Naturally by Amy Scheer
Park ranger/professor offers tips for enjoying America’s national parks
Ranger Lundberg
A woman walks into a ranger station. “These natural bridges,” she says, looking around at information about Natural Bridges National Monument, Utah. “They man- made?”
Park ranger Ann Lundberg has heard it all. She’s fielded eccentric questions, met the self-proclaimed twin brother of Jesus, and awakened to the sounds of 70 buffalo surrounding her tent.
And at the start of every summer, when her duties as a Northwestern English professor taper off, she’s ready for more. Having begun her academic career in pursuit of a geology degree, Lundberg was sidetracked by John Van Dyke’s The Desert, a poetic recounting of his three-year journey through deserts in the American Southwest at the turn of the 19th century. She knew while reading it that her two interests—literature and the natural world—could meet at the crossroads and keep on traveling together.
Lundberg spent summers as a child building sand castles along the base of the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado. She went on to work as a seasonal ranger at national park sites in Utah, North Dakota and Wisconsin. Ask her about the National Park Service (NPS), a system of nearly 400 sites across the nation, and she’s got plenty good to say.
Why visit a national park? Why not beat the heat at Mall of America?
“For peace of mind,” says Lundberg. “If you visit parks in the right way—really see them, take time to actually stay in the park, to walk, to sit still—it can really bring you a sense of peace. They’re reflective places. They’re peaceful.”
What’s the right way? The ranger knows best.
“Don’t overplan; plan to do things well rather than to do everything. See something, and see it well.”
Beyond a few favorite parks, Lundberg is hesitant to name a “best of” list of any sort. “It’s close to impossible to choose,” she says. If pressed, she’ll tell you to see the Grand Canyon before you die—Yellowstone, too, and one “ruin” park, preferably Hovenweep in Utah.
And though she can’t help favoring the wildflowers that bloom at Cedar Breaks, Utah, in late June/early July, or the 5,000-year-old bristlecone pine trees at Great Basin National Park, Nevada, she still insists that each traveler find her own way through the hundreds of unique opportunities the National Park System has to offer.
“You make your own experience wherever you go,” says the ranger. Naturally.
The Ranger’s Preferred Paths
Though her journal is stamped with many a park’s name (visitors can secure small park “passport books” for this purpose, but she prefers some extra room for notes), Lundberg has a soft spot for sites where she’s worked and for roads less traveled, to borrow from poet Robert Frost—as any good English professor park ranger should.
Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, Wisconsin
“For Midwesterners who can’t afford to drive far with gas prices.” Reach four of these 21 islands (Oak, Raspberry, Stockton and Madeline) on Lake Superior by ferry or tour boat. Be sure to visit the Civil War-era Raspberry Island Lighthouse, where Lundberg spent three summers giving tours and living alone on the island. Stay all day if you can, she says. And do what? “Build sand castles on the beach. The more adventurous can rent kayaks and tour the less accessible islands and shoreline ‘sea caves.’”
Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota
See where Roosevelt found solace from heartache in 1883 and visit his ranches; hike and mountain bike; hang with the bison and explore the wilderness of the badlands. Also, stop by the Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site (NHS) and the Knife River Indian Village NHS.
Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, Colorado
“My family and I loved the great sense of peace there. It’s relatively small and unhurried. The forms of the sand dunes are graceful, peaceful. It’s beachlike but with mountains and no waves. Be sure to spend time wading in Medano Creek.”
Natural Bridges National Monument, Utah
The first park where Lundberg worked, Natural Bridges is small, seldom-visited—and gorgeous. “Hike through the canyons and under the bridges; hang out with the lizards, be followed by a mountain lion.” Don’t just drive by the overlook and peek out of your car, she says; walk a mile from the parking lot and you’ll have some time to yourself. 