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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.

Parks are idealizations of nature, but nature in fact is not a condition of the ideal.

Parks represent an efficient, cost-effective way to improve public health.

The park lies directly downwind from a slew of coal plants. Virtually all of the major contaminants in the local air and water are direct results of coal emissions. Coal produces ozone, which kills trees. Coal produces sulfates, which kill fish. No other park in the country has more ozone or sulfates than Shenandoah National Park.

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.

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.

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

What people ought to do is find out what a national park is to begin with.