Yosemite Falls from the valley floor: By Glynn Wilson
“Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you.”
- Sam Elliott as The Stranger in “The Big Lebowski.”
Tales From the MoJo Road
By Glynn Wilson –
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. – Sometimes in this crazy, mixed up world, the written word can make all the difference.
Yet sometimes, no matter how hard you try, the written facts are not enough.
Sometimes when you are on the road you miss the story entirely.
And sometimes when you find yourself in the heat of a major battle, no matter how hard you try, you find yourself on the losing side.
Such is life.
Before there was a Sam Elliott or Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski, there was a writer and influential transcendentalist thinker named Ralph Waldo Emerson. In an essay on “Farming” published in an 1870 collection of stories, Emerson described a beleaguered primal human figure, whose diet included foods derived from plants and animals. Hunting megafauna like bear was a dangerous endeavor, he wrote.
“He is a poor creature; he scratches with a sharp stick, lives in a cave or a hutch, has no road but the trail of the moose or bear; he lives on their flesh when he can kill one, on roots and fruits when he cannot. He falls, and is lame; he coughs, he has a stitch in his side, he has a fever and chills: when he is hungry,” Emerson wrote, “he cannot always kill and eat a bear … sometimes the bear eats him.”
Back in his day, John Muir knew the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat.
And so it is in our life and times as well.
Muir succeeded in talking President Teddy Roosevelt into expanding national protections for forests and creating more national parks. But in his final battle trying to prevent a dam in Hetch Hetchy Valley in the northwestern part of Yosemite National Park on the Tuolumne River, he lost. The lake that was created by the dam is still a water reservoir for the city of San Francisco.
The Battle for Yosemite Names
A few years ago, I wrote about a battle between the National Park Service and private concessionaire Delaware North over the intellectual property in Yosemite National Park.
U.S. Park Service Escalates Battle Over Yosemite Trademark Names With Delaware North
But on the road in the summer of 2019, I missed the story on a legal settlement in that case. I only learned about it recently from a Facebook post on the Yosemite National Park Facebook group.
Sometimes the bear eats you.
Background
First a little background. This goes to the heart of the ongoing struggle to prevent the National Parks from being totally privatized and commercialized.
The mob company Delaware North started with dog tracks in Arkansas, then branched out into running hotels, restaurants and catering services, including the inaugural parties of President Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. By making large campaign contributions, it weaseled its way into contracts with the national parks.
Delaware North became the provider of visitor services at Yosemite National Park first in 1993 under contract with the National Park Service, via the subsidiary DNC Parks and Resorts at Yosemite, Inc. It was a political payoff.
When the contract was canceled due to disgruntlement with its services, and acquired by another concessionaire company, Aramark, in 2015, that company was required to purchase the assets of the previous concessionaire: Delaware North. But that company claimed that the sale did not include its intellectual property, which it claimed included trademarks for many of the historic place names in the park, including the historic Ahwahnee Hotel, Badger Pass, Curry Village, Yosemite Lodge, and the slogan “Go climb a rock.” The private company claimed this was valued at $51 million. Delaware North sued the United States in the Court of Federal Claims in 2015. The NPS disputed the cost of these intangible assets, as well as Delaware North having registered the names in the first place.
In January 2016, it was announced that due to the legal dispute, properties at Yosemite National Park would be renamed effective March 1, 2016, when Aramark’s contract officially began. The Ahwahnee was renamed the Majestic Yosemite Hotel, Camp Curry was renamed Half Dome Village, the Yosemite Lodge became Yosemite Valley Lodge, the Wawona Hotel became Big Tree Lodge, and the Badger Pass Ski Area became the Yosemite Ski & Snowboard Area. Upon Aramark’s transition to concessionaire in March 2016, the trademarked place names were replaced by the alternative names and new signs had to be made.
In July 2019, the National Park Service finally reached a settlement agreement with Delaware North for roughly $12 million, including an agreement to return the trademarks to the NPS upon the conclusion of Aramark’s contract, when the original place names were restored.
Sometimes you eat the bear, after paying dearly for the meal.
Yosemite National Park trademarks dispute
Half Dome in Yosemite Valley: By Glynn Wilson
Hetch Hetchy Dam
“These temple-destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar. Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.”
- John Muir, The Yosemite (1912) chapter 15.
With population growth continuing in San Francisco, political pressure increased to dam the Tuolumne River for use as a water reservoir. Muir passionately opposed the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley because he found it about as stunning as Yosemite Valley. Muir, the Sierra Club and Robert Underwood Johnson fought against inundating the valley. Muir wrote to President Teddy Roosevelt pleading for him to scuttle the project. Roosevelt’s successor, William Howard Taft, suspended the Interior Department’s approval for the Hetch Hetchy right-of-way. After years of national debate, Taft’s successor Woodrow Wilson signed the bill authorizing the dam into law on December 19, 1913.
Muir felt a great loss from the destruction of the valley, his last major battle. He wrote to his friend Vernon Kellogg, “As to the loss of the Sierra Park Valley [Hetch Hetchy] it’s hard to bear. The destruction of the charming groves and gardens, the finest in all California, goes to my heart.”
Sometimes the bear eats you.
John Muir died on Dec. 24, 1914 of pneumonia.
HETCH HETCHY: The Epic Environmental Battle That Changed America
There is a new movement to restore Hetch Hetchy “for a second Yosemite.”
Who would like to eat that bear?
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Read the full essay and see more pictures in the New American Journal.