Editor's note: As part of National Parks Traveler's Centennial Series, Melanie Armstrong, an assistant professor at Western State Colorado University, examines how the National Park Service can provide a place where the global public can step outside the social trappings that obscure their vision in everyday life in order to address the most challenging social issues of our day.

The final program I gave as a national park ranger was a telescope program, inviting visitors to Canyonlands National Park to stay up past nightfall to see the moons of Jupiter and deep sky objects like the twisted Whirlpool Galaxy and the wispy Orion Nebula. For years, park managers had been exploring ways to showcase Canyonlands’ notably clear skies alongside the scenic views and rugged backcountry for which it was better known. National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis had called the parks to action to share the “Starry, Starry Night” with park visitors as part of the initiative to prepare the agency for its second century of stewardship. Before I began a career transition to a university, I sought one last opportunity to align a 12-inch Dobsonian telescope on Saturn and invite someone to see the planet beaming through the lens. When I heard people gasp and exclaim, “I didn’t know you could actually see the rings!” I understood a bit more of what it means to be a park ranger, and also a bit more of what it means to be human. Helping park visitors see the rings of Saturn with their own eyes enacted the mission of the NPS not just to educate and inspire, but to provide experiences that will transform how people live in the world.

At Canyonlands we spoke of the night sky as a “valuable resource,” a phrase I knew meant little to travelers in the park. The statement feels possessive, as if the infinite sky I saw from my front porch somehow belonged to me or to this place alone. The places we see when we look upward remain, for now, unclaimed and unmanaged by the variety of land managers who have parceled out our home planet. In naming dark skies as a resource, the park references the ever-more-rare ability to see through our polluted atmosphere to the darkness beyond. Everyone on this globe has equal access to looking up; however, most people live in circumstances where the trappings of modern society—street lights, smog, or simply a desire to affix one’s gaze to an electronic device—interfere with their experience of the dark night sky. Canyonlands offers a place to set your feet while you gaze, unobscured, at the heavens. Every interaction, experience, reflection, and decision that takes place in a national park provides a similar way for people to access ideas and perspectives that are not available to them in their everyday lives, or which get crowded out by competing priorities.

Throughout the past century, the NPS has excelled at providing opportunities for adventure, beauty, and shared experience. Looking forward, I challenge the agency to embrace its role in providing a place where the global public can step outside the social trappings that obscure their vision in everyday life in order to address the most challenging social issues of our day. In this essay, I argue that parks are vital public places where people generate transformative ideas about themselves and society. I question whether the NPS is reaching its potential to help citizens create the future in which we want to live, and offer speculations about what truly public parks might look like in practice. I conclusion, I claim that this work, done well, will change the world.

The Environmental-Management State

Environmental historian Adam Rome argued that the history of government in the United States has long been a history of resource management. He used the phrase “environmental-management state” to describe how federal land management practices build the nation-state, similar to the work of the welfare state or national security state. The work to manage public lands during the twentieth century had broad impacts throughout government, touching fields of science, engineering, health, and military, among others, and shaping cultural ideas about citizenship, rights, and economy. Bruce Schulman proposed that these “patterns of environmental regulation and bureaucratic governance … established a template for modern American governance.” These bold histories recognize resource management as far more than work to care-take our physical landscapes. The everyday acts of land managers and employees of the NPS formulate impactful ideas about national and individual identity, and are shaping ideologies that far exceed ecosystem knowledge and historical records. In short, land management practices sustain and create social understandings of race, class, gender, citizenship, human rights, capital, and justice, and reproduce them in acts of governance.

For example, the National Park Service has recently, if timidly, shouldered some of the complexities of colonialism in its own environmental-management history. As a seasonal interpreter, I told the story of Yellowstone’s creation as a clever way to turn unwanted land for homesteading into a tourist destination and money-maker for railroad companies. This narrative rests comfortably with national ideologies about capitalism and an entrepreneurial spirit. A counter-narrative about the work to expel native people from early parks, explored in depth by scholars such as Peter Nabokov, Lawrence Loendorf, Mark David Spence, and Philip Burnham, has now crept into park origin stories. Moreover, parks are finding ways to bring native people into park management, seeking insight into how their work can be improved by native knowledge of place. Following Rome’s theory, if the NPS weaves diverse ways of knowing into the fabric of daily park management, the agency will not only change its internal culture, but will change the core ideas about race and citizenship that shape our nation.

Consider a movement initiated by the Utah Diné Bikéyah and Navajo Nation in southeast Utah, petitioning the president to use his authority through the Antiquities Act to create a new type of management area. This monument would be co-managed to protect wilderness lands while providing for the sustainable cultural uses of the land by those who have long lived there. Through the Diné Bikéyah National Conservation Area, native people would not just come to the table to discuss the management of the area, but they would set up the table and invite others to fill the chairs. If we, as a nation, hope to move beyond our colonial past to create a more just and equitable future, we must not wait for a broader political agenda to remake management practices. History has shown that the politics of land management are the politics of the nation. Knowing this history should empower us, looking forward, to step outside work that is comfortable, no matter how noble, to do work that will lead us towards who we want to be as a nation. Our history compels us to be transformative.

Parks and the Public Sphere

A few times in my career, I had the opportunity to train new NPS employees. In these sessions, I made a claim that was met with equal parts enthusiasm and disbelief: I promised these employees that they could change the world during their season in the park. Setting aside the superlatives or qualifications that might accompany such a statement, I drew upon research in science communication to argue that changing the world begins with changing the ways we talk to each other, and finding places where diverse groups can talk together.

In articles published in Science and The American Journal of Botany, Matthew C. Nisbet and Dietram A. Scheufele have challenged assumptions about an ignorant public, proposing that society does not need better science to solve our most pressing issues, but rather needs better ways of communicating. We also need to learn to rely on ourselves as individuals responsible for our own actions, and contexts that resonate with something we already value or understand. In broad strokes, our numerous historical parks provide substantial context for cultural understanding and our “wilderness” parks have long provided opportunities for people to learn to act independently and accept consequences. Today, interpretation professionals are increasingly considering dialogic approaches to open new paths to communicate with park visitors. Programs called “facilitated dialogues” attempt to enlist diverse park audiences as co-creators in park stories, sharing their experiences with each other as much as learning from the interpreter who leads the discussion. This approach recognizes that every person who comes to look at the night sky has a context for understanding the values of darkness, stars, and planets, and that by sharing those experiences publicly, they can increase their understanding of each other and their diverse personal histories. These interpreters take seriously the role of our nation’s parks as places to debate issues of public importance.

As park managers, we know we are managing for “the public,” but perhaps fail to recognize the complexity and significance of this public space. The philosopher Jurgen Habermas theorized that certain historical factors enabled the creation of the public sphere during the 18th century. This new public was geographically located in lodges and coffeehouses where an emerging merchant class could gather to exchange knowledge in print or in person, and it played a vital role in spurring citizens to act on behalf of their own well-being, most extremely to instigate a revolution. The creation of a space where people of diverse politics could simply gather and talk fundamentally changed the structure of how knowledge was created, and in turn developed new understandings about injustice and human rights.

America’s parks have inscribed in their core mission a similar commitment to public use. In Habermas’ words, “We call events and occasions ‘public’ when they are open to all, in contrast to closed or exclusive affairs.” These lands are open to all, and therefore public. From its inception, the Service has guarded, perhaps imperfectly, open access to its sites. While the agency thinks deeply about the public in terms of access, does it fully embrace the opportunities for democratic practice made possible by public parks? Habermas described the decline of the public sphere due to mass media and the co-option of public spaces by the state. How might parks revitalize spaces where participants in a democratic system can debate the issues that impact our shared futures?

Hannah Arendt beautifully argued that the public sphere is “the common world” that “gathers us together and yet prevents our falling over each other.” I saw this daily in park visitor centers. Conversations here are unlike the dialogues heard in restaurants, schools, or corporations. Sometimes they are simple swaps of information about favorite hikes between a family from urban Philadelphia and a retired couple from Germany, and sometimes they are a dialogues about slavery between an interpreter and prospective Junior Ranger. Amid the chaos of a busy visitor center on a holiday weekend, one can witness the gathering of citizens with wide-ranging histories who are learning not to fall over each other. Does the NPS fully realize the potential of its visitor centers as rare spaces for active public engagement and dialogue?

In every cycle of budget cuts and in every conversation about the barriers to citizens who want to dwell in the public sphere on their public lands, we must be mindful of the ways that economic and social privilege encroach upon common use of the space. Both entrance fees and expenses of travel exclude visitors, and parks are increasingly considering ways to manage increasing visitation in already-crowded places. What are the effects upon our democracy if low-income members of the public are excluded from the public sphere? Furthermore, what are the effects on the public sphere when costly visitor centers are closed in favor of distributing distilled information through electronic or print media? Maintaining a focus on the potential of parks the preserve the public sphere reminds us that visitor centers are more than information desks and restroom stops, but are a unique public space, “open to all.”

Finally, Habermas argued that the public sphere is a “vehicle to put the state in touch with the needs of society.” It is a means by which public opinion becomes political action. The NPS has shown itself not to be shy in taking a stand on key issues within a narrow sphere of expertise; in the next century, the agency must open its scope of influence to all aspects of society, becoming more in touch with the wide-ranging needs of modern citizens. Parks do not simply memorialize and preserve; as harbingers of the need for social reform, parks can create the future in which we want to live.

Parks to Engage Controversy

Consider the case of climate change. The NPS has decided to use its science-making resources to research changing climates for the purpose of park management. Science has never before generated such quality data about a changing climate, and yet there is still social conflict about key issues surrounding climate change. As an agent of the public sphere, the National Park Service is uniquely positioned to instigate political action. It oversees the public spaces that will create new communications processes, instill social responsibility for our actions, and provide resonate contexts. This is the myth that Nisbet and Scheufele identify at the root of conflict over science. As communicators and managers, we tell ourselves that “If only people had all the information, they would see the ‘right’ answer. Once they are brought up to speed, the controversy will go away.” This model assumes that the facts will be interpreted by all audiences in similar ways, sending the blame to the science communicators for conveying bad information or to the “irrational” public for not understanding the facts. In reality, people are continually learning not just the technical aspects of science, but the social, ethical, and economic contexts that surround science. This is the frame that defines the range of problems that can be addressed, and conflict emerges from the varied and contrary ways we frame the climate change issue. Through its public spaces, the NPS has the ability to change the ways a problem is framed. Thus, in addition to generating data about climate change, the agency must continue programs to listen to citizens’ conversations on climate change and to help people see themselves in a larger climate context. These initiative must open a space for people to engage on a controversial issue outside elite relationships of power. Public parks offer just such a public sphere.

Looking forward, parks must continue to be a means to “put the state in touch with the needs of society,” not only in existing spaces, but also by creating new types of parks that respond to the justice issues of our day. Parks have excelled at the hospitality industry for more than a century, inviting even the earliest travelers to Yellowstone to think differently about the world. Consider how that hospitality might be turned to issues like immigration, where guided paths and rest stations are built for tourists in parts of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, while in other parts immigrants wander lost and perish without water on public lands. How might boaters at Glen Canyon engage in public debate over water conservation issues in ways that will inform water policy and legislation? The role the NPS plays in telling our national stories need not be confined to the past. The public who visit public lands have stepped into the conversation simply by showing up. By presenting the controversies boldly and in a context that resonates with visitors’ values, the NPS can promote the types of civic engagement that have shaped the environmental management state over time and kept alive our national belief in an engaged citizenry committed to justice for all people.

Public Parks for a Just Tomorrow

A few years ago, I heard Julia Washburn, NPS Associate Director of Interpretation and Education, predict the demise of brick-and-mortar schools. She proposed that online delivery systems would provide learners access to information, and that students would have to go to new places to acquire the concepts, critical thinking, and civic skills that accompany data in today’s classrooms. She argued that the NPS should be working to make its sites the classrooms of the future, a place where people will go to process information and apply knowledge. Students can learn about stars and planets and light pollution online, but might begin to understand the value of dark skies when they look through a telescope at Canyonlands and then share their personal reaction to that first view of Saturn’s rings with other people having a similar experience. At my night sky program, I could play a direct role in creating opportunities for people to recognize their own need (or not) for dark skies and instill a desire to convey those needs to those who govern.

While every interaction between park employees and the public contains the potential to dramatically change the world, I wrapped up my pre-season pep talk to new employees with a simpler guarantee. From my very first season working at a park, I saw that spending a prolonged time living and working in parks assuredly brings individual change. The perspective of dwelling as a guest on the public’s land, working in a job that focuses continually outward on preserving rarities and providing for others’ enjoyment, and sitting at night around the campfire conversing about the future of the public landscape affirms to employees the value and power of the public. The ideas that will carry parks into the next century were likely generated around those campfires and tried out in the public sphere, with visitors excited about what they were seeing or feeling in a particular park. Watching one, then ten, then thousands of stars pop out in a darkening sky with people who have only seen a dozen stars between the skyscrapers near their home changes a park ranger, and therefore changes the world.

Works Cited

Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.

Burnham, Philip. Indian Country, God’s Country: Native Americans and the National Parks. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000.

Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Translated by Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989 (1962).

Nabokov, Peter, and Lawrence Loendorf. Restoring a Presence: American Indians and Yellowstone National Park. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004.

Nisbet, Matthew C. and Dietram A. Scheufele. “What’s Next for Science Communication?: Promising Directions and Lingering Distractions.” American Journal of Botany 96 (2009): 1767-1778.

Nisbet, Matthew C. and Chris Mooney. “Policy Forum: Framing Science.” Science 316 (2007): 56.

Rome, Adam. “What Really Matters in History: Environmental Perspectives on Modern America.” Environmental History 7 (2002): 303-318.

Schulman, Bruce J. “Governing Nature, Nurturing Government: Resource Management and the Development of the American State, 1900-1912.” Journal of Policy History 17 (2005): 375-403.

Spence, Mark David. Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Sutter, Paul S. “The World with Us: The State of American Environmental History.” Journal of American History 100 (2013): 94-119.