Five National Park Experiences I Want

Twilight settles on Zion National Park, Utah. (ReneS / flickr)

The clock ticks toward midnight on a Sunday night, and the workweek begins anew in about six or seven hours. I didn’t go hiking this weekend. Life keeps getting in the way, as it has these last couple of years, and I just can’t get outside with the consistency that would make me content. I don’t regret the other priorities, but they’ve elbowed their way in and that makes hiking a harder and harder activity on which to focus. You know what I mean.

I’m left to indulge in a little bit of midnight daydreaming, paging one flickr photo after another, satisfying my wanderlust to see, at least on my computer screen, the mountains of Montana or the sunset in the Everglades.

Tonight, I felt like listing five national park experiences I really, really want. It was hard to whittle it down to just five, but I made it. If you’ve ever done any of these, I’d surely love to hear you tell about it.

Here they are:

1. Backpack to the most remote spot in Yosemite. About a year ago, I worked on an article for Backpacker about alternatives to hiking in national parks, and one of them involved the Buckeye Trail north of Yosemite National Park, Ca. What drew my interest was how that trail quietly slipped into the expansive, peak-filled and unpopulated northern section of that park. Can you imagine the solitude? Can you hear the echoes of John Muir? I wanna find out.
2. Take a southern Utah roadtrip. I don’t care how I do it — by car or bike — but I want to spend a week to two weeks park hopping from Arches to Canyonlands to Bryce to Zion, hiking and backpacking and taking photos all the way. What is it about deserts which captures the hearts of men and women who harbor a piece of wilderness in their soul? What are the powers of its beautiful emptiness? Yeah, I could read Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey, but c’mon, we’re in this as modern day explorers to learn for ourselves and see if our imaginations are accurate.
3. Watch bison graze. The park? You name it. No animal — not the grizzly, the wolf or the eagle — embodies the triumphant yet melancholy history of the West than the buffalo. Eradicate buffalo populations and you rob native tribes of a primary resource. Save the bison herds so they can roam in Theodore Roosevelt, Yellowstone and elsewhere, and a thread to the glorious past keeps us tied to that sepia tone nostalgia. I wanna lay my backpack down on some grassland, mountains or no mountains on the horizon, and watch them quietly go about their existence.
4. Hop on a Fontana Lake boat and start a trail in Great Smoky Mountains. I’ve been there once. Did a day hike to Charlies Bunion, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park remains embedded permanently in my wanderlust. Trails start from Fontana Lake so deep in the park that no roads reach there, so you have to charter a boat. Then spend a week standing on one bald mountain after another. Just give me a week. Please, just one week, and I’ll use it to glorify this magnificent park.
5. Kayak one of the Alaska parks. Yeah, I coulda listed “Climb Mount McKinley,” and that would appear on a list of 25 experiences, but I’m drawn to Alaska for its marine life. Humpback whales, puffins, sea lions and the taste of a salmon dinner after paddling around Katmai or Kenai. That to me seems like the way I’d like to feel the heartbeat of Alaska, from the water seated in a sea kayak.

So what are your top five? I made this list because I’m caught in a tide of daydreaming, but I also wanted to see what Compass Points readers have on their life lists. List ‘em in the comments section.