What's happening to our national treasures?

“The world is so full of a number of things, I ’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”  

Robert Louis Stephenson's words woke me up this morning, as they did yesterday and the day before....(Do you ever get a phrase in your mind and can't let it go?)

I'm pretty sure he meant animate "things" as well as objects made of glass and fabric and wood.

Yesterday, repainting a scuffed and dingy hutch with a fresh white coat of chalk paint,  I musing about how all this energy stirring in my house has taken on a life of its own.  One room spills over into two, then three.  That's my journey right now--not entirely unlike traveling in a car and looking first at one thing, then another, through the window.

What was playing on NPR was a program called "Think."  It just so happened (as I was thinking about wanting to go to Glacier National Park before all the glaciers are gone due to global warming) that Terry Tempest Williams, a naturalist and my mentor at Breadloaf twenty years ago, was being interviewed about national parks.

The program was entitled "National Parks in Peril," and she talked about ways to take better care of our natural wonders.  She's written a book entitled  Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks.

When I started this blog four years ago, I was setting out on my last solo trip to the west coast.  (If I ever do it again, it will be with a traveling companion!) My goal was to see as many national parks as possible, but that was the month the government shut down, so the only one I was able to see before it closed was White Sands.

Terry (from Utah) knows the national parks intimately and describes Texas' Big Bend as her favorite. She's always talked about nature with such awe, and she names the parks she goes to over and over like old friends.

My favorites are Yosemite and Glacier--both breathtaking.

If you're a park lover and nature lover, I hope you'll hear this interview.

http://www.npr.org/podcasts/478859728/think