Burns’ National Parks project casts an exquisite spell

Funny the images that stay with you from childhood. Any time someone mentions the Civil War, there's this snapshot that flits across my brain of being in my parents' TV room watching the Ken Burns documentary on the subject. It's nothing more specific than that, but I remember my whole family being glued to the TV for days.

I was 12 when "The Civil War" came out. Four years later, Burns had us fixated again with his nine-part series on the history of baseball. He's done much since then, including an acclaimed history of jazz, but nothing that really pushed the Thompson family buttons. That is, until this past week when "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" came to PBS.

After episode one of six, even though I knew the answer, I called my parents in Philly to see if they had watched it.

"Oh, of course," my mom said. "That John Muir was an amazing guy wasn't he?"

Was he ever.

The celebrated naturalist, writer and conservationist is the star of the first two-hour episode. In 1869, he was hired as a sawmill operator in the Yosemite Valley in what is today Yosemite National Park. That it is a national park, and not some Niagara-like carnival of consumerism, is due in no small part to Muir.

The minister's son formed a bond with the place that he often described in religious terms. His relationship with the land was not simply one of observing and appreciating.

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread," he wrote, and he explored and wrote about the area with the fervor of a fanatic.

Not content to look at Yosemite Falls from afar, he scaled its cliffs and got behind the rushing water in a giant cave, viewing it from the inside. He made runs at grizzly bears to see what they felt when they charged prey. He climbed trees during storms, and soaked sequoia cones in water, then drank the purple liquid.

He was a wanderer and a mystic, and his accounts of Yosemite helped convince Americans to preserve the place as a national park in 1890.

The first episode, in which Muir figures prominently, features Yosemite as well as Yellowstone, which became America's first national park in 1872. Others are highlighted as the series goes on, but these are not simply glamour shots of America's most beautiful places. As the series' subtitle suggests, producers Burns and Dayton Duncan are after something much more meaningful.

Said Duncan during the introduction: "At the heart of the park idea is this notion that by virtue of being an American, you are the owner of some of the best seafront property this nation's got. You own magnificent waterfalls. You own stunning views of mountains and stunning views of gorgeous canyons. They belong to you. They're yours. And all that's asked of you is to put it in your will for your children so that they can have it, too. Hopefully, you won't let it be sold off; you won't let it be despoiled."

The idea of national parks seems straightforward now - it's something we take for granted - but it was revolutionary at the time. Yellowstone was not only America's first national park, it was the first of its kind in the world. That it could be the role of the federal government, any government, to set aside "a refuge for human beings seeking to replenish their spirit" was novel.

All this is brought to life by Burns and Duncan through people such as Muir, the people responsible for establishing and shaping the parks. Each episode has its stars, from President Teddy Roosevelt to park rangers, historians, conservationists and others. Places such as Shenandoah, the Everglades, Acadia and Great Smoky Mountains each have a creation story, and when you learn it, it deepens and broadens your appreciation of these wondrous natural spaces.

I've never been to Yosemite, but when I go - and after seeing this series, I must go - I'll understand what it took to protect and defend what Muir called "the grandest of all special temples of Nature." I won't simply be a tourist with a camera snapping pictures of Half Dome, El Capitan and Bridalveil Fall. I'll try to take in Yosemite as Muir did, to soak up every stunning vista and marvel at the grand scale of things. And I won't be the only person there looking for that experience.

As the series makes clear, it's the essence of democracy that we are all owners of these places, these "geographies of memory and hope where countless American families have forged an intimate connection to their land then passed it along to their children."