Earlier this summer I took a trip to a national park — Yellowstone, to be exact. Yesterday, the birthday of the National Park Service, helped me think about my own relationship to wilderness and to the idea of our national parks. It is, perhaps, the one area where I feel a strong sense of patriotism, and even in that it isn’t all that strong. Still — our national parks and our areas of wilderness that have been set aside for people to enjoy in their own untrammeled and natural setting is something I take pride in — that back in our nation’s past some people had the wisdom to set aside land from being used for commercial enterprises, energy extraction, or something else entirely. As a kid we were taken…