My head is usually in the clouds as I watch the sun rise until it is high in the sky over Blue Mountains.
Happy day beloved Joy Train Rider! Bless you! How are you doing today? I love you.
I must say it’s an incredible thing when you live in heaven and suddenly come up on something so jarring it viscerally reminds you that you’re still on Earth. But because I’ve had the experience of heaven I know better how to handle the challenge, as I’ll share.
My husband Frank tells a story about a pampered dog and a dog that lives on the margins finding themselves in desperate straits, and asks, “Which one do you think would handle it better?”
To which I respond, “The junkyard dog, of course. Because it’s used to struggling.”
“Actually no,” he says. “The pampered dog did better, because it had not been under stress and had no fear so it was willing to try different things without reservation.”
Ah! So living in heaven in my mind, I can apply that to my how I see the problem and the potential solution.
The problem? You don’t know that there is literally heaven on Earth in your backyard, full of your history and magic and wonder, called the National Parks. Therefore, you cannot help protect them. Consequently, by the time you learn about them they may be gone or severely diminished, and you will never know the difference.
My solution? To blast the cry for help that employees of the National Park System are issuing far and wide. Some of my closest friends are public servants who work for the Park Service which manages the Park System, and I hold the leadership in high esteem.
So when these dedicated public servants are so demoralized they rank their effectiveness at 371 out of 432 agencies, I have no option but to scream at the top of my lungs. In so many other categories employees express that working for the agency to protect our “Crown Jewels;” “ America’s Best Idea” and “ The Soul of America,” is hell.
This means that within a few decades, you will have a very different experience than I have in the national parks. As the Republican wing in Congress that is virulently opposed to public lands strangles the Park Service’s budget, we can logically expect deterioration to accelerate.
I don’t suffer with nightmares but it does haunt me that so many of us, particularly Americans of color such as myself, will go to their graves without ever knowing the Earth where they lived, and what was just around the corner. It almost breaks my heart to see the parks sharing fluffy talk on social media when they should be sharing vital information about the role every ethnic group played in the creation of America, stories that could help bring us together because the Park Service manages the places where pivotal history happened.
It’s hard to care if you don’t know. so I’m determined to draw as much attention to the problem as I can. In 2022, 312 million Americans and foreign tourists visited the national parks. I can affirm that a minimal number were Americans of color, and an even lesser know the problems I’m describing. But too many are retreating from dealing with the issue, with almost a fatalistic acceptance of “how things are.”
The national parks mission needs an infusion of new blood, of new eyes, new creativity. To paraphrase Einstein, “The problems we face will not be solved by the minds that created them.”
I am certain that when urban-based people see the national parks and understand the mission, everything will click:
This rainbow came to visit December 6, and last year one appeared at the same place over the Blue Mountains December 7, as Facebook Memories showed me.
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