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.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
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.
What people ought to do is find out what a national park is to begin with.
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.
It isn't safe to go to the parks. Toxic chemicals ruin the air and water. There is vandalism, even crime, and conscientious park personnel are demoralized.
The Right has such antiquated ideas - if they took charge, I think they'd want to close the parks, open the land up for development. It's an ongoing battle to keep the parks strong.
Parks are idealizations of nature, but nature in fact is not a condition of the ideal.
Nothing can be more striking to one who is accustomed to the little inclosures called public parks in our American cities, than the spacious, open grounds of London. I doubt, in fact, whether any person fully comprehends their extent, from any of the ordinary descriptions of them, until he has seen them or tried to walk over 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.