By Motorboat in Ross Lake National Recreation Area and North Cascades National Park
During the fall of 2012 I spent several days at Ross Lake with my son, Ted, and my granddaughter, Oona, age four. Reviewing a video I made of the trip now several years later, I find that it resonates with a number of themes we are studying in History 373.
First there is the matter of shelter in the wilderness. In the film you will see glimpses of Ross Lake Resort, where we stayed. It’s not just any lodge: it actually floats on the lake, and during the winter it needs to be moved to the middle of the lake to accommodate the winter time fall in the water level. When you wake up, you are on the water on the lake in the middle of the mountains.
Ross Lake Resort has a storied past as a fishing camp, and some people have been coming there for generations.
With the film accompanying this post, I hope to provide you with a “virtual” experience of the lodge and its surroundings. In the film Ted, Oona, and I go out in one of the resort motorboats and make our way up the lake, deeper into the mountains, and up a narrow watery canyon. (I feel cold today in the EWU library just remembering that trip!)
When you watch the film, make connections to course themes. You know the drill. Here are some questions to consider:
- OK, sleeping in a tent in a forest brings you closer to the wilderness than staying in a motel in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. But on a spectrum of wilderness proximity, where would you put Ross Lake Resort?
- During the 1920s national parks director Stephen Mather pushed hard to make the parks accessible by that comparatively new invention, the automobile. Many opposed the idea, but roads were built, bringing millions of visitors to the national parks. Today we see debates about snowmobiles in Yellowstone and helicopter tours over the Grand Canyon. In national recreation areas such as Ross Lake there is a long tradition of allowing motorboats. My question is: can one experience nature and wildness from the thwarts of a motorboat while cruising on a man made lake? OK, here’s the video. After watching it, try to answer the questions below.
- Robert Sterling Yard complained about “park ideals being sacrificed on the altar of gasoline.” Do you see evidence of that sacrifice in this film?
- If Patrick McManus were writing up this trip, what elements might he emphasize?!
— Do you see evidence in this film of “The Theory and Application of [ah, somewhat] Old Men”?
5. If you were “thinking like a mountain” would you object to this little party of three invading your territory?