Perhaps there are still some people who don’t know the difference between the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service. Let us review the question one more time. The Park Service is an agency of the Department of the Interior, entrusted with the care and management of the national parks, national monuments (such as Death Valley and the Statue of Liberty) and what are called National Recreation Areas—Lake Mead, Lake Powell, etc. The Forest Service is a branch of the Department of Agriculture, alas, and was given charge, long ago, by Congress, of our national forests. The parks were established primarily as wilderness areas, to be kept so far as possible in a state of nature, but open (in some manner) to the enjoyment of the people. The forests, on the other hand, have been meant for various uses—watershed protection, wildlife habitat, human recreation, livestock grazing, logging, even mining. Since World War II the last three uses have become predominant, usually at the expense of the first three.

From Abbey’s Road (1979)

There is a certain built-in antagonism between the two agencies. Park rangers sometimes refer to forest rangers as “tree farmers” (this was once considered an insult); while the latter like to call the former “turkey herders” or “posie sniffers.” No matter. The difference between one service and the other, and between national parks and national forests, is not so great as it once was. With mass motorized recreation becoming a bigger and bigger industry in itself, the national parks have been subjected to increasing commercial development: paved roads, motels, hotels, marinas, gas stations, stores, banks, hospitals, cloverleaf intersections, parking lots, traffic lights, even jails. I know of no place in the national forests that has suffered the grotesque and incongruous development of Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Great Smokies.

In any case, I myself have worked for both agencies, in both lands of places, and can testify from ample personal experience that the difference between the Park Service and the Forest Service is more nominal than real: both labor under the domination of the GNP, the NAM, the corporate pursuit of pecuniary happiness. “Business means America and America means business,” says your friendly U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “America’s business is business,” says John Calvin Coolidge, our last honest president, and he was never more right than now, here, in the Sick Seventies, when even sex therapy and spiritual fulfillment have become growth industries. (My cousin Gus told me the other day, with barely subdued excitement, that he has nailed down the Transcendental Meditation franchise for Winkelman, Arizona. Better than Pizza Parlor or Midas Muffler—a gold mine.)

What has all this whining and complaining to do with Smokey the Cop or the out-of-doors, that other world out there, beyond the expanding labyrinth of walls that cuts us off from what we long for, more and more, as it recedes into our past? Not much. Very little. But some.

For seventeen seasons, off and on, I have worked as a ranger, as a fire lookout, as a garbage collector, for the Park Service, occasionally for the Forest Service. Since most of these jobs involved, to some extent, what is called “protection” (law enforcement) as well as “interpretation,” I too have played the role, or more exactly played at the role, of Smokey the Cop. I wore a uniform and a badge, I carried a .38 in the glove compartment of a government pickup, I sometimes harassed people, especially hippies. And shot two dogs and a number of beer cans. In self-defense.