If A Tree Gets Tagged in the Woods ...
Plus, Urban Meadows, Crowds in National Monuments, Quiet Parks, Ranger Programs in Virtual Reality, Poems in Space and more
howdy
I feel like I am sort of obligated to chime in with thoughts whenever a big outdoor / public lands vandalism story happens, and one is in the news again. I am, however, extremely happy to note that things haven’t been quite as stunning as the Casey Nockett saga of 2014 or the following year’s truly silly back-and-forth with graffiti artist Mr. Andre, who also self-published his vandalism inside Joshua Tree National Park on Instagram, then threatened to sue me for writing about it. Early social media was a VIBE, people.
Although it’s on a much smaller scale, a story about a teenager in Glenville, New York spray-painting trees in the Indian Kill Nature Preserve with the phrase PROM? as part of a promposal did manage to bubble up from Reddit to Newsweek this week. And it’s a reliable source of online outrage, so it may hit further by the time this reaches your inbox.
A few thoughts about this: First, are these promposals becoming the new gender reveal parties (which are awful for a variety of reasons) and if so, how long until one of them sets 23,000 acres of forest on fire? Second, is the sadly predictable response of commenters asking what’s the big deal it’s just a bunch of trees? another glaring example of our rampant Nature Deficit Disorder?
But many users weren't too worried about the painted trees. One commenter said: "Of all the stupid s*** kids do, that one is pretty low on the list," while another wrote: "Seriously. It was probably some nervous 16-17 year old that thought it might [be] cute and was thinking like a kid. The trees will be fine. Everything is okay."
As other commenters noted, the trees will survive this (it’s oil-based paints that can really do damage). The bigger issue is that graffiti begets graffiti (and litter and other behavior you probably don’t want in a nature preserve) and it reduces the value of a tree to the background prop of a quick, flashy presentation. And, of course, it’s hard for someone to build a deeper connection to the natural world when that natural world is covered in self-serving advertisements for personal attention.
The best-case scenario? Local hikers get together and do a proper graffiti removal and maybe a nice park cleanup volunteer day, too. And if they run into any bureaucratic snags along the way trying to do the right thing the right way, then here’s some helpful tips from Purdue University that will set them on a good path …
The Big Story
Something to talk about
Moving at the Speed of Government
Even if you’re only mildly paying attention to the way new parks and monuments are designated and designed in this country (or maybe a bike lane in your neighborhood, or a new stop sign, or just about anything), you’ve probably at some point asked yourself why the heck is this taking so long to get done?
There have been a lot of opinion pieces lately about the ever-increasing amounts of red tape needed for projects of all shapes and sizes (see: a half-block bike lane to nowhere in Los Angeles that added $2 million to construction costs), and how maybe in our efforts to make sure nothing got done too hastily or sloppily we might have accidentally made it so that nothing gets done period.
One such example was featured recently in Lookout Santa Cruz, where Santa Cruz County’s sole national monument was designated in 2017 but has seen planned public opening dates come and go in 2021, 2022, and now 2023. The current snag du jour? A parking dispute.
Of course, it’s a bit more complicated than that, involving predictions of visitor increases, lots of land use agreements, non-profit mission charters and many other forms of municipal arcana, but the net result is the same. And in the descriptions of public meetings, it seems like most people are just checked out of this maddening, tedious process entirely.
Planning for an increase in visitors will be a good thing in the long run, though. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison for a lot of reasons, but the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument in Southern California, which was named in 2014, has seen a notable increase in visitation since its title bump. The most recent attendance count (for the year 2021) saw 4.6 million visitors—a million-person increase over the last count in 2011. For the record, that exceeds the annual visitation of Grand Canyon and Yosemite National Parks.
I was asked about this visitation increase in the Los Angeles Daily News, and I said what I often say when presented with news like this—more people in the outdoors is good, as long as we can keep offering new places for them to go and making sure things don’t get swamped. And that I also wish increased visitation brought increased federal funding, too.
Sure hope they can figure out that parking issue out in Santa Cruz, though.
Modern Hiking
Good stuff from the Modern Hiker site
Hike in the High San Gabriels
Here is a little secret I’m going to let you in on right now—the ‘High San Gabriels’ is probably my favorite region to hike in the Los Angeles area. Especially this time of year when the crowds are starting to form around the low-level frontcountry trailheads and June Gloom threatens to prevent you from getting on a trail anywhere.
The High San Gabriels—which I define as the peaks and canyons from the central to the far eastern end of the mountain range—have a lot to offer visitors. High altitude peaks. Waterfalls. Fragrant pine forests and pinon juniper woodlands. Some of the best vistas in the region. And in most cases, lots of solitude, too.
Our writer Andrew Shults just shared this exemplary route on the world-famous Pacific Crest Trail just past the Chilao Visitor Center, and it’s well worth your time and effort.
Your Parks
Your Places
Make Some Noise for the Country’s First Urban Quiet Park
If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I love my hiking, I love my wilderness, I love my backcountry adventures—but I also deeply love the humble city park.
This was a journey for me. I used to look past city parks to the mountains and canyons beyond city limits, but while working on Discovering Griffith Park (the first and ONLY in-depth guidebook for one of the country’s largest and wildest urban wildernesses), I was shocked and surprised to read the park co-founder’s thoughts about the importance of city parks to cities and societies. Noted Complicated Figure Griffith J. Griffith described city parks as “safety valves” for urban environments over 100 years ago, and I think that sentiment is still true. So I was delighted to see a park in my new neighborhood was recently named the first Urban Quiet Park in the United States.
Mount Tabor Park in Portland, Oregon is the ninth such park in the world. It sits atop an extinct volcano, which is cool enough, but it was given the award for its proximity to downtown Portland and the fact that its variety of terrain offer lots of quiet spaces for Portlanders to escape that hustle and bustle and noise pollution. Good on ya, Mount Tabor! Via KPTV.
Tech Talk
Gadgets, Technology, and Hype
Virtual State Parks
This week, California State Parks launched a new app called the Virtual Adventurer, which lets users download free virtual journeys through nine California State Parks. You can access all the content offline and bring the app with you on your visit, where you’ll have interviews with tribal elders, demonstrations by park rangers, living history re-enactments, 3D models of artifacts and buildings and lots more. If you’re at home, you can also make a ranger pop up on your bookshelf if you want.
I explored the Bodie State Historic Park and Anza-Borrego Desert State Park programs and it was nice to see was tailored to its park’s unique aspects—the Bodie program let me fly around a 3D animated stamp mill while Anza-Borrego’s let me hear from tribal elders about the impact of the stagecoach routes on their communities.
The parks currently participating in the app are:
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
Bodie State Historic Park
Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park
Jack London State Historic Park
Montaña de Oro State Park
Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area (Oso Flaco Lake)
Old Town San Diego State Historic Park
Point Lobos State Natural Reserve
Sue-meg State Park
You can download the app by pointing your mobile device at this image.
Leafing Out
Plants!
Let Our Plants Grow Wild
So, I know just a few paragraphs earlier I had some nice things to say about city parks. But city parks have lots of different purposes, and it follows, then, that they also have different kinds of designs. A park that has things like tennis courts, swimming pools, and picnic areas is going to be built a little different than an area that’s specifically set aside for a wilderness or watershed reserve. A few weeks ago, the author of the book Urban Jungle: the History and Future of Nature in the City, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times that basically pitched an idea for more urban parks in the “wild” vein than the manicured one.
He's not pitching replacing existing parks, but rather building out miniature “lightly cultivated wild spaces, microforests, and roadside meadows,” although he suggests kind of letting the toughest plants go wild for a bit and I’d rather see a bit more managed plants from the local biome to make sure invasives don’t spread. Still, the idea is an interesting one—especially if we’re looking at adding spaces like green roofs and bioswales to our urban parkland. Via New York Times.
One More Thing
Oh yeah, before I go …
The Poetry of Space
If I mainly talk about outdoor news here, you can consider this EXTREMELY outdoor news.
A few weeks ago, I got to hear U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón speak as part of a lecture series. During a question session, she casually mentioned that she had just been asked by NASA to write a poem for their Europa Clipper Mission to study the watery moon of Jupiter for signs of life. She had said the task was already difficult enough before she found out the poem would be engraved on the probe in her own handwriting and sent 1.8 billion miles into space. The probe is scheduled to launch in October of 2024.
Hear Ada Limón read her poem here.
You can also add your own name to the spacecraft on a microchip here. Which I totally did.
Until next time,
Happy Trails.
