Important news from the
National Park Service hit the media (print, online and social) this past spring
and summer. The $10 lifetime price of the America the Beautiful National Parks
and Federal Recreational Lands Senior Pass was ending at the end of
August. The cost of the pass was then immediately increasing for the first time
since 1994 to $80.
 |
| Image: National Park Service NPS.gov |
The change was a result of
legislation passed in December of 2016 which essentially stated that the cost
of a lifetime pass for those over 62 years of age should be equal to the ANNUAL
pass for everyone else. Included in the legislation was an additional level for
seniors - $20 for a one-year pass.
Sometime in early summer I caught
the bug with all the rest of America who was 62 years of age or older and I applied
for our passes online. The extra $10 for an online application didn’t bother me,
but I would have saved that money just by visiting one of Massachusetts
National Parks that charge a fee – those in Quincy, Boston, Concord and others.
The $10 passes were available at any one of them. Time was running out,
however, and I wanted to make the deadline.
Within weeks, Gerry and I were
official Senior Pass holders. I was
excited to see our names printed on the back of our colorful plastic cards. Even more thrilling was the fact that each of
our cards admits three others who can come along and visit one of the National
Parks with us.
On our recent trip to Hawaii
this past October, we spent a few days on both ends of our trip nursing our
jet-lag in Northern California. The beginning of our trip was unfortunately
hindered by the tragic wildfires that raged across wine country and it seemed
the entire northern half of the state was plagued by chocking smoke. By the
time we returned 9 days later, however, the fires were well on their way to
containment. We spent a lovely, warm fall day in the city of Napa and the town
of St. Helena – places spared from the devastation in Santa Rosa and the
surrounding hillsides.
We were on our way to a
red-eye flight that would leave San Francisco later on our last night, when we
drove up and over the mountains that snake up through the towns in Marin
County, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge.
There we wound down the steep incline on the Pacific side to enter Muir
Woods, nestled only a few miles from the ocean.
Muir Woods, home to some of
the oldest and tallest coastal redwoods*, has been a lifelong destination for
me. Beginning in the early 1960s, my mother insisted that every visiting aunt,
uncle, or cousin walk among the tall and graceful redwoods just across the bay
from our home. We made many trips to Muir Woods over decades as I continued the
family tradition and visited many times during my years in California and
nearly every visit “back home.” *Note that the very tallest, widest, and oldest
coastal redwoods are found farther north up the coast in Prairie Creek Redwoods
State Park and Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.
Muir Woods National Monument (in
the town of Mill Valley) is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation area
that is just one of the 400 national parks across the United States. After the Great San Francisco earthquake and
fire in 1906, crafty contractors and businessmen looked to the redwood forests
just north of San Francisco for trees that would provide building materials for
a city nearly burned to the ground.
Soon-to-be Congressman William Kent and his wife had purchased 611 acres
of coastal redwoods in Mill Valley just a year before the quake. In 1908 the
Kents donated that land to the United States. They insisted that
conservationist, philosopher, author and scientist John Muir receive the honor
of the name. It was President Teddy Roosevelt who used his executive powers to
create the park we know as Muir Woods.
At the time when Muir Woods
was created and dedicated, many of the redwoods were already hundreds of years
old. Currently, the tallest tree in the
park is over 250 feet tall and the oldest may be over 1,200 years. Their ancestors have been on the planet for
more than 240 million years. These beautiful trees with reddish bark and coniferous
needles stand majestically throughout the park.
They allow beams of sunlight to filter down to the forest floor which is
rich in wildlife, plants of all kinds, and soil that was created by the dying
trees of past centuries. When walking among the needles and leaves on the park
trails, one can imagine this lovely place as home where an early Native
American family could sleep among the hollows of trees and where their rituals
were held in the redwood cathedrals.
The library and Minuteman
Library Network has many recent books for you to enjoy about our national parks: National Parks of America (with suggestions
on how to experience all 59 of them) by The Lonely Planet; and Lassoing the Sun:
A Year in America’s National Parks by Mark Woods. Both were published in 2016.
You can read more about
Teddy’s Roosevelt’s environmental crusade in The Wilderness Warrior by Douglas
Brinkley (2010). John Muir’s story is told in the Wilder Muir by Bonnie Gisel
(2017); The Wild Muir (22 of his greatest adventures) by Lee Stetson (2013);
and John Muir and the Ice That Started a Fire (his efforts to
conserve the glaciers of Alaska) by Kim Heacox (2015). The California redwoods are championed in The
Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring by Richard Preston (2008).
While only 118 of 417 of our
national parks have an entrance fee, the National Park Service is particularly
generous to Americans. In addition to the Senior Pass, four other free
admission passes are available to citizens of the United States and permanent
residents: the Every Kid in a Park pass
(4th grader); the Annual Pass for US Military; Access Pass with free admission
and discounts on other amenity fees for U.S. citizens or permanent residents
with permanent disabilities; and the Volunteer Pass for those with 250 hours or
more volunteer hours with federal agencies that participate in the Interagency
Pass Program.
