Summers in Yosemite helped to forge his ideology

I was 5 years old in June of 1959 when my father took a summer job as a seasonal ranger in the high country of Yosemite National Park.

I remember shedding tears of resistance about this unknown adventure, as it would require me to leave my friends and our games of kickball in the streets of San Diego among other forms of play that youngsters create in the “urban jungle.” But it was off to the unfamiliar, and it would change my life forever.   

Our ’52 Chevy, loaded with the bare necessities of gear to last us all summer, labored through the night as we headed north, avoiding the heat of the Mojave Desert and skirting the east slope of the grand Sierra Nevada, arriving at the base of Lee Vining canyon at dawn. Our ascension to the park entrance at Tioga Pass with the rising sun at our backs was an extraordinary sensory and emotional experience, and one my family would repeat many times through my childhood. It became a pilgrimage of sorts, and the eight summers we spent in the wilderness setting of Yosemite’s high country, free from the distractions and complications of life in the big city, were the best times my family spent together.

I have always been curious about what kinds of details a person stores in long-term memory and why other things quickly leave us. As I look back on my most vivid memories of those childhood adventures, many are indeed sensory. My inexperienced senses had been overwhelmed and consequently dulled by a constant barrage of the rank smell of automobile exhaust, the glare of city lights, and the dull roar of noise punctuated by car horns, sirens and jet engines overhead.  

Lee Vining canyon introduced me to the sweet smell of high-desert sage, the alpine meadows of Yosemite were home to the aroma of wild onion and a myriad of wildflower species, and to this day I still stick my nose into the furrowed bark of Jeffery and Ponderosa Pine, the “vanilla trees” as we called them.  

I had no idea how blue a sky could be, or how many stars were being hidden by the brown blanket of smog over my hometown. Yet, a moonless night on Tioga Pass at 10,000 feet revealed an incredible display of the heavens, my first hint that we on earth may not be alone in the universe. And the quiet uncovered the songs of the Stellars Jays, the Clark’s Nutcrackers, and the Mountain Chickadees. There was a new, soothing roar in the background, the sound of water cascading over rocks, the wind blowing through the trees, and often there was absolutely no sound at all.  

Perhaps the most enjoyable treat of all was to lay on my belly at the edge of a stream and drink the clear, fresh water that was so cold that it almost hurt my teeth. Yes, indeed, it was a whole new world.

But that world is becoming increasingly crowded. I was fortunate to be able to experience Yosemite in the last of the good old days. Since that time, the population of our country has doubled and the population of California has almost tripled. The world population increases by about 220,000 people every day. That’s about a “Spokanes-worth” of people — every day. The pressures placed on all of our resources are mounting quickly. Visionaries like John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt were inspired by the beauty and wildness of places like Yosemite and understood the urgency to preserve such places for generations to come.  

My family, and millions upon millions of others, are certainly the beneficiaries of their foresight. As a teacher of biology, I now understand the many values of wilderness beyond the personal and experiential, but those times of youthful exploration and growth, in wild places all over the west, have shaped the person that I am today.

Humans need a place to cleanse the heart, the mind and the soul, and to reconnect with the land, the air, and the water that nourish us. Whether it be an untrammeled coastline, a red desert gorge, an alpine meadow, or a mountaintop, that place is called wilderness.   

I chose to raise my children in Kootenai Country and the Cabinet Mountains, so that they might be nurtured like I was, surrounded by family, friends and wild places.

In the words of President Lyndon Johnson upon signing the Wilderness Act of 1964: “If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracles of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it.”

(Gene Reckin was born in 1954 and raised in San Diego, Calif., while also spending many life-changing summers in Yosemite National Park. He began his study of biology at San Diego State University in 1972 and transferred to the University of  Montana  in 1974 to complete a double degree in wildlife biology and botany.  He worked seasonally in Lassen Volcanic National Park during his college years.  He met Libby native Lenora Spencer, and they married and settled in Libby in 1979 where they raised their two daughters. He has taught science in Libby public schools for 34 years, primarily high school biology, chemistry, and research.)