America’s National Treasure

         I have a flawed photo that reminds me why I love America’s National Forests.  In the distance,  Yellowstone’s Old Faithful is spewing jets of boiling water and thick steam into Wyoming’s blue summer sky.  It would be an incredible picture if the geyser wasn’t partly obscured by a head of hair.  I do not know the extravagantly coiffeured woman who stepped into my frame.  The shot, however, says more about summer in Yellowstone, than an album full of boiling mud, grazing buffalos and steaming glory holes.  I see now that the  photograph speaks to the best and worst of America’s National Parks--the incredible natural beauty and the crowds who are loving them to death. 

         Created in 1916, the National Park Service is a separate federal bureau within the Department of the Interior responsible for protecting  378 areas and 83 million  acres in 49 States.  Facilities vary from park to park, but most charge fees, offer guided tours and visitor centers  And yet, when American’s think of their National Parks--unless it’s the Grand Canyon, Yosemite or Yellowstone which have been endlessly  photographed and documented--they often picture a National Forest.  Along with the deep canyons, glaciated granite walls and thermal displays, they assume the national parks are filled with undisturbed wilderness.  Wilderness, yes....undisturbed not always. Too often, the inclusion into the National Park System, signals an end to solitude and, in some cases, the very reason for the creation of a park.

         The aim of Congress when it established the Forest Service in 1905 was to provide quality water and timber for a growing nation.  Today most  National Forests are less structured than Nation Parks and heeding Congress’s directive, encompass private business, rarely charge fees and are less likely to offer visitor centers.  The National Forests encompass lands equivalent to the state of Texas and realistically serve as America’s Great Outdoors.  Between the high mountains, deep valleys and vast woodlands, the national forests offer space to hike, bike, fish, and ski at the same time they supply timber and ore for the nation’s economy.   Directed by Congress to manage national forests for the sustained yield of water, grazing, wildlife, wood, and recreation, the U.S, Forest Service tries to  balance the desires of recreationists with the needs of industry--a source of endless controversy which often lands Forest Service Officials in an internet hot seat.

         Gifford Pinchot, the first Chief of the Forest Service, believed his mission was "to provide the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people in the long run." Later shortened to simply “Caring for the Land and Serving People” an obvious beauty of national forests is access.  Scattered across the 50 states, they often abut city limits,  where they  provide a cool, gladed respite from summer’s heat.   Others are located within a few hours of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle and offer a weekend escape from urban congestion.    National Forests also serve to educate visitors about the beauty, productivity and power of nature.  Due in part to the number and total acreage, it would be impossible to pick the nations five best.  The following, however, offer both geographical diversity as well as an overview of the nations volcanoes, forests, mountains and grasslands.

         I remember 8:32 a.m Sunday, May 18, 1980 clearly.  I was reading the morning news and half listening to a radio, when an apoplectic annoucer reported that Washington State’s Mt. Saint Helens was erupting.  Prior to a 5.1 earth quake that set events in motion, this symmetrical volcano served as the crown jewel of Southern Washington’s Gifford Pinchot National Forest.  In seconds, however, Mt. St. Helens north face collapsed in a massive rock debris avalanche that slammed into Spirit Lake, then crossed a 1,300 foot ridgeline and cascaded fourteen miles down the Toutle River.

         Relieved of billions of tons of confining rock, pressurized gases within the volcano exploded out in a powerful lateral blast that flattened 150 square miles of forest. Fluid slurries of rock and mud scoured the volcano and searing flows of pumice poured from the crater.   In the following minutes, a forty thousand foot column of ash turned day into night as it blanketed parts of Eastern Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

         Mt. St. Helens continued to erupt until 1986  creating a  920 foot lava dome . Though United States Geological Survey  scientists now monitor the volcano for earthquakes, swelling, and gas emissions, as a measure of volcano’s relative  quiescence, each summer thousands of visitors climb to the crater rim.

         In 1982 Congress created the 110,000-acre National Volcanic Monument to promote research, recreation, and education. In summer Forest Service guides now host short walks and amphitheater presentations that detail how, in the years since the eruption, plants, birds and animals have returned to the devastated meadows and forests.  From the vantage point of a number of visitor centers on Highway 504 people can witness the profound geologic changes in the volcano as well as the rebirth in the surrounding foothills.

         Two states and a thousand miles away in Southern California, one does not normally associate National Forest with the Los Angles Basin, but thanks to the efforts of President Benjamin Harrison who set aside 737,280 acres in 1893 to stop overgrazing and unchecked forest fires, the San Bernardino Forest now offers Los Angelinoes an easy escape from the Basin’s smog and congestion. 

         History records that in 1898, Glen C. Shepard, was offered a salary of $50 a month to protect the wilderness.  Today, with millions of people living in the cities below, it would be impossible to put a price on this wild combination of granite mountains, clear lakes, desert and forests.

          In 1964  Congress passed the Wilderness Act in which the San Gorgonio, San Jacinto, and Cucamonga wilderness were included in the San Bernardino National Forest. Though the forest is divided by Interstates 70 and 15 and encompasses twenty-four communities, the San Bernardino and  San Jacinto Mountains remain remarkably unchanged.

         Vaulting like a green, brown and gray wall above the eastern edge of the Los Angeles Basin,  the San Bernardino’s 11,205-foot Jepson Peak, 10,624-foot San Bernardino Peak, and 11,502-foot Mount San  Gorgonio offer unequaled views of the Sierra Nevada and the Mojave Desert.  These mountains are home to Joshua Trees, Pinion Pine, White Fir, Black Oak and Bigleaf Maple as well as bighorn sheep, mule deer,  mountain lion, and black bear.

         Here city dwellers can hike and camp along 500 miles of trails, including 195 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail.   Mountain bikers can choose between gravel forest roads, or a myriad of single track trails. The forest's lakes and streams appeal to anglers and boaters while in winter the San Bernardinos offer both lift assisted and back country skiing. 

         Hot Santa Ana winds periodically desiccate this desert forest leaving it prone to fire and the Children's Forest, near Running Springs off State Highway 18, was developed after the Bear Creek Fire of 1970. Targeted at children the area has a visitor center, interpretative trails and a series of child education programs.

         My first introduction to South Dakota’s Fort Pierre National Grasslands was on a late October afternoon when Star, my wire hair pointer, locked up on a skunk.  We were hunting pheasants in waist high grass and before I could yell “No!” the skunk had emptied both barrels on us.  Subsequent showers, in gallons of tomato juice, shampoo and air fresheners did little to sweeten the powerful natural cologne that clung to us and for two weeks afterward,  Star and I were left pretty much alone.   The upside to getting skunked in South Dakota was I grew to love the beauty of the National Grasslands.

         Located a few miles south of Pierre  (pronounced Pier),this rolling sea of grass has changed little since September of 1804 when, after a brief stop at Farm Island (Fort Pierre, SD)   Lewis and Clark anchored near mouth of the Bad River.  Lewis’s September 25 journal entry reads: "It was a fine morning. We raised a flagstaff and awning, under which we assembled at 12 o'clock, with all the party parading under  arms." Following the parade the explorers parlayed with Chief Black Buffalo and braves of the Teton Sioux, who occupied the area.

         Major fur trading posts were subsequently located near the mouth of the Bad River and  Cheyenne River and Chief Sitting Bull who fought against Custer at the Little Big Horn was reported to have been born near Ft. Pierre.  Drawing on this history, Kevin Costner chose to film his award winning “Dances with Wolves” near Pierre 

          Administered by the U.S. Forest Service, the 116,000-acre Fort Pierre National Grassland is located in central South Dakota southwest of the Missouri River. Here privately owned fields of wheat, sorghum and sun flowers alternate with fenced range and rolling green hills.

         Many early settlers found it hard to keep their bearings in this sea of grass and visitors today will be hard pressed to discover some single, defining feature to fix the grasslands indelibly in their minds. The beauty of this remnant of the great planes is found in the dense grasses which provide excellent habitat for pheasants, Hungarian partridge, sharp tail grouse and the Greater Prairie Chicken, whose range has declined to less than 10 percent of what it was when Lewis and Clark struggled upstream against the Missouri’s unyielding current.

         Given a mild winter and beneficent spring, South Dakota’s pheasant  populations often explode with hundreds of the exotically fledged birds flying from cultivated fields to water.  As a result, hunting and fishing are by far the most important forms of Grassland recreation with bird watching, hiking, snowmobiling running a distant third.  There are no developed  recreational sites in the Grasslands and though camping is allowed,  for obvious reasons, open fires are discouraged.

         Traveling further east to North Carolina,  the Pisgah National Forest was once part of George Vanderbilt’s (grandson of railroad baron, Cornelius Vanderbilt) 125,000 acre estate.  Straddling the confluence of North Carolina’s Swannanoa and French Broad Rivers, the Pisgah was inadvertently named by the Reverend James Hall, a Presbyterian minister, who upon seeing the rich French Broad River basin during General Griffith Rutherford's 1776 expedition against North Carolina’s Cherokee Indians, named Mount Pisgah after the peak from which Moses saw the promised land.

         Vanderbilt’s estate was originally managed by Gifford Pinchot who was later named first Chief of the Forest Service. When Vanderbilt died in 1914, the land was sold to the U.S. Government which established the Pisgah National Forest.  Today, the half-million-acre Pisgah and the Nantahala National Forest, compose a large percentage of North Carolina’s remaining forests.

          German forester Dr. Carl Alwin Schenck managed Vanderbilt’s estate after Pinchot.  Working in the Pink Beds, an Appalachian mountain valley, Schenck taught the United State’s first professional forestry classes in 1898 .  Today the Pisgah National Forest’s  6,800-acre “Cradle of Forestry in America”  includes  a visitor center, Dr. Schenck's reconstructed forestry campus and the Forest Festival Trail which recreates the 1908 Biltmore Forest Fair.

         The Pisgah also offers hundreds of miles of trails for day hikes, self-guided interpretive tours, overnight hikes,  backpacking trips, and horseback riding.  The Pisgah Glass Falls is an unbroken  30 feet wide rush of white water that drops vertically more than 60 feet down a rugged rock face into a pool below while the 14,000-acre shining Rock Wilderness’s Graveyard Ridge and Mountains to Sea Trail offer a relatively easy and uncrowded way to explore the forest.

         I have skied in the shadow of the White Mountains but have never hiked within them. My brilliant nephew, Ben Valentino, however, spends every free weekend exploring the national forest.  Located less than a day's drive from New York or Montreal on the border of Maine and New Hampshire, the 770,000-acre White Mountain National Forest is home to the Northeastern United States highest mountains. Known as the Presidentials, more than sixty 4000-foot-plus peaks including Mount Jefferson, Mount Adams, Mount Madison, and the 6,288 foot Mount Washington dominate this National Forest. The fastest wind speed ever recorded, a 231-mph gust, was measured on the summit of Mt. Washington.  With frequent storms  and a climate comparable to Antarctica, the White Mountains' reputation for the world's worst weather is well founded.

         Fast moving storms aside, the White Mountains  are a favorite of mountain bikers, hikers, campers and during winter, cross country and downhill skiers.  Filled with streams and lakes that contain Eastern Brook Trout and Atlantic Salmon, the White Mountains are also home to  moose, black bears, and deer.   Over the years, the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) has erected eight mountain huts along the trail of the same name which traverses the Presidentials to its western edge.  The Whites are also home to developed downhill resorts like Waterville Valley and Bretton Woods but it is Tuckerman's Ravine that, for good reason, attracts the most attention.  Here, on a warm spring day, large crowds gather to watch the worthy and simply foolhardy challenge the huge back country wall. 

         As hard as I might try, any round up of our National Forests is bound to fail.  Realistically I cannot pick five, or fifty or a hundred forests that wholly define the East, West or Central U.S.  Our National Forests are too varied, the streams and mountains too unique to judge by any single standard. The beauty of hiking, fishing, biking, camping or hunting is solitude...the hours spent following clear streams, hiking through mature forests, or staring at the embers of a dying campfire. When Congress created the National Forests to “care for the land and serve people,” they did not envision the thousands of spectators surrounding Old Faithful, but a single hiker following a trail through shadowed woods.