This past Sunday I spent part of
my evening talking to Nancy Walker Bush Ellis, president George H. W. Bush’s
only sister. She is 89 years old and lives in Boston, which is where I met her
at a dinner held after my godfather’s faculty concert. We ended up talking
about something that has been coming up again and again in Terrie’s writing –
the threat of increased tourism on the value and beauty of a particular area.
She has a home in Kennebunkport, and was telling me about how disappointed she
was about the tourists and souvenir shops that came with them. This initially
came as a surprise, but made more sense when I read up on her environmental
actions that I previously knew nothing about.
She told me about Walker’s Point in particular, which is an
oceanfront view of the Bush’s summer home--one of the hottest tourist attractions
in Kennebunkport. Once little-known and unoccupied, the site now attracts tons
of people looking for a scenic drive, not unlike the road up Whiteface. We discussed
how difficult it is to balance local economic needs while preserving an area
whose natural beauty attracts an increasing, and often harmful, amount of human
traffic. At this point in the semester, I have no doubt that the Adirondack
Park provides a global case study for this particular dilemma, but this is the
first example I have stumbled upon on my own. At some point during the
conversation, she asked me if this type of management was a field I’d be
interested in pursuing as a career. I replied in all honesty that I had no idea
what I was doing with my life, but that it was a possibility. Upon leaving
later that night, she said, “Have a thrilling life!”
