It's Just Water - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/101/niagara

I don't care for nature. It doesn't do anything for me.

I go to the Grand Canyon, and it's just a whole lot of nothing. Or rather, it's a whole lot of holes. It's one giant hole int he ground. Wow, it's impressive just how much a river can erode stone. It's almost like it shows that it takes time for things to happen and that the world is older than just a few thousand years because there's no chance in the world that a hole that big is going to be made in just a few years. Other than that, it's just a giant hole.

I went to Yellowstone, and instead of a giant hole, it was forests with geothermal vents and pockets throughout the entire park. Wow, it's a green place where occasionally the water is really really stinky and hot. That's just what I wanted in my life, to go and see hot water that smelled like eggs.

Rivers don't do anything for me, forests are just a place to get lost in, ponds and lakes get boring after a while, and it isn't anything that is super exciting. I am simply not the type of guy that gets amazed at the 'grander of nature' (I'm thinking that I'm spelling that wrong, because I want it to be something like grandeur, but it's late and I don't want to try to find the spelling of the right word that spell check won't get angry at).

I don't know what it is, but big natural places like that don't really do anything for me. Even places that are man made that people are super astonished by I look and and nothing really happens. Wow, you built something really tall, good job for you. Or even, wow, you built something that's an interesting shape, good job for you. Nothing about tall buildings, weirdly shaped buildings or anything like that really speaks to me. It's just things, and in nature, it's just nature. There's never been something that I just have to go see, because it's just more rocks and trees doing something weird.

I don't understand why people have to go and see some of these places. Why do you have to see Niagara? Go to the swimming pool, stand under one of those mushroom waterfall things, and then try to have a conversation with someone. Take that annoying roar of water. . . and multiple it by fifty and that's what your time at Niagara is going to be like. WHAT DID YOU SAY!? I'M SORRY I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER HOW BEAUTIFUL AND SERENE NATURE IS BEING RIGHT NOW!

Yellowstone? Go out and get lost in some trees. If that isn't good enough for you, once an hour go outside and stand in your front yard by a broken sprinkler head and turn up the water presure as high as it can go, and that would still be a better trip because you'd be only a few seconds away from your bed and not have to sit through a super boring car trip just to see a spout of water jump out of the ground. It's a mighty impressive spout of water, but it sure is not worth any amount of time in a car that it actually takes to get to Yellowstone, even if you live near by.

I think this is all because Las Vegas ruined me. Las Vegas is the world of excess. You want the New York skyline? We've got that. You want Paris? We've got that. You want water that goes up in the air every hour? Ours dances to music. You even want to have one of the world's tallest bulidings that has amusment rides strapped on to the top of it just waiting to throw you to your death when one thing finally goes wrong? Yup, we've got those too.

Vegas ruins everywhere else because everywhere else is boring. What am I going to get in Yellowstone that I don't get in Vegas? Air? We've got that. The chance to possibly see a bear? Spoiler - I can see a polar bear in Las Vegas.

Whatever it is, those big national parks that everyone seems to love, I want nothing to do with. They're boring. They're boring to get to, they're boring once you're there, and they're super boring the longer you stay there. Going to visit one of them as a vacation is one thing, but staying there for more than one day is just murder because there's nothing to do. To me, spending time in a national park is one of those things that sure, you can do it once real quick to mark it off your 'you need to do this to be a member of society' list, but past that I don't get why in the world people are so obsessed with it.