America’s best president was Theodore Roosevelt.
He fought against oversized business as the “trust buster.” He fought for peace in the Russo-Japanese War and earned a Nobel Prize for it. He fought for government to expand its role outside of its traditional limits.
But, in all honesty, these are things I looked up before writing this column. The true grounding for my fervent support of Theodore Roosevelt is centered around his dedication to national parks.
Roosevelt saw the wilderness as a place that grows character, valor and vigor — a place worthy of preservation for future generations. Future generations like me. And because of this, most of my childhood was spent at national parks.
I still remember my brother and me, both no more than 12 years old, sitting in the trunk of a rental van with the hatch open, watching the vast landscape of the Badlands of South Dakota flying away from us. When the car stopped, we would go track down the prairie dogs that scurried beyond sight. When we ran, we carried pen and paper in hand to identify any of the native plant species that we could see. Once we filled these out, we would get out long-awaited Junior Ranger badges and pledge allegiance to taking care of the park.
The vast, dry wilderness of the Badlands I played in was the same wilderness where Roosevelt took refuge while coping with the loss of both his mother and first wife. It is also the one that tourists like me have visited since its establishment as a national park in 1978.
The Badlands belong to a greater National Park Foundation that will be turning 100 years old on August 25, 2016. Because of this, there are a plethora of centennial events celebrating America’s strong history in park service.
Yet even with this large of a celebration occurring on our home soil, there will still be students that spend spring break in the Bahamas, a summer in France or a semester in Peru. These are all, of course, great and necessary experiences for building an understanding of the world as a global citizen. But I also extend the challenge to be an American citizen as well.
Through sheer luck I’ve seen every location President Lincoln lived in, from birth to death. I’ve been terrified by hungry mountain rams at Glacier National Park. I’ve hiked the John Muir Trail through the Sierra Nevada, a mountain range that John Muir himself called the “Range of Light.”
