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 A special local preview of Ken Burns’s new documentary series, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” with remarks by Burns and co-producer Dayton Duncan, will be presented at 7:00 PM, July 1 at the Bellows Falls Opera House in Bellows Falls, VT.
Proceeds from the event will benefit The Student Conservation Association, headquartered in Charlestown, NH, and the Walpole Historical Society, in Walpole, NH. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door, and are available online at brattleborotix.com and at local retail outlets including, Boccelli’s On the Canal and the Village Square Booksellers in VT, and Real to Reel Video, Ruggles & Hunt, L.A. Burdick, and the Walpole Historical Society Museum Gift Shop.
Ken Burns Film Preview
Wednesday, July 1
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
7 Square
Bellows Falls, VT
Bellow Falls Opera House
Tickets: $20.00 in advance/$25 at door
Contact info:
Deirdre Fitzgerald
(603) 543-1700 x 173
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For weekend event we might eat early and go, but I'm hoping some good soul does go and writes about what they hear/see.
The National Park system is a signature American accomplishment. We were the first nation in the world to establish national parks, but now we're lagging behind in percentage of acreage in parks compared to the rest of the world.
The Reformer article about Burn's film mentioned that there are 56 (58?) of them - that number seems impossibly low. As a nation we have millions upon millions of acres of public land in the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), National Forests, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), Dept. of Defense (DOD), and the wilderness area system.
Out of all that we can only set aside 56 areas as the nation's playpens? Sure the states all have their own park systems, but I for one would love to see the number of national parks doubled or tripled in my life time and see an increase in their budgets so they can be taken care of properly.
I confess I've only been to 3 (Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Mt. Rainier), but I remember those experiences because they were like islands set aside from the American strip mall landscape. There were plenty of people and cars to be sure - but no MacDonalds or Wall Mart - nature is the show.
And I guess that's the essence. I've been in plenty of remote areas - Wilderness Areas of breathtaking beauty and physically challenging to get to and be in. In the National Parks you're often cheek by jowl with someone who wouldn't be caught dead in a Wilderness Area - this is as far out as they will go, but there's something neat about that mixing of suburbia and outdoors. It's not always pretty, but can be a unique experience.
We all (OK, I'm assuming...) remember the Yogi Bear cartoons - Yogi was always stealing untended picnic baskets. That's a pretty good depiction of what goes on. In the early 80's a girlfriend and I visited Yosemite and hiked in for an overnight. We put our backpacks down to rest at one point and a squirrel climbed up on my girlfriend's backpack. She started to take a picture of the critter when it ripped open a hole in the pack's side pouch with it's teeth quickly stuck it's head into the gash and came out with a huge mouthful of trail mix and ran off to a chorus of curses.
A memorable if unhappy experience and as they say we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes.
You could say the National parks give pavement bound folk a chance to fail in ways they wouldn't normally do.
If I were to at this thing Wednesday night, one thing I would ask about is the challenges to the Park system. I heard a story recently on NPR that Mexican drug cartels had been caught in recent years growing pot in Yosemite and elsewhere on public land. There's also been an increasing tendency to use contractors instead park Service employees to take care of the parks and that has to come with it's own set of problems.