December 11, 2019

“The parks guided me to a better person, more aware of the world around me and its fragility, the precious life that shares our orbiting rock, and the enormous sacrifices made by humankind along the way. The parks continue to give the gift of inspiration and the aspiration to exit stage left having offered more than I took. They heal me when I am broken, and remind me that we can all strive to be a better human being. A park is visited when it speaks to our heart, and leaves something more in it than we had when we arrived.” -David Kroese

Here I am. A man upon islands. Like the stars in the night sky, these tiny piles of coral and rock and sand jutting from the surface of a vast expanse of ocean, are beacons to light our mortal bones upon. Stepping stones into the horizon. Isolated microcosms flung away from the concerns of life on the mainland. Most of my last month of this journey will be spent hopping from dot to dot amid a seemingly endless blue sea. Although I only have a handful of parks left to visit before home, the distance to get there is farther than ever.

Among the contradictions encountered on this journey, few have struck me the way some of our military parks and memorials have. These battlefields and places of conflict and strife are sobering for their histories. The trauma and suffering seeps in. The sacrifices and bloodshed, the important turning points in American history, the fragility of life, and some intrinsic flaw in our human DNA that allows us to justify killing each other and the planet we live on. The contradiction of these parks lies in the resilience of nature among these human horrors. In none of these parks was this more evident than in War in the Pacific National Historical Park on the island of Guam. Here in this tropical paradise, peace was shattered when the Empire of Japan fought and captured the island. They rounded up the resident Chamorros people and subjected them to forced labor – building up Japanese defenses on the island. Eventually the Americans returned to Guam. We bombed the beaches and hillsides for days before landing and routing out the entrenched Japanese forces. Tens of thousands died. We were victorious, and we liberated the Chamorros. Today, the island is at peace again. The turquoise blue waters roll gently into the rocky coral shore. Palm trees and tropical flowers and blue sky and a gentle breeze are all quick to erase virtually all traces of the devastation that once happened here. A few bunkers remain. A few mounted guns decay under the trees as nature slowly erases them from existence. In Pearl Harbor, the beautiful waters barely hide the wrecks of the American Naval Fleet. But a fateful day of fire and fury, smoke and oil, and death on a scale we rarely see in this country, is only a memory – a memorial. Nature has reclaimed the harbor, in as much as she can. Across the harbor and into the hillside, a travesty lost in time, stricken from memory, and reclaimed by nature, hides away still – virtually unseen. Honouliuli National Historic Site is one of two NPS units that is not accessible by the public. The park preserves one of four NPS units dedicated to Japanese American Internment Camps. Here, Japanese Americans, among others, were declared ‘suspect’ and separated from their families – forced into these camps for the majority of World War II. Here, in these camps, we were tested by our own Constitution, and we failed. This period in our history was forgotten – eagerly – by the internees, and by the rest of the country. Nature herself helped the process along. In Honouliuli, the isolated abandoned camp quickly became overgrown with trees and tall grasses. Soon, all trace of the camp had disappeared. Eventually this history would be rediscovered, and uncovered, and brought to light for a new generation to understand. A lesson to learn and a mistake not to be repeated. Like Shiloh, and Gettysburg, and Sand Creek, and Little Big Horn, these parks demonstrate to me the power to heal. The power of nature to reclaim her ground. The power of humans, however flawed, to reconcile, recover, and move forward. This is one of the many continuing gifts our national parks have to offer.

I came to the parks to heal, to recover, and rediscover the man hidden deep at the core of my being. Over the course of this year, the parks have given me all of this and so much more. They have taught me what it means to be an American. The histories and responsibilities. The memories and events we are obliged to remember and pass on. They have made me, and made me want to be, a better person - to continue to explore and grow and learn. And, to exit this world, when my time comes, having given more than I have received; because these parks have left more in my heart than I had when I arrived.