The Promised Land

An MLK/Inauguration day hike into the blurred edges of promises made.

For many of us, it was difficult to miss the irony in seeing the inauguration of the 47th president of the United States fall on Martin Luther King day. One man fought for, and gave his life to, the belief that human beings should be judged “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” The other wants to build a wall across our borders, end Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion requirements for federal employees, refuses to admit that our differences make us stronger, and more.

The discord inherent in that pairing was too much to bear. I couldn’t bring myself to watch the inauguration. All day I had been thinking of Martin Luther King’s eloquent and poignant “Mountaintop Speech” delivered on April 3, 1968 at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee just hours before he was assassinated. In that famous speech, Dr. King declares that he has “been to the mountaintop.” And has seen what he called “the promised land.”

There are few mountaintops in Chequamegon Bay so instead, I went down to the lakeshore as the inauguration got underway to get away from cable news and social media and to get a glimpse of another kind of promised land.

It was cold: -8 degrees with a wind chill of -24, the wind raising a curtain of blowing snow that set the islands in a gauze of indistinctness. Despite the cold, my mind was on a late summer day, September 26, 1970, and the promises made as President Richard M. Nixon signed Public Law 91-424.

“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that in order to conserve and develop for the benefit, inspiration, education, recreational use, and enjoyment of the public certain significant islands and shoreline of the United States and their related geographic, scenic, and scientific values, there is hereby established the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.”

(White House photographic archive)

With those words, the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore became law. And with that law, they became a kind of “promised land.” Here, that bill said, we would value not the economic potential of timber or sandstone but the inherent beauty, “inspiration” and recreational opportunities of the islands.

More than just a tip of the presidential pen to these values, the act further promised that management of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore “… shall include specific provisions for— (a) protection of scenic, scientific, historic, geological, and archeological features contributing to public education, inspiration, and enjoyment.”

The beauty and importance of these “significant islands” had been acknowledged and codified. A promise had been made at the highest level of our nation’s government.

In politics, of course, the fate of a bill and the blurring of its original purposes and promises can hang on a single word or phrase. The recent Senate confirmation hearing for Doug Burgum, the nominee to be the incoming Secretary of Interior, highlighted how the changing of a few words has the potential to alter the narrative.

Burgum, a wealthy software mogul and former governor of North Dakota slightly changed a phrase long cherished by lovers of national parks to fit his vision of incentivizing profits from our public lands, a resource he called “the nation’s balance sheet.”

“I think it is part of our duty, not only if I have the privilege of being nominated here but all of us as elected officials, to make sure we are getting a return on the nation’s balance sheet for the benefit and use of the American people.”

(photograph by Greg Nash, The Hill)

The last section of that statement echoes, in a disturbing way, the famous words of the Yellowstone Act of 1872, an act that created not just the first national park in our country but the first such park in the world.

Signed by President Ulysses S. Grant, the Yellowstone Act spoke of protecting the resources of our parks for the “benefit and enjoyment of the people” (words carved into the stone arch at the entrance to Yellowstone) while Burgum spoke of the commodification of those resources for the “benefit and use” of the “American” people. “

(National Park Service photograph)

First, our parks are open to all people, of any nation, not just Americans. And, “use” of natural resources in the way that Burgum was hinting at, is the exact opposite of protecting them, a difference clearly spelled out in the 1916 Organic Act creating the National Park Service. There it is promised that parks will be managed “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

To be fair, Burgum’s comments were not directed at any national park in particular, or even national parks in general. His comments were aimed at “public lands” which includes an array of designations beyond national parks. Later in his testimony he makes it clear that he is not advocating a complete cashing-in program. “Not every acre of federal land is a national park or a wilderness area,” he points out. “Some of those areas we have to absolutely protect for their precious stuff, but the rest of it – this is America’s balance sheet.”

Are public lands simply a “balance sheet”? What is meant by the “rest of it” that Burgum references? Is a “national lakeshore” simply the “rest of it”? Is a “national monument”? Do our national forests or wildlife refuges hold any “precious stuff” in his view? What is the true “precious stuff” of our public lands? For many of us, the definition of what is considered “precious” in our public lands may differ dramatically from that of the administration that was being sworn in as I walked the lakeshore or that of its Secretary of Interior nominee. Such a statement begs us all to look at the breadth of our public lands and into our own hearts to define what to us is “precious stuff.”

What is certainly precious, however is the promise made in the Yellowstone Act, echoed again in the 1916 Organic Act, and signed into law on September 26th, 1970 with the creation of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.

But those promises may be in peril. Statements like those of Elon Musk concerning potential deep cuts in the federal work force, the recent Ways and Means Committee report on selling public lands, and proposals to slash the budgets of those agencies that manage our public lands, combined with the statements of the Secretary of Interior nominee, all serve to blur the lines and weaken those promises.

So, I could not watch the inaugural. Instead, I braved the winds and walked the lakeshore, trying to keep my mind off politics and the wind off my cheeks. But I love these islands. I love our public lands. In the midst of such strong winds (political and otherwise) I could not help but ponder the promises chiseled in stone at the Gateway to the world’s first national park, codified in the various legislations that govern our public lands, and, more importantly, etched into the hearts of those of us who love those lands. And, about what can be done.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter,” Dr. King once wrote. I can’t run away forever, walk a trail every time politics rears its ugly head over the next four years.

Turning around, I retrace my windblown tracks, thinking about what is precious, about political winds, and thinking about the promises that must be kept.

— Jeff Rennicke (all photography by the author unless otherwise noted).