The major national parks each have a distinct signature to them, depending on the characteristics of the land and what is taking place on that land. Of course, apprehending that signature and forming a culture around it is dependent on the region's history and then the regional culture itself, which in turn does a dance with the land's elemental forces.
What characterizes Rainier National Park is an almost excruciating sense of awe in beholding the formative and transformative forces which shape the land, and an accompanying instinct to stand at a remove from the wilderness as a sharply delineated entity.
This inclination to stand at remove is amplified to the point of near revulsion, as if shrinking back from an electrical shock. Trails are carefully defined and raised up from the dense and untouched ecosystems in the surrounding landscape, and the corridors of destruction are just as carefully left intact to carry out their ends.
Which of course must necessarily be balanced with the desire to maintain a park as a site of recreation and tourism, which is evident enough in the pummeled trails, carved out footbridges, built up banks of rock, carefully maintained campsites and facilities, and the rest of it. The form of the park itself - its infrastructure, its intent, the way in which it is regulated - has been derived from the greater concerns of the civilization itself, as a site of preserved wilderness to enter into and tour, and then to leave again, preferably with minimal impact, yet with a sense of comfort and belonging that requires pulling the edges of the wilderness to meet the sensibilities of the industrial citizen.
But anyway, back to Rainier's signature sense. This is a sense that can be found in all the national parks, but it is a sense that is certainly heightened in Rainier due to both the intense fertility and dynamism of the ecosystems, and the utter destructiveness of the natural forces at play. This gives rise to an odd aesthetic opposition in which ecosystems brimming with life exist right alongside volatile geological and weather-related forces of destruction, constantly transforming yet invigorating the landscape, all of which is left to run its own course without interference.
One can attribute much of this to the central feature of the park: Rainier itself. This powerful volcano has forced the land high into the air, generating a site of turbulence in which water is carried down and throughout the land, in a region that is already fertile thanks to the climate. And at the same time, the volcano and its displacements pulverize the surroundings with lahars, mudflows, floods, and extreme weather.
Lush old growth forests sit side by side with massive corridors of shattered and toppled trees, carried down by torrential floods or snapped over by wind, their building-sized root systems turned up and towering in the air with much of the soil and embedded rock still stuck to them. Washed out trail crossings, crumbling and advancing glaciers, debris-clogged riverbeds, and the aftermaths of countless rockslides are commonplace, and painstakingly left alone.
Granted, this is a signature that must necessarily be perceived and interpreted by an observer with the accompanying sensibility. It is easy enough to imagine some maurader salivating at the seemingly endless stock of timber, geological treasure, living resources, and so on. Of course such was the case in the early European settling of the continent, as can be seen in the breathless accounts of the pristine conditions, the seemingly limitless resources, and boundless fertility of the land. But that is a different kind of consciousness, with its own historical branches and progressions; another story.
At the very least, these sites of immense natural power are enough to punch through the spiritual torpor of neverending industrial growth, and so they are set aside - for the time being - as sort of secular sites of worship. Which aren't necessarily experienced explicitly as religious sites, but which bear all of the imprints you would expect to find in one, such as the heightened awe and reverence, the air of the sacred, the ascetic sensibilities, the beckonings to pilgrimage and tribute, and the like.
Whatever the case, there is something happening in these parks worth reflecting on.
