National Public Lands Day--Hope You Celebrated!

This past Saturday, September 29th, was National Public Lands Day in America.I hope you celebrated.

Our country is in part full of fences and gates that you and I cannot cross. The city where I grew up, Euclid, Ohio, had almost no public access to Lake Erie (Of course, as kids, my brother Denny and I made our own access, going everywhere we damned pleased, swimming wherever we liked). Our home had such a tiny yard (about one tenth of an acre) that we went on family picnics all the time to  the Cleveland Metroparks--that was my first encounter with public lands, the common good, the common wealth of America. This is where we could play baseball, enjoy the woods, breathe the fresh air.

A New York Times opinion piece ("The Geography of Nope," by Timothy Egan, published September 27, 2012) says America has thousands of square miles of national park, national forest, and Bureau of Land Management lands--about the size of Italy. Add to that our beloved state and local parks, and we have something more precious than gold. Politicians, industrialists, and businessmen--keep your hands off these shared national treasures!

Egan makes a point that these public lands are not guaranteed safe. These lands could be bought, sold, or industrialized. And he mentions certain immediate threats to these lands (locate the article here: New York Times article on public lands in the USA).

I am very grateful for these public lands. For those near me: Cleveland Metroparks, Lake County Metroparks, Geauga  County Metroparks, Cuyahoga Valley National Park; and those far away (like Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness, which I visited this past summer). These lands are our common wealth.