Ken Burns

The Everglades was long ago drained in its golf courses and strip malls and apartments.

It's one of the most diverse ecological environments on Earth, as flat as it is.

It's just spectacularly diverse.

Yeah.

And Yellowstone would be a down-on-its-luck heyday in the 1950s amusement place called Geyser World.

But it's not that.

You and I and everyone within the sound of my voice own...

the most beautiful spots on the continent, and I would argue in many cases the most beautiful spots on the earth.

It's pretty great.

And it gives us that unfettered ability to go into nature, to get off the trail, which 90% we can admit it, there's nothing wrong with that, 90% of the people stay within 100 yards of any trail, but to get off the trail and go out and see the magnificence of this planet.

It's very humbling.

Yeah, you stand.

And, you know, the thing I like about the parks is that it isn't just what you see.

It's who you see it with.

Like you stand on the rim of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River exposes pre-Cambrian Vishnu Schist that is 1.7 billion years old.

That's almost half the age of the planet itself.

But the Grand Canyon works if you also are holding somebody's hand, right?

It's like who you see it with becomes central to the experience of it.

Miracle to the Grand Geological Library, all of the strata.

It was like a library of telling stories of what was going on.