**Basic Principles of Interpretation**

**Amy Galperin -- Principle Two**

Freeman Tilden\'s second principle\... Information is not equal to
interpretation. But interpretation\'s based on information.

What does this really mean? And, actually, a lot of people when they see
this principle, they kind of go back to me and say, \"I understand
it\... Interpretation is not information, but it\'s based on
information.\" But what does that really mean? Well, let me give you an
example.

Suppose we\'re in a hillside in Colorado right outside of Rocky Mountain
National Park and we walk up to that hillside and we come up to a
Ponderosa pine and I say, \"Okay, let\'s sniff this bark. If you scrape
it and sniff it, you get a delightful vanilla smell, and you see how
cinnamon this bark is? This is a Ponderosa pine tree. And you see it has
needles here, and the needles are in groups of two, and that\'s how you
identify the Ponderosa pine. And if you look over here, you see right
over here there\'s this red little plant. This red little plant is
fireweed. And if we walk over here, we see this other tree,\" and on and
on and on, just talking about the things. And basically just giving the
visitors information.

Let\'s go back and do it again. Here we are at the hillside. \"Okay,
folks, before we head up this hillside, you look out on this hillside
and you see there are some cinnamon trees out here, and then there\'s a
grassy area in front of the cinnamon trees. Those cinnamon trees are
called Ponderosa pine. And the Ponderosa pine in this grassy hill is
actually talking to me, and what it\'s saying is that this area has had
a lot of fire go through, because Ponderosa pine is a fire species.

Let\'s go up to the tree. And you see this nice cinnamon bark. We can
scrape on the bark and smell the vanilla. This nice cinnamon bark is
actually very thick, and this grassy area, if a fire came through here,
the fire would spread very quickly, and it would travel very fast,
burning through the grasses, and that\'s actually going to be a very
light fire. That\'s not going to go through and damage the living part
of this tree because of its thick bark.

But if you see over there on that hillside, that hillside over there
actually has also Ponderosa, but you see they\'re growing close
together, there are bushes coming up underneath the tree. That\'s an
area where there hasn\'t been much fire recently, and if a fire went
through there with all those tight trees and all those shrubs coming up,
that\'s going to be a pretty hot fire, and that could actually damage
the tree.

If we were back here in the 1850s, most of the hillsides would look like
this hillside\... lots of open space, trees scattered, and the grasses
coming up. That area over there with those dense trees in it and a lot
of lodge pole pines in there, very stick‑figured lodge pole pines, that
area exists mainly because there\'s been no fire.

Fire helps keep this opening here. In fact, BLM is now using fire to
maintain these openings here because this is much better for wildlife.
Elk can go through here. Elk find lots of food here. Deer enjoy this and
will eat some of the shrubbery growing up along here, but fire will keep
the shrubbery low. That area over there that\'s real dense, if you walk
through there, and I\'m sure most of you don\'t want to, but if you did,
you would find in the center no birds, because it\'s so dense there\'s
very little food in that. That\'s what happens when we keep out fire.\"

So what\'s the difference between those two programs I gave you? One
where we\'re identifying all the plants. And one where I\'m telling you
a story.

When Freeman Tilden talks about information is not equal to
interpretation, what he\'s really talking about is stories.
Interpretation is based on stories. Interpretation uses the information
and tells a story. That is the key between interpretation and
information, is stories.