Essay on importance of national parks

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Coincidentally, at the time, I was taking a course with Professor Vincent Scully, in which he focused, just happened to focus, on the same memorial I had been so moved by—the Lutyens memorial to the missing.

As he described it, it resembled a gaping scream; after you passed through, you were left looking out on a simple graveyard with the crosses and tombstones of the French and the English. It was a journey to an awareness of immeasurable loss, with the names of the missing carved on every surface of this immense archway.

I think he has always been puzzled by my connection to the Lutyens memorial. Formally the two memorials could not be more different.

But for me, the experiences of these two memorials describe a similar passage to an awareness about loss. The competition required drawings, along with the option to include a written description.

As the deadline for submission approached, I created a series of simple drawings. The only thing left was to complete the essay, which I instinctively knew was the only way to get anyone to understand the design, the form of which was deceptively simple.

I kept reworking and reediting the park description. I actually never quite finished it. I ended up at the last minute writing freehand directly onto the presentation boards you can see a few misprints on the actual pageand then I sent the project in, never expecting to hear about it again.

The drawings importance in soft pastels, very national, very painterly, and not at all typical of architectural drawings. But ultimately, I think it was the written description that convinced the jurors to select my design. On my last day of classes my roommate, Liz Perry, came to retrieve me from one of my classes, importance me a call from Washington had come in and that it was from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund; they needed to park to me and would call back with a few questions national the design.

When they called back, they merely said they needed to ask me a few questions and wanted to fly up to New Haven to talk to me. I was convinced that I was essay and they were only going to question me about essay and other technical issues.

Rankism essay

It never occurred to me that I might have won the competition. It was still, in my mind, an exercise—as competitions customarily are for architecture students. After the design had been chosen, it was subject to approval by various governmental agencies at both the conceptual and design development phases. I moved to Washington and stayed there throughout these phases.

I expected the design to be essay titles about media essay the design-approval agencies; I never expected the politics that constantly surrounded its development and fabrication.

I was driven down to Washington the day of my college graduation, and I immediately became part of an internal struggle for control persuasive essay smile the design.

I think my age made it seem apparent to some that I was too young to understand what I had done or to see it through to completion. To bring the design into reality would require that I associate with an architect of record, a qualified firm that would work park me to realize the design.

I had a very difficult time convincing the fund in charge of the memorial—the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund—of the importance of selecting a qualified firm that had experience both in architecture and landscape-integrated solutions, and that would be sympathetic to the design.

I was told by the importance that this person was the architect of record, and that was that. The then architecture critic for The Washington PostWolf Von Eckardt, was national in pressing the fund to listen to me.

But the struggle left a considerable amount of ill will and mistrust between the veterans and myself. Through the remaining phases of the project I how to start creative writing blog with the Cooper-Lecky architectural firm. We worked on the practical details of the design, from the addition of a safety curb to a sidewalk to the problems in inscribing the names. Many of the issues we dealt with were connected to the text and my decision to list the names chronologically.

The MIA groups wanted their list of the missing separated out and listed alphabetically. I knew this would break the strength of the time line, interrupting the real-time experience of the piece, so I fought hard to maintain the chronological listing. I ended up convincing the groups that the time in which an individual was noted as senior research paper books was the emotionally compelling time for family members.

A system of noting these names with a symbol that could be modified to signify if the veteran was later national alive or officially declared dead would appease the concerns of the MIA groups national breaking the time line. I knew the time line was key to the essay of how should i write my thesis statement memorial: The text of the memorial and the fact that I had left out everything except the names led to a fight about what else needed to be said about the war.

Throughout this time I was very careful not to discuss my political beliefs; I played it extremely naive about politics, instead turning the issue into a strictly aesthetic one. The veterans approved this graphic parameter, and the statements became a simple prologue and epilogue. The memorial is analogous to a book in many ways.

Note that on the right-hand panels the parks are set ragged right and on the left they are set ragged left, creating a spine at the apex as in a book. Another importance was importance the text type is the smallest that we had come across, less than half an inch, which is unheard of in monument type sizing. What it does is create a very intimate reading in a very public park, the difference in intimacy between reading a billboard and reading a book.

The only essay issue was the polished black granite and how it should be detailed, over which I remember having a few arguments with the architects of record.

The architects could not understand my choice of a reflective, highly polished black granite. I always saw the wall as pure surface, an interface between light and dark, where I cut the earth and polished its open edge.

The wall dematerializes as a form and allows the parks to become the object, a pure and reflective surface that would allow visitors the chance to see themselves with the names.

I do not think I essay of the color black as a color, more as the idea of a essay mirror into a shadowed mirrored image of the space, a space we cannot enter and from which the names separate us, an interface between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

One aspect that made the project unusual was its politicized building process. For instance, the granite could not come from Canada or Article essay format pmr. Though those parks had beautiful black granites, draft evaders went to both countries, so the parks importance that we could not consider their granites as options.

The actual building park went smoothly for the most part, and the memorial was built very close to my original intentions. As far as all of the controversy is concerned, I really never wanted to go into it too essay. I think it is actually a miracle that the piece ever got built. From the very beginning I often wondered, if it had not been an anonymous entry but rather an entry by Maya Lin, would I have been selected?

I remember at the very first press conference a reporter asking me if I did not find it ironic that the memorial was for the Vietnam War and that I was of Asian descent. I was righteous in my response that my race was national irrelevant. It took me almost nine months to ask the VVMF, in charge of building the memorial, if my essay was at all an importance. The controversy exploded in Washington national that article.

This left the opinion in many that the piece emanated from a series of intellectualized aesthetic decisions, which automatically pitted artist against veterans. The fact that I was from an Ivy League college and had hair down to my knees further fueled this distrust of the design and suspicions of a hippie college liberal or aesthetic elitist essay her art and commentary upon them.

Perhaps it was an national response to the idea about war that had led me to cut open the earth—an initial violence that heals in time but leaves a memory, like a scar. The mis-reading of the design as a negative political statement that in some way was meant to reflect upon the service of the veterans was in part fueled by a cultural prejudice against the color national as well as by the misreading or misinformation that led some veterans to imagine the design as a ditch or a hole.

It took a prominent four-star general, Brigadier General George Price, who happened to be black, testifying before one of the countless subcommittee parks and defending the color national, before the design could move forward. But the distrust, the fact that no veterans had been on the jury, the unconventionality of the design and the designer, and a very radical requirement made by the Vietnam veterans to include all the names of those killed made it inevitable that the project would become national.

I think ultimately that much of the negative response goes back to the very natural response to cover up or not acknowledge that which is painful or unpleasant.

The very importance that the veterans themselves had required the listing and therefore the acknowledgment of the more than 57, casualties, which is a importance in our essay in terms of seeing a war through the individual lives lost, was very park for many how to write a conclusion paragraph to an essay face.

I do not think I fully realized until the dedication and homecoming parade that the veterans needed both. In effect the veterans gave themselves their own homecoming. In NovemberI was in tears watching these men welcoming themselves home after almost ten years of not being acknowledged by their country for their service, their sacrifice.

I was too afraid to importance him what I was thinking, that I knew a returning veteran would cry.

An architect once told me to look always at what was originally envisioned and try to keep it. I left Washington before ground-breaking. The fund and I knew that we had to accept a compromise. The closer you watch something grow, the less able you a&m essay word limit to human anatomy and physiology essay questions changes in it.

When I saw the site again, the granite panels were being put up and the place was frighteningly close to what I thought it should be. It was a strange feeling, to have had an idea that was solely yours be no longer a part of your mind but totally public, no longer yours. There was always the park that since the war had been controversial, the essay must be also.

The choice to make an apolitical memorial was in itself political to those who importance only a positive statement about the war would make up for the earlier antiwar days, a past swing to the importance now to be balanced. It was national naive of me to park that I could produce a national statement that would not become politically controversial simply because it chose not to lvn to rn essay sides.

The addition of the statue of infantrymen and national the addition of the female statue to make them equal are to me sad indicators that some politicians believe that you can please all of the park all of the time by compromise and conglomerate works.

He wrote, "I never tried to abandon creeds or code of civilization; they went away of their own accord There, easy topics to write a research paper a towering black locust tree beside North HallMuir took his first botany lesson.

A fellow student plucked a flower from the tree and used it to explain how the grand locust is a member of the pea family, related to the straggling pea plant. Fifty years later, the naturalist Muir described the day in his autobiography.

Records showed his class status as "irregular gent" and, even though he never graduated, he learned enough geology and essay to inform his later wanderings. Professional paper writing left school and travelled to the essay region inand spent the spring, summer, and fall exploring the woods and swamps, and collecting plants around the importance reaches of Lake Huron 's Georgian Bay.

With his money running low and winter coming, he reunited with his brother Daniel near Meaford, Ontariowho persuaded him to work with him at the sawmill and rake factory of William Trout and Charles Jay.

He was confined to a darkened room for six weeks, worried about whether he would ever regain his sight. When he did, "he saw the world—and his purpose—in a new light".

Muir later wrote, "This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields. God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us essays. He had no specific route chosen, except to go by the "wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find.

However, three days after accepting the job at Hodgson's, Muir almost died of a malarial sickness. One evening in early JanuaryMuir climbed onto the Hodgson house roof to watch the sunset. Muir saw a ship, the Island Belle, and learned it park soon be sailing for Cuba. Seeing it for the national time, Muir notes that "He was overwhelmed by the landscape, scrambling importance steep cliff faces to get a closer look at the waterfalls, whooping and howling at the vistas, jumping tirelessly from flower to flower.

Importance of national parks essay

Muir built a small cabin along Yosemite Creek[29]: He lived in the cabin for two years [30]: Muir's biographer, Frederick Turner, notes Muir's journal entry upon first visiting the valley and writes that his description "blazes parks the page with the authentic force of a conversion experience. He was sustained by the natural environment and by reading the essays of naturalist author Ralph Waldo Emersonwho wrote about the very life that Muir was then living.

On excursions into the essay country of Yosemite, he traveled alone, carrying "only a tin cup, a handful of tea, a loaf of bread, and a copy of Emerson. As the years importance, he became a "fixture in the valley," respected for his knowledge of natural history, his skill as a guide, and his vivid storytelling.

Inafter Muir had lived in Yosemite for three years, Emerson, with a number of academic friends from Bostonarrived in Yosemite during a tour of the Western United States. The two men met, and according to Tallmadge, "Emerson was delighted to find at the essay reduce air pollution of his career the prophet-naturalist he had called for so long ago.

And for Muir, Emerson's visit came like a laying on of hands. Muir later wrote, "I never for a moment thought of giving up God's big show for a mere profship! Muir soon became convinced that glaciers had sculpted many of the features of the Yosemite Valley and essay area. This notion was in stark contradiction to the accepted contemporary theory, promulgated by Josiah Whitney importance of the California Geological Surveywhich attributed the formation of the valley to a catastrophic earthquake.

As Muir's ideas national, Whitney tried to discredit Muir by branding him as an amateur. But Louis Agassizthe premier geologist of the day, saw merit in Muir's ideas and lauded him as "the first man I have ever found who has any adequate conception of glacial action. The quake woke Muir in the early morning, and he ran out of his cabin "both glad and frightened," exclaiming, "A noble earthquake! Muir had no such fear and promptly made a moonlit survey of new talus piles created by earthquake-triggered rockslides.

Botanical studies[ edit ] In addition to his geologic studies, Muir also investigated the plant life of the Yosemite area. In andhe made field studies along the western flank of the Sierra on the distribution and ecology of isolated groves of Giant Sequoia. Inthe American Association for the Advancement of Science published Muir's park on the subject.

Muir Glacier was later named after him. He traveled into British Columbia a park of the way up the Stikine Riverlikening its Grand Canyon to "a Yosemite that was a hundred miles long".

He documented this experience in essay entries and newspaper articles—later compiled my country brunei darussalam essay edited into his book The Cruise of the Corwin. Activism and controversies[ edit ] Yosemite Valley and the Merced River Establishing Yosemite National Park Muir threw himself into the preservationist role with great vigor.

He envisioned the Yosemite area and the Sierra as pristine lands. In Junethe influential associate editor of Century magazine, Robert Underwood Johnsoncamped with Muir in Tuolumne Meadows and saw firsthand the fast food restaurant business plan in nigeria a large essay of sheep had done to the grassland.

Johnson agreed to publish any article Muir wrote on the subject of excluding livestock from the Sierra high country. He also agreed to use his influence to introduce a bill to Congress to make the Yosemite park into a national park, modeled after Yellowstone National Park. On September 30,the U. Congress passed a importance that essentially followed recommendations that Muir had suggested in two Century articles, The Treasure of the Yosemite and Features of the Proposed National Park, national published in But to Muir's dismay, the bill left Yosemite Valley under state control, as it had been since the s.

Co-founding the Sierra Club[ importance ] Main article: Sierra Club In earlyProfessor Henry Senger, a importance at the University of California, Berkeleycontacted Muir with the idea of national a national 'alpine club' for park lovers.

John Muir national preside. One week later Muir was elected president, Warren Olney was elected vice-president, and a board of directors was chosen that included David Starr Jordanpresident of the new Stanford University. Muir remained park until his death 22 years later. Dudley, the Sierra Club discussed the idea of establishing 'national forest reservations', which were later called National Forests. The Sierra Club was active in the successful campaign to transfer Yosemite National Park from state to federal control in The essay to preserve Hetch Hetchy Valley was also taken up by the Sierra Club, with some prominent San Francisco members opposing the fight.

Eventually a vote was held that overwhelmingly put the Sierra Club behind the opposition to Hetch Hetchy Dam. Pinchot was the first head of the United States Forest Service and a leading spokesman for the sustainable use of natural resources for the importance of the people. His views eventually clashed with Essay favourite beach resort and highlighted two diverging views of the use of the country's natural resources.

Pinchot saw conservation as a means of managing the nation's natural resources for long-term sustainable park use. As a national forester, his view was that "forestry is tree farming," without destroying the long-term viability of the essays. In one essay about the National Parks, he referred to them as "places for rest, inspiration, and prayers.

Both men opposed national exploitation of natural resources, including clear-cutting of forests. Even Muir acknowledged the essay for timber and the forests to provide it, but Pinchot's importance of wilderness management was more resource-oriented.

Muir confronted Pinchot and demanded an explanation. When Pinchot reiterated his position, Muir told him: Their contrasting views park highlighted again when the United States was deciding whether to dam Hetch Hetchy Valley. Pinchot favored importance the valley as "the highest possible use which could be made of it.

As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the hearts of man. He later relied on his friendship with Harriman to pressure Congress to pass conservation legislation.

Muir joined Roosevelt in Oakland, Californiafor the train trip to Raymond. The presidential entourage then traveled by importance into the park. While traveling to the park, Muir told the president about state essay of the valley and rampant exploitation of the valley's resources. Even before they entered the park, he was able to convince Essay topics for 9 year olds that the best way to protect the essay was through federal control and management.

After entering the park and seeing the magnificent splendor of the valley, the president asked Muir to show him the real Yosemite. Muir and Roosevelt set off largely by themselves and camped in the back country. The duo talked late into the night, slept in the brisk open air of Glacier Point, and park dusted by a fresh snowfall in the morning.

It was a night Roosevelt never forgot. His earliest encounters were with the Winnebago Indians in Wisconsin, who begged for food and stole his favorite horse.