National Park Lodges: Rustic Gateways to Wilderness

Many Glaciers Lodge Table for Two: Glacier National Park

I love the amazing contrast of coming off the trail after a few days trekking in the wilderness, getting cleaned up and sitting down to a delicious dinner with friends in a historic rustic park lodge. To me the old lodges speak in a deep way of the potential harmony of culture and nature--that I don't have to choose between people and wilderness. I see the lodges as transitional portals that join these too worlds. There is a wild nature living within us and we can become more civilized by respecting and preserving wilderness and the wild beings that live there. For a while we can live in the wild with them. 

Even for those who get no closer to the wilderness than playing cards, working a puzzle or writing a letter in a lodge alcove, the lodges do their magic of connecting us with outdoor traditions and history. Intuitively we absorb the adventures, myths, legends and histories so richly suggested in the log architecture, Native American decor, rustic furnishings and old photos. We find a continuity and community with past generations who, like us, lodged or dined here to celebrate this special place and time together.

I hope you get from this photographic essay something of the magic I felt visiting these five lodges in July 2013 with my family. 

Mount Rainier National Park's Paradise Inn

(opened 1916)

Glacier National Park's Lake McDonald Lodge 

(opened 1914)

Glacier National Park's Many Glaciers Hotel 

(opened 1915)

Canada's Waterton Lakes National Park Prince of Wales Hotel

(opened 1927) 

Yellowstone National Park's Old Faithful Inn (opened in 1903)

Yellowstone National Park's Roosevelt Lodge 

(opened in 1920)

Happy Trails to You!

Moonlight Meanderings at Mammoth: Yellowstone National Park

Last July I was attending a family reunion in Yellowstone and saw that a full moon was occurring while we were camping near Mammoth Hot Springs. After scoping out the boardwalk trails in daylight to see which terraces were actively spouting hot water I enrolled some of my family to join me for a mad moonlight meander to see what we could see (and photograph). I took my new Nikon D600 FX camera but no tripod so all these shots are hand-held (sometimes I used the boardwalk fence as a support). We had a fantastic adventure exploring in the full moonlight in the cool of the night without crowds. Enjoy the photos!

Near Canary Springs in Upper Terrace

Near Canary Springs in Upper Terrace

Canary Springs in Upper Terrace

Near Canary Springs in Upper Terrace

Near Canary Springs in Upper Terrace

White Elephant Back Terrace by Moonlight

White Elephant Back Terrace with flash

The Liberty Cap in Lower Terrace

Palette Springs in Lower Terrace

Pallette Springs in Lower Terrace

Snowmelt on the Silver Fork of the American River

I am fortunate to live within a two-hour drive of gorgeous mid-elevation Sierran forests, complete with lichen-covered granite outcroppings, clear rushing rivers and many species of tall conifers. Yesterday I took a six-mile hike with some friends in the El Dorado National Forest south of Highway 50 on the way to Lake Tahoe from Sacramento. I never realized before how beautiful the Silver Fork of the American River is. The trailhead begins nine miles up a paved road from Kyburz where the road crosses the Silver Fork Bridge on the way to the Mormon Emigrant Trail.

Around this Bend in the River: An Image Poem

The bend of the Silver Fork

Sitting on grey lichened granite

Mid-elevation Mid-May

Sierran West Slope cool...

Snowmelt song

Clear green swirling

Over sand river bottom

Tree shadows...

Quivering new aspen leaves

Delicate trembling in the sun

Dancing to the rippling

Water swirling back...

Poisonous chartreuse wolf lichen

Splotching north-facing conifer

Boles and limbs

White fir Ponderosa Pine Sugar Pine Incense Cedar...

Deep breath of White-crowned Sparrow

Songful air

Coursing cumuli briefly

Blocking our star Sun…

Glacial erratics dropped from heaven

Wearing over millennia into the cobbles

Marking the river’s bend

Me more like the quivering aspen...

Sitting on grey lichened granite

Watching deep jade shadows

Swirling away

Around this bend

 

May all Beings be well, happy, free and awake! Walk in Peace, Bob

Yosemite: Pines Campground Paradise

Inquisitive Doe, 1980 scratchboard © Bob Hare 2012

Journal Entry: Summer, circa 1984: Pines Campground, Yosemite National Park, California

Mystical experiences can occur anywhere at anytime; they don’t always happen in a pristine natural environment. One Friday night I pulled into my campsite in Yosemite’s Pines Campground. I pulled out my tent and began to set it up when I was suddenly entranced by the panoramic beauty all around me which I hadn’t seen at all in my hurriedness to get here and get established. I dropped the tent poles and stood in one spot slowly turning to look in all directions at the wonders unfolding all around me. The mundane campsite of concrete picnic tables, parking pads, and restrooms suddenly transformed into a glorious unending woodland poem. Headlights of moving cars flashed in and out among the silhouetted trunks of ponderosa pines and the drifting campfire smoke. 

Looking Up, 1978 scratchboard © Bob Hare 2012

Above the smoke I could see the stars and the 4,000’ cliffs of Glacier Point. The calls and laughter of children and the drone of camp generators were equally blessed. I had room in my heart for everything. A clanging cook pot resonated like a meditation bell through my mind and infused the entire scene. I couldn’t tell where my mind ended and my perceptions began. Everything had an absolute clarity and perfection to it as if everything was a ripple on the still surface of a single consciousness that was generating both me and my experience. I didn’t need to do anything—all was complete at every unfolding point like a flower that never ceases blooming. I went to sleep in this seamless panorama of consciousness and woke up in my usual separate self with sleep in my eyes.

This experience is similar in feeling to one described by Emerson:

Standing on the bare ground—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me. I am part or parcel of God. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

May all Beings be well, happy, and free! Yours in Peace, Bob Hare