[Mb-civic] Where is Ansel Adams when we need him? - Derrick Z. Jackson - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Where is Ansel Adams when we need him?

By Derrick Z. Jackson  |  November 5, 2005

ANSEL ADAMS came to the White House in 1975 to deliver a print of a 
photograph from Yosemite National Park desired by President Ford and 
Betty Ford. Adams, still smarting from President Nixon's neglect of 
public lands, asked Ford to redefine the meaning of our parks, maintain 
their funding, and put a ''new emphasis on preservation and 
environmental responsibilities."

In 1983, Adams met with President Reagan, and not to deliver a 
photograph. He was a vocal critic of Reagan's rollbacks on environmental 
protection and preservation of wild areas. He said Reagan's land 
policies were ones of ''rape, ruin, and run!" According to Adams, had 
the nation been under the vision in the 1930s of Reagan's infamous 
Interior Secretary James Watt, Kings Canyon National Park would today 
''look like part of the outskirts of Las Vegas."

After Adams told Playboy magazine in 1983, ''I hate Reagan," an 
embarrassed White House had the beloved photographer sit with Reagan for 
nearly an hour. Adams left unimpressed, borrowing from Oscar Wilde to 
say, ''They know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

One can only guess what sparks would fly if Adams, who died in 1984, 
could witness President Bush's resurrection of Reagan's rape, ruin, and run.

This week the Senate passed a budget bill that would allow for drilling 
for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The House Budget 
Committee, at the urging of Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo 
of California, voted to include in its budget bill a proposal to lift 
moratoriums on offshore oil drilling in the lower 48 states.

In September, Pombo got the House to weaken the Endangered Species Act 
under the ruse that it oppressed landowners. Pombo wants to relax rules 
on public land for mining and oil interests. He even floated an idea to 
sell off 15 national parks.

Public outrage made him drop that idea, but he and the Interior 
Department are floating other ideas that would turn national parks into 
NASCAR tracks and football stadiums, ideas that include everything from 
selling advertising space on park buses and trams to selling naming 
rights to rooms, information centers, and park museums. There is talk of 
corporate sponsoring of trailheads.

That talk was in my head when my wife Michelle Holmes and I visited Zion 
National Park in Utah a month ago. The trip began three days after I saw 
the exquisite Ansel Adams exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts. The 
closest airport to Zion is Adams's feared Las Vegas. There is still 
plenty of desert between the casinos on the strip and the canyon two and 
a half hours away, but as someone who visits an uncle periodically in 
America's fastest growing city, it is still stunning to see how fast the 
miles of earth become the outskirts and how fast the landscape becomes 
obliterated by billboards.

In Zion our most perfect moment, our ''Ansel moment," one of unthinkable 
beauty, came on a day in which we waded upstream in the Zion Narrows. 
The narrows is where the grand panoramic views of red and white spires 
at the beginning of the park close in like a vise at the end of the line 
for the public tram. We waded upstream in the narrows, until we were 
specks at the bottom of a chasm of walls 1,000 feet high and only 20 
feet apart.

Orange light snaked down upon us. The contrast between daylight and 
dimness made the canyon a sandstone pumpkin. At one point, I took a 
picture of Michelle with the glowing walls behind her. For us, it was a 
moment of serenity and humble awe at a spot only our chilled legs could 
get us to. In Pombo's world, the wall behind Michelle would blaze, 
''McDonald's Super-Size Narrows."

Ansel Adams said in his autobiography that ''Starry-eyed reaction to the 
splendors of nature is an invaluable experience for everyone, provided 
it is tempered in time with a realization that this reaction hopefully 
exists for the many rather than the few." As beautiful as our Ansel 
moment was, it is also haunting because too many politicians see dollars 
instead of stars.

Last month the National Park Service announced a $270,000 Save America's 
Treasures grant to help preserve Adams's works. This is while Congress 
assaults public lands and Bush ignores the call for environmental 
responsibility that Adams had issued to Ford. The outskirts of Las Vegas 
creep toward the day where all we may have left of our natural treasures 
is a photograph.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/05/where_is_ansel_adams_when_we_need_him/
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