Blog and Photos by Garrett Fulton
Imagine if right now you could undo every mistake that you have ever made in your life up to this point and start tomorrow with a completely clean slate. What would that be worth to you?As strange as it may sound, that is exactly the opportunity that the early American settlers had before them as they stepped off on to a new continent. It could have been a fresh new start on an untainted, clean land of unlimited possibility. They could have taken the previous two thousand years of European history and used it as spring board to launch the perfect civilization and culture.
All the things that the Europeans did well and right up to that point could have simply been copied and continued.On the other hand, every poorly planned city, every disastrous civil engineering project, every dysfunctional public system, and every unsightly blemish of disorganization, bad laws and chaos could have been noted and completely avoided. Put plainly, the new settlers in this vast new land could have avoided every sin and mistake of their European forefathers...............but they didn’t.
Now lets jump to the modern day....are you still with me?
While riding through the town of Cody, which had been described to us as "very interesting", and "really historical", I found myself once again shaking my helmet in disgust. The road out was loaded with ticky tacky trinkety tourist trash. T-shirt shops, theme restaurants which capitalized on names of note, stands selling fireworks, road side "museums" and numerous other stores set up shop where a person could buy useless novelties engraved with a location to be put like worthless trophies on bookshelves at home to collect dust. The road side was cluttered with signs, arrows and commerce all vying for business, but in a room where everyone yells, no one is heard.
I had to pause and reflect. What had we become as a society? What happened to that fresh start? What had we done to that clean slate we were afforded? Why did we abandon the goddess of beauty and start our malignant worship to the demon of commerce? We could have had warm cozy pubs with stone walls and inviting wooden signs. Instead we have towering plastic icons selling to us miles in advance Mc Donald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Shell Gasoline. We could have had gorgeous brick buildings and cobblestone. Instead we have entire treeless housing developments with plastic siding ,asphalt roofs and power lines.
Building styles conflict, commerce is king and efficiency is deified. America has sacrificed the child of culture for convenience, murdered tradition for money and abandon good taste for comfort. Like a child with peanut buttery hands let loose in a fabric store, everything he touches is stained.
How ironic then that a beautiful national park like Yellowstone is merely an area that Americans haven’t been allowed to touch. It required no work, no planning, nor any design. It is an untouched reminder of the gorgeous original slate that we as Americans had but squandered. It is an area that is fenced off, away from the sticky peanut buttery hands of American commerce and bad taste. What went wrong?
Imagine if right now you could undo every mistake that you have ever made in your life up to this point and start tomorrow with a completely clean slate. What would that be worth to you?As strange as it may sound, that is exactly the opportunity that the early American settlers had before them as they stepped off on to a new continent. It could have been a fresh new start on an untainted, clean land of unlimited possibility. They could have taken the previous two thousand years of European history and used it as spring board to launch the perfect civilization and culture.
All the things that the Europeans did well and right up to that point could have simply been copied and continued.On the other hand, every poorly planned city, every disastrous civil engineering project, every dysfunctional public system, and every unsightly blemish of disorganization, bad laws and chaos could have been noted and completely avoided. Put plainly, the new settlers in this vast new land could have avoided every sin and mistake of their European forefathers...............but they didn’t.
Now lets jump to the modern day....are you still with me?
While riding through the town of Cody, which had been described to us as "very interesting", and "really historical", I found myself once again shaking my helmet in disgust. The road out was loaded with ticky tacky trinkety tourist trash. T-shirt shops, theme restaurants which capitalized on names of note, stands selling fireworks, road side "museums" and numerous other stores set up shop where a person could buy useless novelties engraved with a location to be put like worthless trophies on bookshelves at home to collect dust. The road side was cluttered with signs, arrows and commerce all vying for business, but in a room where everyone yells, no one is heard.
I had to pause and reflect. What had we become as a society? What happened to that fresh start? What had we done to that clean slate we were afforded? Why did we abandon the goddess of beauty and start our malignant worship to the demon of commerce? We could have had warm cozy pubs with stone walls and inviting wooden signs. Instead we have towering plastic icons selling to us miles in advance Mc Donald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Shell Gasoline. We could have had gorgeous brick buildings and cobblestone. Instead we have entire treeless housing developments with plastic siding ,asphalt roofs and power lines.
Building styles conflict, commerce is king and efficiency is deified. America has sacrificed the child of culture for convenience, murdered tradition for money and abandon good taste for comfort. Like a child with peanut buttery hands let loose in a fabric store, everything he touches is stained.
How ironic then that a beautiful national park like Yellowstone is merely an area that Americans haven’t been allowed to touch. It required no work, no planning, nor any design. It is an untouched reminder of the gorgeous original slate that we as Americans had but squandered. It is an area that is fenced off, away from the sticky peanut buttery hands of American commerce and bad taste. What went wrong?
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