I cried watching the Ken Burns National Parks series on PBS

I would highly recommend watching it. You can watch the entire series online.

http://video.pbs.org/program/1072181584/

I am not a big nature lover. I am a city kid and other than Girl Scout trips, I didn't grow up spending much time doing outdoorsy things. But then when my own kids were little, the only way we could afford to take a vacation was if we camped. So I have spent some time appreciating the wilds of a campground and love a good meal cooked outside followed by a campfire before bed. And nothing beats falling asleep in the big outdoors.

I have been to a few of the national parks - Yellowstone and Grand Canyon and Rocky Mountain and Mesa Verde. Probably a few more I am leaving out. But I never really appreciated the treasure these parks are for this country until I watched this show. I was especially touched in the last episode when the story of the expansion of the parks in Alaska was told. I am old enough to remember how rabidly many Alaskans fought that expansion and how they have since embraced the tourism and resulting economic benefits.

I also thought of Sarah Palin and her fondness for shooting wolves from helicopters when I watched the film of wolves being returned to Yellowstone in 1995. I had tears in my eyes. How can anyone believe that human beings are destined to control nature? I have no problem with hunting for food but randomly shooting animals just because we are bigger and smarter and more powerful is repulsive.

There is quite a bit of US history woven into this wonderful series. So watch it and enjoy. And have kleenex handy. :)

i especially enjoyed the part about yosemite, which i have visited before. very educational, the photography was breathtaking!

this series gives me hope that we're getting our PBS back.

It's on my need to do list.

You will not find anyplace closer to heaven than Yosemite.

And we cannot even visit what John Muir thought was the most beautiful part of Yosemite.
It is all under water now, as a reservoir for San Francisco.

For the sake of future generations, for the sake of all the critters that call these parks home it is our respobsibility to act responsibly. We need to conserve,create rather then destroy,go along with "natures selection" while not trying to speed it up. We should protect the trees,the grasses,the wild flowers. Maintain what is there but not create new roads to nowhere destroying what is in its' paths. These parks play a huge role in climate as well. It is up to us to help keep it in balance. Educating todays children to respect those lands also plays a huge part. The lands,the animals,the trees etc will thank you for it by being there for future generations to enjoy.

The series was incredible.

I have always loved the National Parks and I learned so much from this series and will probably drop the 100 do buy the DVD's

I want to watch it over and over.

DH and I spent a month in Yellowstone, moving from campground to campground in various parts of it. It's such a fascinating place. More Americans should vacation in the parks like the Europeans and Asians who come here on vacation do. The nice thing is if you aren't an outdoorsy type, there are the lodges and restaurants. You don't have to rough it and senior citizens get a free pass for all the parks.

and very informative although I thought he might have been more direct with the fact that more than a few parks were stolen from the indigenous people.

and can't wait to sit down and watch them. I love Ken Burns.

when they brought the wolves back to Yellowstone.

I've been to more National Parks than I can remember. My grandparents took my brothers and I to Yellowstone in the early 60s and I've been going to as many of them as I could all my life. What got me about the series was how, even during the Gilded Age, it was the rich that realized the natural treasures in America should be preserved for those to come and the real grassroot movements that got them ratified.

It's being rerun on my local PBS today. I'll have to buy this Ken Burns series to watch in years to come.

It's really wonderful.

Mostly because I really, really, really want to go see Yellowstone, Yosemite, the redwoods, Mt. Rainier, Crater Lake, Monument Valley, Acadia, Mesa Verde, the Everglades... And I really, really, really want to go back to Denali, Katmai, the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert/Petrified Forest... But, thanks to Shit-for-Brains and the rest of those asshole republicans, I am jobless and broke and cannot go anywhere. (Yes, I lost my job directly because of the actions of several of them.) If I ever do find a job, it's going to take years to dig out of this hole I'm in. Forget going to any more parks. Well, except for the Congaree NP. That's only an hour and a half away. Except that I don't want to put any more miles on my 13-year-old car than I have to. I cannot afford to replace it any time soon.

In addition to the scenery and back stories provided by the Natural Parks series, I love the politics of it all. It totally justifies a modern government stimulus that goes to the people (CCC, WPA, etc) and not to the banksters.

you should have been living here at the time. :) It was very intense, and, truth be told, I can understand to a certain degree why people were upset. Alaska was a new state, basically trying to figure out how it was going to support itself, other than North Slope oil, and it seemed that some of the richest resource areas with the potential for providing the most jobs (mining, timber) were being locked up. You have to admit that the federal government took a huge slice of Alaska's pie -- much more than any other state's. That's why I don't feel too bad about the fact that Alaskans get more back from the federal government than a lot of other states.

As this chart shows http://nrm.salrm.uaf.edu/~stodd/AlaskaPlanningDirectory/LandOwnership.pdf, the United States government owns 65% of the state. Publically owned State lands comprise 24%, leaving 10% Native Corporation land and 1% for private ownership by the rest of us.

As you say, people have reconciled themselves to the reality of the situation and we are happy for the tourist dollars, but with the economy as it is, even that figure was way down this year.

Alaska is a complicated place, and, as in most situations, there are two sides to the story.

I hope to visit Alaska one day. Hubby was stationed there in the 70s and has wanted to go back ever since.

is like so many people I know here. A lot of people come up with the military or whatever -- or to do pipeline work -- and then end up staying because they love it so much. In my family's case, my dad took a job up here with ITT Arctic Services after he retired from NASA in 1969. I was already "out of the house" by then, but I did come up to visit in 1972 when my first daughter was an infant. I loved it so much, I came back again the next summer, and then moved up for good in 1975. Now I can't imagine living anywhere else. It's just a part of me. In fact, I didn't even set foot outside the state from 1980 to 2000.

Like someone in the series said about Alaska, they might not ever get to see the place but just knowing it's here is reason to celebrate. :)

....but I thought of it in a very new way when Burns brought us the thoughts of the first white folk who saw it in the nineteenth century.

Boiling mud! Spouts of water high into the air! Fumes and colored springs and all that stuff!

Burns reported that newspapers of the day refused to print the early reports, saying that they did not publish fiction.

I've taken Glacier Park and Yellowstone and all the others too much for granted in my lifetime. Precious is not too big a word for them.

but highly recommend Glacier National Park in the lower 48...most beautiful of all imo

when I thought of all the strip mining companies and paper pulp mills that can never be built, and all the oil and gas reserves just going to waste under those millions of acres of "scenery." It makes me weep. And the protected polar bears, fish and caribou and reindeer, also. Think of Joe the Taxidermist. Sarah Palin tells me he has had to find another line of work. She told me, "take only pictures, leave only footprints" is not a philosophy in line with our great country, America's need for energy independence and our great people's demand for reindeer and caribou meat on the dinner table. If you want to see a polar bear, look at the wrapper of a Klondike Bar.

:sarcasm:

National Parks. It stresses over and over again how important it is to save the wild/natural places.

The first time I went to Yosemite, I truly thought I had died and gone to heaven..


Here is an excellent article about the series.
http://www.pbs.org/aboutpbs/news/20080714_nationalparks.html

And some foreign bank ends up owning Yellowstone?

I missed about 1/3rd of the episodes during the week so I'm watching them all over again... 6 hours yesterday, 6 more today. The final episode starts in 4 minutes. Like I said, there are no words to describe my thoughts right now. Ken Burns is himself a National Monument.

I am more amazed by each of his films.

:hi: