Impressions of the consummate tourist

Fran Mainella is the kind of tourist that you love to have come to visit. She is appreciative and sensitive to the beauty around her, enthusiastic and articulate about the pleasure she is experiencing and happy to communicate her warm appreciation for all that you have done to ensure her enjoyment of the Upper Delaware River Valley as a recreational resource.

But she’s no tourist. She the national director of the National Park Service and she was in the area this past weekend, visiting the Pennsylvania parks, including Steamtown in Scranton, the Middle Delaware and the Upper Delaware National and Recreational River.

And while I’m sure that she lets everyone know that their park is the most special in the country, somehow I can’t help but wonder whether the Upper Delaware isn’t just a little more dear in her heart because the area is an experiment of cooperation and partnership, something that she is most fond of herself.

“We don’t have to own this to manage this,” she told the audience of 50 at a celebratory dinner at the Inn at Lackawaxen on July 23, where all of the partners that help to preserve and conserve the Upper Delaware River Valley had gathered.

Each had a chance to welcome the director and Congressman Maurice Hinchey and explain just a little bit about what their organization did to partner in the preservation and conservation of the valley. Among the organizations in attendance were the Delaware River Foundation, the Delaware Highlands Conservancy, the Visioning the Upper Delaware Committee, the UDC, the DRBC, the Wayne County Historical Society, the Minisink Valley Historical Society, the Cochecton Preservation Alliance, the National Canoe Safety Patrol, the D&H Canal Transportation Heritage Council, the Water Trail and Sojourn, the Eagle Institute and the Zane Grey’s West Society.

And Mainella said thank you to all. With an uncanny ability to remember everyone that she met, complete with some kind of detail, the National Park Service director treated everyone with an air of sacredness seemingly inspired by their work.

“We would not be able to do what we do here, without you,” she impassioned.

And like every good politician, she said what she had to say and then was exceedingly open to arranging people for a family photo.

“I’m good at this,” she said. “Get yourselves in two lines.”

As she squeezed into the center, arms and heart open wide to her constituents, Fran Mainella seemed to embrace, celebrate and inspire us to continue to be good partners working in collaboration to continue the loving stewardship of the Upper Delaware River Valley.

—Laurie Stuart