"Ah, Wilderness!" Kathleen sighed.

This week we've talked about Lois's trip to the Black Hills and the TV shows Cindy's looking forward to this fall, so I thought I'd continue with a look forward to a PBS series that begins on Sunday, some thoughts on the Black Hills (setting of many of my books), and a little family vacation nostalgia.

I just watched Colbert's interview with Ken Burns--two of my favorite people to spend TV time with--and set aside the next 6 Sundays on my calendar for Ken Burns's "The National Parks: America's Best Idea." (With "Mad Men" that'll be 3 hours straight tube time. Hmm.)

Here's what Tim Goodman says in the San Francisco Chronicle:

In "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" [Burns] once again teams with author and historian Dayton Duncan to get at the nature of how a country, in the midst of a land grab and increasing development and all kinds of political ambition, was able to step back, see the beauty in various spots across the country, and devise a plan to set those areas aside for future generations."

I love American history, and I love the way Ken Burns tells a story, so I know I'm going to enjoy this. I agree from the get-go with the premise. Had good ol' TR not "bullied" lawmakers to set aside some of the most beautiful places on the continent as public land, most of those place would have been destroyed. We take the parks for granted now, but this was a radical idea at the beginning of the 20th century. We'd been operating under the notion that land, like everything else, is there for the taking. The king or first flag (backed up by the biggest army) or the highest bidder got the goods. But a visit to the Black Hills gives us an idea of what would have happened to all these places without the National Park system. You've got the Black Hills National Forest, which is beautiful (with the exception of a few over-sized monuments, but that's just my aesthetic) and then you've got the
land of a hundred tourist traps and a thousand billboards. Yes, we've taken lots of family vacations there, and the kids loved panning for gold, but, really, way to ruin God's Country, folks. The contrast between national park land and the rest of the Black Hills is pretty astounding.

There are some privately owned places in the West that are protected and preserved by their owners. Lois blogged about the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary, which inspired two of my books and counting. And Robert Redford has devoted his fortune to preserving a good chunk of the Rocky Mountains. But those places don't belong to the American people. The national parks do.

Hasn't everyone tucked away a trove of memories and photos from these places, from our own childhood and with our children? Here's one of mine: first family camping memory. I must have been five or six, and we had just moved to Idaho. We were camping beside one of those gorgeous mountain streams, and Daddy was fly fishing. He was used to fishing in the Potomac, but he was really getting into this casting thing. My little brother and I were playing on a big fallen log when we heard Daddy yell, "Duck!" Pretty sure it was duck. I dove for cover. Hadn't seen a bear yet, but I knew the mountains were full of them. Turned out Daddy had caught something on his hook. His nose. I remember watching Mama fuss over it--the thing had gone all the way through--until she cut the barb off and worked it back through. Then Daddy soldiered on--Clyde would've cowboyed up--with a new hook. And we had rainbow trout for supper.

Ah, Wilderness. Yep, I can do 12 hours with Ken Burns.

Family wilderness treks, anyone? Do you like to rough it, or are you strictly a hotel with all the amenities vacationer? How about when you were a kid? Did you explore the Mickey-less parks?

P.S. The first montage photo is from the PBS website. The other three are from the Black Hills area.