Welcome to Yellowstone National Park. Welcome to the Matrix National Park Welcome to the National Park

In the previous article, which, by the way, was published a hundred years ago, I showed a town called Sigulda, nestled under a barrel near Riga. The city itself is not very big, but the number of attractions in Sigulda itself and in its surroundings will impress anyone.

Now, I suggest you leave the streets of the city and go down to the Gauja River, where it begins national park. This place came under state protection only in 1973, but history shows that since the 19th century tourists with canes have been actively roaming here. By the way, the cane is the symbol of Sigulda.

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Here is the Gauja River itself.

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You get to the national park by crossing the bridge to the other side, or, if you don’t want to go down, you can use the cable car. But this pleasure did not seem to us the cheapest, and besides, then we would have deprived ourselves of the wonderful views that open onto the river from the bridge.

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The carriage runs at a height of 42 meters, the cost for an adult on a day off is 5 euros. "Yes, well! Better with your legs!"

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It is impossible to visit all the historical and natural attractions of the park in one day, therefore, if the time of your visit to Sigulda is limited, as, for example, with us, it makes sense to immediately decide on the objects that you want to see.

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We decided to limit ourselves to the natural route, which led us to the Turaida complex medieval castle. I promise to write about the castle in the next publication, and now I invite you to enjoy the amazing landscapes that the park is rich in with me.

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The pre-twilight time shrouded everything in an amazing haze of mystery, the long shadows of the trees intertwined into the figures of ancient lizards and dragons, and rare passers-by did not interfere with immersing yourself in this magic. I’m sure that in warmer times a lot of tourists walk along the park’s paths, but we were lucky, the weather was already warm and clear, but people had not yet had time to come. Even the roadside cafe, where we were treated to excellent kvass, according to the bartender, was opened for the first time after winter hibernation.

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Gutman's Cave.

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We begin our systematic movement across the United States from West to East in our Duster with Russian license plates.

Do you know what is the most amazing thing about the USA?
Beauty! It's crazy in the USA beautiful nature. Especially in National Parks. Crazy!

And as proof, there’s a video about our thorny path to Yosemite Park, about its summits overcome and about the meeting with bears.

And the surprising thing is that we knew nothing about it at all. Well, perhaps you've heard about Grand Canyon, yes, they suspected that the wonderful pictures on computer screensavers should have been made in some real place on Earth. They were made in the States. Yes, it really is so beautiful there. Even better.

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So, if you are going to the USA, or, better yet, to California, then I implore you, cross it off your list Los Angeles, Las Vegas and others boring cities... San Francisco, so be it, leave it :) ... And go straight to the National Parks - Yosemite, Sequoia, Bryce Canyon and others - there are plenty of them in the west. And we liked almost all of them.

You can look contemptuously at all these beauties and say that here in Russia it’s no worse. And perhaps this is even true. BUT. We don't know how to sell it. We don’t know how to wrap it in a beautiful wrapper (convenient infrastructure) and wrap it in beautiful legends. As a result, it turns out that our beauty in full is accessible only to a select few crazy people who go on multi-day hikes along untrodden paths with the risk of falling into an unexplored cave or getting lost in a dense forest. And this, of course, has its own romance. And, no matter how hard we try, there will always be places for such hikes in Russia (our country is too big). But how great it would be if we built the same convenient infrastructure at least at key points: put signs on the road, laid out walking paths indicating their complexity and length, arranged convenient observation decks with picnic areas and drew maps where all this would be indicated with detailed advice and comments.

And let the entrance to these parks be paid, but not $30 per car, of course, like in the USA. And even if these parks are not yet involved in saving rare species of animals and plants (although if there are those willing to do so, no one will be against it).

But let them be. For our children who have never seen wild animals. For foreign tourists who have never seen such wide open spaces. For ourselves, who yearn for living nature and beauty.

In Yosemite we met the team responsible for international cooperation between the parks. They have a joint project with a team at Lake Baikal - they raised money in California to buy mopeds for our rangers (foresters?) to control the territory. Maybe this is the first step? Or maybe someone is already excited about the idea and wants to get involved in the process? We will be happy to share contacts;)

Now, I suggest you leave the streets of the city and go down to the Gauja River, where the national park begins. This place came under state protection only in 1973, but history shows that since the 19th century tourists with canes have been actively roaming here. By the way, the cane is the symbol of Sigulda.

5. Here is the Gauja River itself.

The carriage runs at a height of 42 meters, the cost for an adult on a day off is 5 euros. "Yes, well! Better with your legs!"

We decided to limit ourselves to the natural route, which led us to the Turaida medieval castle complex. I promise to write about the castle in the next publication, and now I invite you to enjoy the amazing landscapes that the park is rich in with me.

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16. Gutman's Cave.

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Welcome to the Matrix National Park

For a new generation, the idea of camping in Yosemite seems strange and reminiscent of TV shows of yesteryear where Lucy, Daisy, Fred and Ethel traveled in their air-powered trailer. Some large parks have seen a decline in attendance over the past few years, a trend that precedes terrorist attacks September 11 in New York and Washington. It would seem that this reduction could benefit the parks, tired of the excessive influx of visitors and suffocating from automobile exhaust fumes. But there is a certain delayed danger in this.

Numbers first. Overall park attendance has remained roughly the same over the past decade, but a closer look at the statistics reveals that visitor numbers to eastern city parks and historic sites have increased, while attendance at major parks in the west has fallen. “Statistics suggest there will be a further decline in visitor numbers over the next two years,” quipped Oregonian columnist Michael Milytain in an article on the topic. Indeed, in the mirror of numbers the situation looks dramatic. Visitation to Yosemite National Park has decreased by 16% since 1996. The Grand Canyon peaked in 1991, Yellowstone in 1992, and national park Oregon's Crater Lake - in 1995. The number of visitors to Mount Rainier National Park decreased from 1.6 million in 1991 to 1.3 million in 2002.

Since the late 1980s, their numbers have dropped by nearly half in Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

The main reason for this decline, I think, is the gap that has formed between youth and nature - the transition from the world of real sensations to virtual nature. However, state analysis national parks, conducted by Northern Arizona University, identified two main obstacles: lack of time in families and the widespread perception that parks are only for occasional scenery. Other reasons include shorter holidays and vacations, fewer excursions (from 3.5 to 2.5 days), an increase in the number of expats, especially in California, who were not previously in the habit of visiting wildlife parks, increased entrance fees (by this moment you have to pay $20 for one car to enter) and the belief that national parks are for the rich (a survey of California park visitors found that more than two-thirds of them had an income of at least $50,000 a year). Camping is being replaced by “sightseeing tours” - this is how this type of recreation in the parks is officially called.

In 2001, the number of visitors staying at national park campsites fell by almost a third, which turned out to be the most low rate over the last quarter century. The decline in interest in camping is especially evident among young people under 30; This may be a result of their parents not taking them camping as children. Consequently, they will not teach their children to do this. One California survey used by Milstein shows that more than eight-tenths of campers acquired an interest in camping during childhood. But now more than half of those surveyed were without children at the campsites.

So are parks for children now? The Matrix generation was surgically robbed of the fascination with the mysteries of nature and the risks associated with the desire to know them. While officials work to make the parks safer and more accessible to visitors, city residents heading out are choosing to head to Disneyland rather than to the wildlife. Some children are very disappointed that there are so few Disney wonders in the park. Here's what one high school student wrote when he visited Utah's Rainbow Bridge National Monument, the world's largest natural bridge, carved from stone over present-day Lake Powell more than a thousand years ago: “In a way, The bridge disappointed me. It wasn’t as perfect as in the brochure.” Parents diversified their vacation by renting a jet ski.

This is where the danger lies. If, as attendance at parks and forests falls, the age of visitors increases, where will the political electorate come from that will support parks and forests? It wouldn't be a big deal if there was simply a decrease in the number of visitors. But the fact is that this phenomenon is observed at the very moment when the development of society and its energy needs sharply increase pressure on the natural environment.

The political wind is now blowing in their direction. For example, the US Forest Service, when updating its plan for Southern California's Cleveland National Park for the next fifteen years, considered several radical proposals for the northern third of the forest. They include flooding the canyon to create a 40-hectare reservoir, building two high-voltage power lines 46 and 50 km long, and a new highway passing through the forest between Riverside and Orange counties.

Theodore Roosevelt created the Cleveland National Forest in 1908. Since then, its area has decreased from 800 thousand hectares to 170 thousand hectares of fragmented areas. If the number of people dedicated to preserving these endangered forests dwindles in the same proportion, imagine how many forests and parks will remain by, say, 2108, when our swollen population will be desperate for any scrap of space?

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