Why Joe Always Gets His T-Shirt

Even in the wilderness, unmistakable evidence of America's rampant consumer bleeds into the scenery

The visitor centers and gift shops scattered among America's national parks hold little grip on me. Parks need to cash, and people need to show off their travels to far-flung places.

The map is usually enough of a memento. I don't crave souvenirs when cruising through national parks, just the ability to show my route, the sites and the stops. OK, I'll cop to buying a Glacier National Park T-shirt - I needed more than the map from this place I'd dreamt of for years.

But paradoxically, one of those stops has to be merchandise-related. A new tradition began last year, when coming down from Rocky Mountain National Park and feared I'd never again breathed normally. While relishing in my rapid rebound in the much thicker air near the park entrance, I left the park with a handful of postcards and a Rocky Mountain NP T-shirt.

I repeated it twice on this past trip at Yellowstone and Glacier, grabbing a shirt early at Yellowstone and at a stress-relieving stop downhill from the peaks in Glacier. With the visitor centers closing as I got deeper in the park, I worried I missed the chance to fulfill my little obligation.

After undertaking these long journeys on my own, part of me tugs at the notion that by all rights, my brother should be riding shotgun on these drives into the wilderness. But Joe can't come with me. My mother rarely lets him leave her sight these days. Consequently, I have to bring the park to him.

Honestly, the journey and destinations on these trips to America's unspoiled corners never gets lonely for me. I relish any chance to crisscross the Plains and navigate switchback roads that demand speed-limit respect. From the driver's seat, I have no trouble marveling at the majesty, danger and beauty alive on those craggy peaks, steep canyons and bubbling mud. But I need a feeling that someone should be riding shotgun, even if they cannot.

My aunt just send me these two photos from the 1930s, with my grandfather and great-grandfather (both named Tom Melville, the younger of which appears as the photo on this blog). The first shows them standing in Yellowstone during one of the park's sunny moments (they rarely last long on many days).



We had the fortune to be a railroad family, who could travel at a time when a quarter of Americans went without work. The Yellowstone they visited has an untamed quality; the pictures my digital captured in the park tell a story written mostly on paved roads, but they could stand anywhere, at any outlook.

The latter shows them in front of what could be the train station in Livingstone. They all took their long vacations via train into Indian territory in South Dakota and on this trip, onward to Livingstone, Montana, the major arrival point for most Yellowstone visitors in that era.

The landscape at Yellowstone's northern entrance, with its desert peaks and brown peaks would have barely changed since they traveled them, minus the gas stations and paved highway that run from Gardiner to Livingstone.


What goes unsaid in those pictures is who stands behind the camera, likely my grandfather's twin brother, Uncle Dan. The brothers traveled together and in this case, great-grandpa went along (there's more family history, such as my grandfather's first wife and child dying after birth in the 1920s). I wonder if Joe and I might have undertaken the same journeys as our ancestors- but not for too long. You can't dwell on "what if" moments that can never be.

With a National Parks annual pass in my pocket, this year's park possibilities include Mt. Rainer, Crater Lake and Yosemite next year. Since my sister lives in Washington State and old friend Alicia lives in California, being alone on those drives doesn't factor in.

But that won't stop Joe from getting more shirts.