This Saturday I had the opportunity to visit Valley Forge National Park with a friend of mine. Valley Forge was, of course, a critical military camp for the America’s Revolutionary forces and the park maintains the site as both a historic tribute as well as a wildlife protection area. I was particularly interested in visiting the park considering that this week’s reading, Braiding Sweetgrass, was centered around the juxtaposition between Native Americans’ and American immigrants’ respective relationships with the environment. Author Robin Wall Kimmerer characterizes the Western relationship with the natural world as being historically “abusive.” Therefore, it seemed incredibly ironic that this site, which was arguably one of the most important sites to the success of the Revolution, was also a nature preserve. The American Revolution, which made this portion of the New World an autonomous nation, officially began Americans’ seizure and destruction of this country’s environment under the guise of sovereign right. As we drove into the park, I wondered what Kimmerer would say about this attempt at confluence between nature and American history, the former being viewed as source of all life and beauty to her people and the latter being seen as the source of overwhelming pain and devastation.

We walked up a steep hill to the center of the park. Ahead of us was an ocean of short green grass littered with patches of brown due to the frigid, Janurary temperature. A marble, arch memorial to America’s most heroic loomed over the landscape. We explored a few of the site’s wooden cabins. As I entered the small wooden structures, most of which maintained dirt floors, I could not help but think of the Luther Standing Bear’s piece, ‘Nature.’ I envisioned the Continental solider and wondered if he had saw the dirt of his quarters as the Lakota elders did. Was he able to understand and appreciate the grounding and “life-giving forces” of the earth? It seemed unlikely. I imagined instead that the cabin’s dirt floor was seen as a merely burden to the solider who aspired to fortune and a large, furnished home once the war was over.

We then walked away from the cabins, downhill towards a small body of water. Encircled by trees, I stood amongst the black stones of the small stagnant pond. In preparation for the visit I had read about the park’s “recreational” features on its website and had seen that the area was great for fishing. In looking at the pond I suddenly felt a pang of anxiety, as I was concerned that the park had artificially placed fish in the pond for fishers to catch, essentially creating just a large barrel for these fishers to shoot into. When asked my friend if this was the case, a middle-aged man within earshot of our conversation interjected that fishing was not allowed in this pond. What I relief I thought, until the man continued that my suggestion wouldn’t be a bad idea as due to pollution in the park’s creek, fishing was catch-and-release only. This seemed much worse then the scenario I imagined and served as a truth, which shattered the park’s image as an environmental sanctuary.

I asked my friend to return to the car so that we could drive towards the ‘woodsier’ area of the park in the hopes of seeing some wildlife. The website promised that the park was home to several different, native species. I crossed my fingers that we might see a young red fox. As we walked back, we passed a group of women on a horseback riding tour, most of the women looked awkward atop of the animals as they walked slowly ahead. I wondered if these horses were ever given the chance to run freely in a field or if since birth these animals were limited to these slow, almost mournful processions.

After returning to our car and driving for sometime down a park path, my friend begrudging pulled over and walked with me into the open woods. We walked for roughly a half-hour. I attempted to make as little noise as possible, tiptoeing across the earth, and listening careful for the rustling of cottontail. Sadly, the only wildlife I was destined to see that day came after we returned to the car. As we drove back towards the exit, a medium sized doe blotted across the road ahead of us. “Damn it”, exclaimed my friend when the animal startled him, “I hate when those things are in the road.” I imagined that here, in the place that us humans had supposedly allocated as a protected home for her, the doe was likely thinking the same thing.

As we drove home, I thought to myself how disappointed Kimmerer would be at the park’s paltry attempts as preservation. The park seemed to me to be analogous to the strawberry stand which Kimmerer had worked for as a girl. Like the strawberry stand’s products which were marketed as the freshest fruit of the earth and yet were so incomparable to the sweet gift of the wild strawberries, so too was the park’s preserve only an empty imitation of nature’s true grace.