On a day set aside to celebrate the Earth and the environmental movement, the Interior Department and National Park Service gave us dollars and cents.

Confusion, misspoken words, and fear mongering swept the public lands landscape this past week following word that the U.S. Forest Service was planning to squash your right to snap a photo in the woods if you didn't pony up $1,500 for a picture-taking permit. The uproar stemmed from a poorly worded Federal Register notice, and was fanned by media worried about their First Amendment rights and very possibly by federal government critics.

At Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, the National Park Service should welcome a discussion into a form of backcountry travel that, if properly managed, need not alter the decades-long experience of visiting these two magnificent parks, but rather enhance it for a small number of wilderness travelers.

Did you hear the news? National parks, those wondrous and scenic expanses of Nature's eye candy, those wild and rumpled landscapes that test your skills and will kill you if you're not careful and prepared, or maybe just in the wrong place at the wrong time, are boring. They've been transformed -- or, perhaps, kept since their creation -- as "drive-through museums."