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National Public Lands Day 2025
Today is National Public Lands Day. These are recreational and wilderness spaces owned by the American people for our use and enjoyment.
🏞️ Natural Wonders 🥾
Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance. ~Theodore Roosevelt
Let me say, (yet again, for the record) that I like where I live.
I like most places where I’ve stayed for any length in time, but I like Pennsylvania best of all.
I like the hills, the trees, the farmland.
Particularly in 🍂Autumn🍂, Pennsylvania erupts with seasonal color.
The advantage of the hills is that the vantage from the top of one gives you a spectacularly colorful view.
🥾 Public Lands 🏞️
Public Lands 101: What Are Public Lands?
Some of this ornately colored landscape is privately held, but a lot of it is kept for public use.
Simply driving from here to there, we typically pass signs for state game lands and recreational parks.
Think of that. You can just pull into the little parking area at the edge of the space and just go for a walk in the woods, go fishing, go hunting.
It’s freaking awesome. What’s really awesome about it is that it’s a reaction to how game lands and wild spaces were retained for the sole use of the royalty and aristocracy.
We weren’t going to have that over here.
Unless it’s private property or a reserved governmental space (such as a military base), it’s held in public trust for the use and enjoyment of everyone.
All 63 National Parks In One Video!
🏞️ Tonic of Wilderness 🥾
We need the tonic of wildness… At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us. ~Henry David Thoreau
There’s an expression that we hear periodically these days: go touch grass.
It’s a simple prescription for getting in touch with reality and restoring a sense of normalcy.
This is extremely easy to do in my corner of the wilderness.
It applies more to people in cities, but it can also apply to people (like me) who spend a lot of time inside behind a screen.
Despite the fifty or sixty foot tall trees out back or the grass and shrubbery out front, I can still go days without interacting with the abundant presence of nature.
This is preferable for me, but even I enjoy stepping outside for a breath of fresh air and a couple minutes of God’s TV.
We have some squirrels, chipmunks, deer and other wildlife who stop through the yard in any given day.
We’ve also got a variety of birds. Kelly knows the species, but to me they’re just random birds.
I don’t have “Bird Blindness” like Langston Fleury, but I’m not as hip to bird types as Kelly is.
I can tell a vulture from a hawk and a robin from a crow, but that’s about as far as it goes for me.
We all have our own interests.
I don’t care about bird varieties, sports, mechanical stuff or a lot of what other people like.
I like nerd stuff.
Fantasy, sci-fi, comic books, certain TV series, movies, stage plays and even (shock/horror) specific musicals are interesting to me and other stuff isn’t.
Even so, my periodic need to “touch grass” will (weather permitting) be exercised today.
We’re hoping to find a nice corn maze or something fun and 🍂Autumnal🍂 to do for enjoyment on our day off.
I don’t know about “touching grass” so much as touching Kelly.
I’ve been awfully busy lately, and I could use some snuggle time with my bosom buddy and lifelong pal.
💙 Awesome Wife | Awesome Life 🤍
Maybe we won’t even get out of bed… 🛌🏻😴💤
That’s all for today. See you back on Wednesday for pumpkin 🎃 seeds