It’s never too late to start planning on turning off the television, shutting down the computer, and getting your butt outside.
The United States National Park Service is the federal agency that manages all of our national parks. The agency was created in August, 1916, through a campaign by Stephen Mather, J. Horace McFarland and journalist Robert Sterling Yard as part of the United States Department of the Interior. It was created through an act of Congress, signed by President Woodrow Wilson, known as the National Park Service Organic Act which mandated that an agency be created “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wildlife 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.”
The National Park System has grown from one million acres of wilderness known as Yellowstone National Park back in 1872, to include over 18 million acres in almost 400 national parks today. To quote the National Park Service, we are truly owners of the world’s greatest collection of nature, history and culture through our National Parks System.
John Muir, Scottish-born American naturalist whose activism help create and preserve the Yosemite Valley once famously said “The mountains are calling and I must go.” Our National Park Service embraces this thought, and encourages all of us to get out and enjoy all of our national parks.
To this end, they’ve created the “Owner’s Guide to America’s National Parks” – a free download authored by Kurt Repanshek available HERE – as well as “Happy Trails: 25 Unforgetable National Park Hikes” which is also a free download by author Kelly Margaret Smith and is available HERE.
Find reading a bit too dry? PBS hosts a video over on their site – “This is America” that tells the story of our national parks. You can watch it HERE.
The world is a wide and wondrous place. We only get one trip around the sun, and it is brief and fleeting. I quote Ferris Bueller when I say “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.“