Get Out!

It’s that time of year again–for those who may have been procrastinating due to “unseasonable” weather. Time to get to the woods, the shore or a national park. That’s some of what I’m looking to do here in the San Juan Islands.

Getting out in July of 1869, John Muir sought to escape the grime and bustle of the city. But, then herding sheep near Yosemite Valley, he discovered that the Sierra Nevada was being harmed by, yes, human activity.

Areas around the Valley were being opened up to logging, farming and grazing, notes freelancer Amy Crawford in the current Nature Conservancy Magazine (NCM) issue. Muir apparently lamented the large number of sheep left to graze, saying: “Incredible numbers of sheep are driven to the mountain pastures every summer, and desolation follows them.” As a shepherd himself, he both knew what he was talking about and realized his work was contributing to the problem.

Thirty-one years later, in October of 1890, Yosemite was declared a national park due in no small measure to Muir’s conservation efforts. Another 26 years passed before a new agency took over management responsibility of our common places of natural beauty and human recreation. The Centennial of the creation of the National Park Service (NPS) is being celebrated this year.

I’m old enough to remember the controversy over the area that, thankfully, became the Golden Gate National Recreational Area rather than hillside housing and retail development in The City.  According to NCM, this park is the most visited in the country. Embedded in the park is The Presidio of San Francisco where weddings and Frisbee throwing, joyful things, occur regularly. Swelling urban density surrounds the national park.

Sally Jewell, businesswoman-turned-Secretary of the U. S. Interior, offers some thoughts I found interesting in her article,”The Nature of Parks”. About her personal history, I didn’t know she’s an immigrant from the U.K. Her parents and Sally, at age 3, settled in Seattle. That locale spelled the start of Jewell’s passion for nature preserved.

The 1916 law creating the Federal agency gave it the mission: “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” In Jewell’s words, “the parks were to be saved from uses that would impair the environment (like logging and mining)” and open to any visitor from any walk of life.

In 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt consolidated all national parks, military parks, cemeteries and memorials along with other properties under the auspices of the NPS.

Today there are more than 400 National Park “units” to, as Jewell puts it, “enrich souls through nature”. Would you have imagined so many?

Think of the ones you know. Do they include the Joshua Tree National Park, and its 1940s Hollywood set in Pioneertown, in southeastern CA? Beautiful!  A lovely drive from San Diego. Did you recall the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor, or Antietam, or Arlington or the National Mall in DC?

Ever heard of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Wisconsin? Or, Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas? How ’bout Biscayne National Park, a protected marine habitat off the coast of Miami?

Like freebies to health and fun? President Obama has launched the “Every Kid in a Park” initiative, giving all 4th graders and  their families free access to national parks and other public lands for a year. The program, supported by the National Park Foundation, is good through August 31st this year.

♥ GET OUT!  Let Your Soul Be Enriched, Joyfully ♥