Ken Burns Film “The National Parks – America’s Best Idea”"

I spent the evening of May 22nd in a packed theater in Telluride, Colorado, at the Mountain Film Festival watching the World Premiere of Ken Burns’s new film, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.”

This was my first time to the Mountain Film Festival and I expected to see such films like the snow-boarding thriller “That’s It, That’s All” and “Solo,” which documents Australian Andrew McAuley’s ill-fated kayak trip across the Tasman Sea, but was happy to see the many issue-oriented documentaries such as Burns’s National Parks.

“National Parks” will air in six parts on PBS in the United States this fall.  First of all, it’s gorgeous to watch, and none of the images have been digitally enhanced.  Every deep red sunset and searing blue sky, all the storms and snowy rock faces shown in this film are completely natural.  Episode One unravels the story of Yellowstone National Park, created with little fanfare by Congress in 1872.  The characters of this historic period are colorful and entertaining, and in telling their stories Burns shows how easily we might have lost the beautiful, wild spaces we have today.  For example, Burns weaves the story of John Muir, so influential in the development of Yellowstone, throughout the film: Muir’s endless tramping through Yellowstone in what people observed to be a “beserk rapture” – and how, when separated from the wilderness he began to wither.  After years away his wife encouraged him back into the woods and he joined a trip to Mt. Rainier later explaining to her, “I didn’t mean to climb it, but got carried away.”

After Episode One, Ken took the stage with author and environmental activist Bill McKibbon to discuss the ongoing saga between people and nature.  Burns’ films explore many issues relative to the national park system in the United States, but I was especially caught by the tense interplay between tourism and the preservation of wild spaces that was going on then, and of course still exists to this day.

– Christina Heyniger