52 WoLP #48: thoughts on nature in our parks by Denise Dahn

Denise Dahn artist, writer, and voice for urban nature has written an excellent and well-trafficked opinion piece in the Seattle TimesThe urban wild needs protection in Seattle parks. In it, she wisely suggests it’s time for the city to step and take a stand:

Seattle City Council should create an urban wild ordinance to permanently fund and protect natural areas in Seattle parks. The areas should be managed specifically for ecological processes — wildlife habitat, soils, water — but also to preserve an essential experience for people: the magic of the urban wild.

Anyone who has taken a walk through our forested parks knows why Dahn would suggest this: encroaching noise, off leash dogs, mountain bikes tearing up the trails. But what you may not know is this:

…most of us know that meaningful contact with nature tends to be slow, quiet and reflective. It’s easier on the nature, too. A Parks Legacy Plan survey found most people, 78 percent, use parks for simple walking….

Those of is who love our parks as a refuge know this is true, and that a simple 15 minute walk in nature can restore and revive a soul like nothing else. The vast majority of park lovers out there who do not know what they have, and will not know until they lose it, also need to step up and become aware of what’s at risk. Losing urban nature such as we have in Lincoln, Schmitz and many other seattle parks, would be a major impact on the character and legacy of Seattle itself.

One of the most significant and costly threats to park nature is recreational development. Dahn sites an interesting comparison:

We also pay heavily for recreational interests. Developed parkland is much more expensive to maintain than natural areas. Unlike Portland, where 70 percent of total parkland is left natural, Seattle is just the opposite: Eighty-six percent of our parkland is developed or landscaped. Only 14 percent is natural.

It’s a great essay, do check it out here

52 Weeks of Lincoln Park is a year-long homage to my lovely neighbor and friend LP. Xoxo

52 WoLP #46-47: things happen in nature

An amazing poem about another Park or maybe all parks everywhere, and all of us who visit them.

In the Park
By Maxime Kumin

You have forty-nine days between
death and rebirth if you’re a Buddhist.
Even the smallest soul could swim
the English Channel in that time
or climb, like a ten-month-old child,
every step of the Washington Monument
to travel across, up, down, over or through
–you won’t know till you get there which to do.

He laid on me for a few seconds
said Roscoe Black, who lived to tell
about his skirmish with a grizzly bear
in Glacier Park. He laid on me not doing anything. I could feel his heart
beating against my heart.
Never mind lie and lay, the whole world
confuses them. For Roscoe Black you might say
all forty-nine days flew by.

I was raised on the Old Testament.
In it God talks to Moses, Noah,
Samuel, and they answer.
People confer with angels. Certain
animals converse with humans.
It’s a simple world, full of crossovers.
Heaven’s an airy Somewhere, and God
has a nasty temper when provoked,
but if there is a Hell, little is made of it.
No longtailed Devil, no eternal fire,

and no choosing what to come back as.
When the grizzly bear appears, he lies/lays down
on atheist and zealot. In the pitch-dark
each of us waits for him in Glacier Park.

52 WoLP is a year long witness of the lovely Lincoln Park in West Seattle. enjoy!

52 WoLP #44-45: early morning quiet

Recently I’ve had a few chances to head out for the park with in the early early morning with a thermos of sweet tea, bundled in a coat to watch and listen as the new day begins. I wait for the first birds, the soft light of sunrise spreading across the water, the sound of the tide coming in..it’s a gorgeous way to start the day.

A quote for your enjoyment:

“To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.”
― Terry Tempest Williams

52 Weeks of Lincoln Park (52 WoLP) is a year long visit with a beautiful place. Enjoy!