

L ANGUAGE AND LANDSCAPE are my inspiration. The poet Jorie Graham has been my muse in The Hour of Land. Her poem WE, published in the London Review of Books on January 8, 2015, has led me line by line through the unknown territory of these twelve national parks. Her prescience on the page and insightful intelligence offered me a poetic crossing.

Edward Hirsch defines a poetic crossing as that which follows the arc from physical motion to spiritual action into another type of consciousness, a more heightened reality. It is a move beyond the temporal, a visionary passage.

When walking in the desert, I look for cairns to guide me, the careful placement of stones stacked one by one as a small monument to direction. Jorie Grahams words have been my directive. She has graciously given permission to use these thirteen lines as a passage into these parks. For this, I am grateful. Each of her lines is represented in italics at the beginning of each essay.

As a poet and a friend, Jorie remains a fierce and uncommon grace.

* * *

Frish Brandt has guided the curation of the photographs inside The Hour of Land. Her wisdom and artistic edge as president of the Fraenkel Gallery have not only expanded my view of national parks, but shaped it. I honor her joyous contribution and the generosity of all the photographers who agreed to be part of this project. Their images create an emotional landscape alongside the physical one explored through each park in this book. By touching the essence of a place, another kind of poetic crossing is made.

* * *

Collaboration is the only way forward.

Lukas Felzmann

I N BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK , the Rio Grande is so low because of drought, locals are calling it the Rio Sand. The river that separates the United States and Mexico is shallow enough in some places that a person can walk across the river in ten steps, maybe less. American children skip stones across its surfaceone, two the third skip lands abruptly on the other side. The same stones are picked up by Mexican children who skip them back across to the other bank in Boquillas Canyon. The game continues back and forth until parents intervene. On one side of the Rio Grande, tourists stand. On the other side, men and boys are herding goats. Breach the border and you will be arrested, American or Mexican, it doesnt matter. Border police could be anywhere. Black phoebes fly across the river, occasionally touching water like the stones skipped across international lines. In the twenty-first century, borders are fluid, not fixed, especially in our national parks.

Earlier in the day, I met a veteran from Desert Storm, the first Gulf War. His name was Bill Summers. Bill was a tall man with hair cut short; lean and muscular, rugged-looking in his camouflage fatiguesthe kind of handsome that cant be brought down by a few missing teeth. I had noticed him picking up trash along the Ross-Maxwell Scenic Drive; his backpack, with his sleeping bag and bedroll, was propped against the hillside by the side of the road.

We ran into each other at the Panther Junction Visitor Center on the interpretive trail. Purple-tinged prickly pearnow theres a mouthful, he said.

Yes, it is, I said, especially, if you try to say it fast.

We began talking about cactus, how well adapted they are to drought conditions and arid country.

Ive been a volunteer in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, he said. The plants around the craters are also skilled at surviving harsh conditions. A brown shirt with the Hawaiian parks insignia was neatly tucked into his fatigues.

How long did you volunteer there?

Three years.

And youre here now?

Hoping to be. Just turned in my application today, maam.

Does it look like theyll hire you?

Its lookin that way.

Why Big Bend?

The desert suits me, maam. Not a lot of people around here.

We moved to the next plantcholla.

The Devils Stick, I said.

That could do some serious harm to a mans leg, Bill replied.

How long have you been volunteering in the national parks?

Since I returned home from Iraq in 1991. Served some time in the Grand Canyon; Ive been all over. Our national parks are the most important thing weve got going in this country, Bill said. As the human population increases, the wild places not only become more valuable but more threatened. Its another way for me to protect our homeland, maam.

Bill Summers reminded me of my friend Doug Peacock, a vet from the Vietnam War. Doug and I met on a trail in Glacier National Park in 1982 and shared a similar conversation. Doug served two tours as a medic in the Army Special Forces, a Green Beret. A decade later, he would describe in his memoir, Grizzly Years: In Search of the American Wilderness , how a topographical map of Yellowstone National Park kept him half-sane in an insane war. Every night, hed pull out the map and run his fingers over familiar country, transporting himself out of the jungle and into the mountains. He left Vietnam on the first day of the Tet Offensive, January 30, 1968.

Peacock returned home with wounds no one could see, and he disappeared into Yellowstone. Then he took a job as a volunteer on a fire lookout in Glacier National Park, where he not only watched for smoke, he watched for grizzly bears, and when he found them, he passed whole days in their presence. He didnt fear them, he was in awe of them. As he came to know individual bears, his heart slowly began to open to the beauty of the world. The grizzlies returned him to a life he could believe in. As payback, Doug Peacock would become one of the grizzly bears fiercest advocates.

* * *

Where are you from? Bill asked.

Utah.

Now, theres a place to live.

We live near Arches and Canyonlands.

Bill nodded. Gorgeous parks. Been there.

So, Bill, when youre a volunteer in a park, what do you do exactly?

Anything thats needed, maam, everything from backcountry rangering to trail maintenance to assisting people in trouble. You name it, Ive done it, and believe me, with the Park Service hurting for funds, theres a lot to be done.

The conversation shifted to Big Bend.

Have you been to the border of Boquillas near Rio Grande Village? I asked.

Not yet.

I told him about the kids skipping stones across the border.

I read today that Congress is trying to introduce legislation to build a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexican border, he said.

Can you imagine a wall in Big Bend?

Personally, I dont think much of fences, maam, and that goes for walls, too.