Preserving Yosemite

I remember the first time I ever saw Yosemite. It was 1967 and I was 6 years old. There were still some fish in the Merced River. The meadows were not wiped out from the hordes of tourists that Jones claims infest the valley “only 3 or 4 weekends each summer.”

Over the last 22 years I have visited Yosemite many times, spent summers working there. Make no mistake about it, Yosemite has changed. It has changed in a thousand little ways; less flora, more trash, more cars, more people. There is no silence. Walk 100 feet from the road day or night and you will hear it, the grinding hum of traffic echoing off the canyon walls like a chain saw in a cathedral. It didn’t used to be that way.

Jones has been spending too much time at the Awahnee Hotel in that comfortable chair looking through rose-colored reading glasses. Take a walk outside, nothing much has changed inside, except maybe the dinner menu.

BRIAN SCHNEIDER

Burbank