Dan Small Outdoors

Enjoy...

June and I are reporting from a warm and sunny perch (daytime temperature in the 60s) while spending a week at a piece of paradise in Arkansas called Petit Jean State Park. We are at the Mather Lodge, named for Stephen T. Mather, the first director of the National Park Service, who in the mid 1920s counseled and collaborated with the local people and Arkansas public officials to preserve this mountain-top area for inspiration, meditation and physical exercise. That is the purpose parks are meant to serve, and what government, at all levels, is meant to provide.

Believe it or not, but I came to this place fifty years ago, so this is a bit of a pilgrimage for me. Now I can say that the lodge, the cabins, the campsites, and the trails all seem still worthy of the setting and the vistas -- unlike many other state parks and national parks too that have been overdeveloped and commercialized to a fault. Stephen T. Mather would be pleased with the good work here.

June and I left our happy home at Port Washington, Wisconsin, on January 18, not yet two weeks ago. Friends may recall that last year we spent a portion of winter in Mexico and the year before in Guatemala. This time we elected to drive and to visit a portion of our own country, more temperate, perhaps, but still warmer than winter in Wisconsin.

Moreover, by driving we have had the opportunity to see what's going on in a large portion of America, to look at and feel what's right and wrong about it. We've observed planless growth and urban sprawl virtually everywhere, with the same freeways, fast food chains, chain motels and shopping malls. Turning on the six o'clock or ten o'clock news on television, we've seen that it's the same too, with stories of drug busts, death on the freeways and young poor people venting their frustration by killing others senselessly with knives and guns.

But there is another side to it. We stopped first at Springfield, Illinois, and at June's insistence spent three nights there. It was barely enough, considering this is the heart of Lincoln Land, the place to learn anew the story of the rail-splitter, the martyred president, who taught himself to read and yet composed the Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address that rank among the most eloquent and literary expressions in history, who struggled with his own demons while he heroically preserved the Union and freed the slaves. We spent one full day at the new Lincoln Library and Museum, which I think all the school children in America, together with their teachers and parents, ought to visit, and other days at other sites, such as the Lincoln Tomb and the home where Honest Abe the lawyer lived with his wife and children. Lincoln in a way exemplifies that which is right about America, in sharp contrast with our present president, George W. Bush, shallow and shabby by comparison, who exemplifies what is wrong about it.

In Little Rock, we visited another new presidential library and museum, this one focused on the life and times of Bill Clinton, who rose from humble Arkansas beginnings to prominence, respected by leaders in world affairs such as Nelson Mandela. I'm sure that Clinton disappointed himself in various ways, and yet he stood up for social justice, full rights for black Americans. Here I learned about Clinton the saxophonist and the advocate of music in our schooling and our lives. This led me to remember my own classes in music appreciation and how much they meant to me. Music is a language in itself, a language of peace, and yet in America today courses in music and art and culture in general are being reduced and eliminated.

One afternoon we visited another special place, the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, which in 1957 became a crucial battleground in the struggle for civil rights. Young people today may not know, and older people may long have forgotten, but fifty years ago the nation watched transfixed as nine black students attempted to enter the previously all-white school. While a hostile crowd jeered the "Little Rock Nine," Arkansas National Guard troops blocked their entrance -- for three weeks until President Eisenhower dispatched federal troops to escort and protect the black students entering the school.

I doubt this episode is cited much in high school history classes today. Yet it should be marked and memorialized, as a living reminder of how history was made and Little Rock came to symbolize the federal government's commitment to eliminate separate systems of education for blacks and whites. Those separate -- and manifestly unequal -- systems still exist, as Jonathan Kozol has shown in "Amazing Grace" and his other books, notwithstanding all the laws against them. Yet as a longtime national parks advocate and supporter, I cheer and applaud the good and lasting work the National Park Service has done at Central High School.

It was not exactly by accident that we came to the site. We were helped immeasurably on our trip by an old friend, Don Castleberry, an Arkansas native, who retired ten years ago following a long career in the national parks. While we were together in Little Rock he showed me an interview with him as lately published in the local Arkansas Times. It was mostly about Don's serving on the board of directors of the Coalition of Concerned National Park Service Retirees, which came into being in response to machinations of the Bush administration to commercialize and privatize the national parks.

Specifically, Castleberry said, changes have been made to benefit the "recreation industry" -- manufacturers, renters and sellers of motorized toys like snowmobiles, ATVs, RVs and jet skis -- who have sought access to the parks. That to my mind is only part of it. The crowd in control these days sees government solely as a means of serving special economic interests. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen T. Mather, where are you when we need you most?

Luckily, June and I have each other, on the road as at home. We lecture, listen, debate and cheer, especially when one insists the best is yet to come. No, for us it is here and now. We expect to be back in Port Washington in early in March. Meanwhile, reach us by email, if you like.

All best,

MICHAEL FROME