An American Civic Preserve

No.220: July 19, 2024

Welcome to The Square Inch, a Friday newsletter on Christianity, culture, and all of the many-varied “square inches” of God’s domain. This is a paid subscription feature with a preview before hitting the paywall. Please consider subscribing to enjoy this weekly missive along with an occasional “Off The Shelf” feature about books, a frequent Pipe & Dram feature of little monologues/conversations in my study, and Wednesday’s “The Quarter Inch,” a quick(er) commentary on current events.

Dear Friends,

At the time you are reading this I should be in Teton Village, a little hamlet ten miles or so from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. This is a place where, to hear one local tell it, “the billionaires are pricing out the millionaires.” This is one of those places where the elite of the elite fly in on their private jets for the weekend. This is where the Federal Reserve Board has their meetings. The local hotel is The Four Seasons. You can reserve a room for—let me check for tomorrow night—$1,672.00, plus taxes. Needless to say, at the end of the day my wife and I will secure our display booth at the fine art show and drive an hour further south where we found an AirBnB that is actually affordable for regular people.

I get conflicted feelings sometimes when I visit places like this, and it doesn’t have anything to do with wealth disparities. I don’t mind the ultra-wealthy coastal—and, well, global—elites having a place in the mountains where they can come and ooh and awe at what are pretty normal mountain views and play at being the kinds of people who wear cowboy hats and boots. The tourism is great for the economy here. I guess I mind a bit at how artificial and manufactured some of it seems. $50 to ride a gondola to the top of an unremarkable ski hill? The Tetons are spectacular, sure; but this isn’t exactly the Swiss Alps. This is a Disneyland version of Rocky Mountain life.

The cool thing about coming to Teton Village for these art shows is that the quickest way for us to get there is by traveling through both Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. And that always gets me to thinking about human beings and our relationship to nature. I’ve written about this in the past. In Paving Paradise I reflected on how humans and nature belong together, over against the prevailing pagan idea that nature in its “pristine” state is a world without us. I wrote:

And that doesn’t mean—as I feel Joni Mitchell’s reproachful glare—that I want to “pave paradise and put up a parking lot.” I love mountains and rivers and streams and meadows and forests and wilderness. But I have to insist that without human industry and cultivation you or I would see or experience very little of it. Roads and bridges and trails and overlooks are among the thousands of ways human cultivation has made the enjoyment of nature possible. Have you ever tried to hike into literally untouched wilderness—the kind where there is no trail? I have, and it is very nearly impossible. Words can hardly describe how thick, rough, and rugged is “untouched” wilderness. Without a trail, there is no memorable backpacking trip with my daughter. Without human cultivation, there is no Yellowstone or Glacier National Park. And what would we do without the manufacturing of shoes and hiking boots and socks and backpacks and tents and sleeping bags and air mattresses and rain jackets and hats and gloves and camp stoves and propane and flashlights and matches and mosquito spray? I know the granolas at REI sometimes say they don’t like corporations and industry and manufacturing, but they wouldn’t have a business without them.

I then discovered, thanks to a bonkers Tweet by Vox founder Ezra Klein, that the sorts of people who fly in to stay at Teton Village apparently agonize about the climate change crisis to the point that they worry about whether to have children at all. I gave them some advice in that regard in The Jay-Hawk & The Human.

I also once had a bit of an epiphany about National Parks on a trip to British Columbia. In No Fences I wrote:

We took the northerly route straight out of Billings, Montana up to Calgary. That meant we got to drive through Banff, and it was as spectacular as advertised. I did, however, start to get a bit unsettled and mildly irritated at incredible amount of fencing the Canadians have put around their National Park—at least on the main thoroughfare I was on. This is a very subtle thing, and it is hard for me to describe the feeling. Where I come from, the public owns public land. Sure, we charge for entry and upkeep in our National Parks, but when you are driving through Yellowstone there is no fence along the roadside keeping you out. And if it isn’t a National Park, but, say, a National Forest or Wilderness Area, it is entirely free and you will never see a fence. There is no keeping you “outside” of nature, looking in.

This had a different feel. Like I was being gifted the opportunity to look through a fence at nature—but as though I am not really a part of it. Look, but don’t touch. Miles and miles of gorgeous river bank one could not access due to the eyesore of a high fence. Forest edges that animals cannot leave. This is a kind of cultivation that does not appeal to me. Fencing in the animals makes it a zoo—a giant one that the animal would probably never notice, but a zoo nonetheless (In Yellowstone the animals wander in and out all the time; and when the Bison wander into Montana, as they do every year, we quite famously shoot them because they carry a certain livestock disease we do not allow). I understand that someone will say that fencing off the roads protects the animals from the traffic, but give me Yellowstone any day of the week where you might have to stop and yield to that thousand-pound Bison who may not feel like yielding to you. (Even if we have to read stories of city slickers getting gored because they ignore the ten thousand signs telling them to not approach the Bison.) But, even better, give me Custer National Forest or the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness where I am not there by anybody’s leave. I can go there and go anywhere I like anytime I like without asking anybody’s permission or paying a fee. That’s just the Montanan in me talking, I guess. Fences and entrances and fees are not my thing; it makes me not feel like part of the “public” part of “public land owner,” and I am just not accustomed to it.

Our trip last week through Yellowstone and Grand Teton solidified this conviction. You must know, as I hinted at in that piece, that summer tourism season in Yellowstone is a long-running, tried-and-true joke around here. Every single year some tourist does something incandescently idiotic, and it often ends up with bodily injuries. A Bison horn up the behind. No, I am not joking. The Park Service posts as many placards and signs as they can (while still being tasteful) warning people to not get too close to the animals. And it simply doesn’t stop the Yahoos from trying to get selfies with their new furry friends. This year, as I read in the local Jackson