Some things remain

In every instance of desperate boredom, a National Geographic waits around somewhere for the reading. Over the weekend, all I had to read was a stack of National Geographics from the late 70s, opting to read an issue about the our national parks—July, 1979.

Old magazines might be some of my favorite things to read. Before the advent of the internet, much of the best nonfiction to be read was in the pages of a magazine, and National Geographic was no exception. The articles in this particular issue still ring true to this day, as old writing often has an eerie way of reminding us that things haven’t changed as much as even that piece will tell us they have.

Punctuated by characteristic National Geographic images, the article “A Long History of New Beginnings” described the parks as they’ve grown physically and in the memories of the families that visit them. Much of the article is about Alaska, New Mexico and Wyoming, boasting the deep grandeur that one can only seem to see in the West. The author is from the East, though, saying “Yet those glories of the West sometimes blind us to the richness of our eastern parks—Acadia in Maine, Independence Hall and Gettysburg, the Smokies and the national seashores at Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras, and so many more, all the way east to the Virgin Islands.”

Because the wilderness is so extreme in Wyoming, sometimes those who have only lived in the West seem to assume that I have never really been outside. I grew up in a huge city metro area, but Pennsylvania, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains has a specific settled beauty. I remember visiting my brother, who went to school right near the Allegheny National Forest; an expanse of woods with trees so huge that the thickness threatened a hidden society, cut off from any other people and right out of a horror film.

The splendor of the East is just different. Right now, I’m homesick for the first time because it’s fall, and fall is the best time of the year in Pennsylvania. Since eastern states have abundant crops and a long autumn, the harvest is celebrated with huge festivals. As a little girl, I would wander through pumpkin patches and try to get the biggest pumpkin. I never did. I wasn’t the one that had to carry it, and the biggest ones needed to be lugged on a cart. We had apple butter and pumpkin butter, fresh apple cider made in a field.

The foliage is really the magnificent part. My dad sent me an article with an image from NASA showing the colors in Pennsylvania during fall. The reds and the orange could be seen from space. Growing up I spent many fall afternoons lying in piles of leaves at the base of the same vibrant trees the satellite spotted.

The West has a different autumn. It’s shorter and subtle, and to me looks like a postcard. I miss the smells back home, which were easier to access since my allergy to sagebrush didn’t exist.

I kept reading. The next article was called “Will Success Ruin Our Parks?” It discussed the massive amounts of tourism that encroach on the local population, specifically native populations in Alaska.

When I moved to Wyoming, I would express that I loved it and people would respond “Don’t tell anyone.” Sometimes I think I could tell everyone in the world about how much I like Wyoming, and people would still maintain that my move out here was a little insane. I think everyone likes to visit and no one likes to stay in distant, remote areas.

Since the major move to the West began, those who stayed have had the same spirit of adventure. You only stay if life off the beaten path is valuable to you, and the few of us that move out here are still the kinds that were willing to risk it all for what they figure would be a better life. At least now, the journey to the West isn’t as likely to kill you, and the destination continues to bear incredible shadows of vast, wild places.

Still, the beauty of a place has to do with memories. Most of my early memories were on Pennsylvania lakes, whose muddy waters remain my favorite.

Any of our very favorite spots probably have no place in the pages of a magazine, no matter how important we think they are. My dad, brother and I spent most of the summer fishing out of a kayak, eventually renting when we outgrew the tandem that my brother and I squeezed into while my dad rowed. We fished from docks that my brother threatened to shove me off of if I caught a bigger fish than him.

Most of this took place at a murky, disappointing lake called Loyalhanna where I heard a coyote for the first time, where not as many people spent the weekends. We didn’t go to the best lakes in order to have time with one another instead of crowds of strangers. I think it was a state park, as they tended to be in Pennsylvania. I camped on the ground, learned to pump water and loved the outdoors. I hiked and climbed rocks and floated in canoes, and everything always smelled wet.