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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.

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.

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

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

Federal support for Morristown National Historic Park and the inclusion of additional lands present a unique opportunity for our government to express its commitment to preserving our past. Failing to do so may allow these historically important lands to go unprotected.

One of the questions I face when working on a book about a historical event is whether I should visit the actual place that I'm writing about. No matter how scrupulously maintained a historic house or battlefield may be, it is nothing like it was in the long-ago past.

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.

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

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.