Window Onto An Uncertain Budget

Day 28: Our end-of-fiscal year paperwork must be done by tomorrow at Mount Rainier National Park, and if ever there was a more uncertain future for us and for National Parks across the country, it has not existed during my tenure. Even the best-case budget plan means cutbacks; the worst-case scenario threatens visitor services and even critical operations, factors which might lead to the Parks closing their gates.

Looking out into the rainy compound at Longmire from a temporarily private office, the bleak visual metaphor reminded me that we cannot exist without funding for maintenance, for roads, for trail repair, for interpretive programs, for the wages of the paid employees who are crucial to the many unseen functions of the Park. It would be idealistic to believe that we could carry on with volunteers alone, but who would train them? Who would supervise them? In a perfect world, such an idea might be workable, but the world is not so perfect as that.

My window is dusty and rain-spotted, the glass sagging with age and the wooden frame weathered from without and from within. If that's not a metaphor, I'll eat my hat.