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There are too many people coming to parks doing the wrong things. They treat the parks like popcorn playgrounds. They don't understand what the national parks mean.

A national park is not a playground. It's a sanctuary for nature and for humans who will accept nature on nature's own terms.

Civilization in our time is driven by materialism and troubled by pollution, over-population, corruption, and violence. National parks can hardly be uncoupled from the society around them, but that only makes it more important to protect them and keep them whole and pure.

The parks are our national treasures, and they must be shown more respect, not only by visitors but also the people who run them.

National parks are cathedrals of spirituality and emotion, and unfortunately, they are being loved to death by many of the same people who enjoy them the most.

I'm excited and encouraged to see people getting involved with their public lands and forests. We really need the public's help to repair these heavily used recreation sites.

So when people go to the park this summer, they are not going to have the same quality of a visit. There is not going to be a ranger out on the trail to tell them about the important cultural and historic areas within the Olympic National Park.

I don't know of a single park without serious environmental problems.

Objects in a park suggest static repose rather than any ongoing dialectic. Parks are finished landscapes for finished art .

However one reaches the parks, the main thing is to slow down and absorb the natural wonders at leisure.