Igniting Love of National Parkland
I was floating on a raft in the middle of an ocean, rocking back and forth, my long curly hair trailing behind me and as I reached up to push wet hair out of my eyes, I suddenly woke up to a shaking leaky tent, lurching back and forth with my husband and our two children in it. The sandy smooth surface we chose to place our tent turned our to be a dried stream bed and it was filling up, fast. Unzipping the backpack tent we sleepily oozed out and took refuge on the picnic table under the canopy - the same one we had played cards using a candle lantern for light just hours before. I am grateful for our national park memories. For the last 15 years, we have had many adventures during our national park vacations. Finding fossils on the Delaware River; wondering what to do about the rouge male bison standing in the middle of our trail in Yellowstone; trudging through the winter wonderland on the top of Mt. Brown or into an oncoming storm at Two Medicine (submitted picture) just this year in Glacier National Park; hearing my heart beat and feeling insignificant in the vastness of Grand Canyon, yet waking up at the North Rim and feeling more connected to the Earth than ever before. The four of us have logged a thousand trail miles and tens of thousands of feet of altitude gain. We have heard the call of cougars, had our socks bitten by a ptarmigan; and been followed by a mountain goat. But we have lived and we have loved our land community from the river at Zion, the hoodoos at Bryce. the rain forest in Olympic, to the top of Half Dome in Yosemite. Treasured land, magical moments!
Family Vacations
Submitted 8/21/2009, WETA
click for larger image
September 26, 2009
Jolene Siemsen, Eugene, Oregon
Waking early,shivering in the chill of the morning, we headed out for the 7th day in a row, meeting the naturalist at the trailhead for another fact filled, day long hike into the mountains.
When I was 16, my family (including my best friend Karen) drove west from Wisconsin to Glacier National Park. We camped there for two weeks, went to every campfire program, and became 'best friends' with the naturalists. Forty years later,those feelings and images have never left me. Best 16th summer ever!