America's Best

I have two very dear American friends, Ed and Carol Samulski. Both have visited New Zealand many times, starting with a wonderful 6 month 1996 sabbatical in Palmerston North, where Ed and Carol's son Casey attended school. I have visited Ed, Carol and Casey on countless occasions in their home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Miang and I have a delightful memory of bathing in the warm Atlantic water off Cape Fear on Bald Head Island, where Ed and Carol have a holiday home, just a few weeks before we returned to New Zealand in 2008, and just before I discovered I needed bowel surgery. Daughter Catherine spent a very happy week with them last year. Then again, last year I spent a very enjoyable week with Ed and Carol as part of Ed's festschrift symposium, where his friends and colleagues came from all over the world to celebrate him.

Ed and Carol have given me a very special gift, "America's Best Idea". This is a Ken Burns documentary about the US National Parks. Ken is to the US what Gaylene Preston is to New Zealand, an authentic voice for the very best that America is. If you haven't seen his documentaries on the Civil War and the US involvement in the Second World War ("The War"), then do so. They are extraordinary.

Last year, in September, Miang and I visited Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Zion, Bryce Canyon and Grand Canyon National Parks, as well as Grand Escalante National Monument. It was a simply magical time. And of course, in 2008, during our California sabbatical, we visited Yosemite National Park twice, both with Catherine and with my sister Jeanine and her husband Murray. Now, as we sit and watch the Ken Burns series, we are both moved by this remarkable story about the soul of America, as well as thrilled by our sense of having experienced some of these wonderful places.

Watching this documentary, the sense grew in me that National Parks really do help define the soul of my own country as well. The idea that we set aside for future generations places where we might replenish the human spirit, connecting us back to our ancient roots, and in the face of a relentless human greed to exploit, is to me, profoundly important.




The picture is of Carol, Ed and me, on the Routeburn Track, in Mt Aspiring National Park, New Zealand, 2005.