What Happened, Here?

Recently, I read a report where researchers focused on why more urban folks, particularly those living in the inner city, don’t use metropolitan parks. The premise was because of a lack of transportation. Turns out the most common complaint was that respondents would not know what to do when they got to the park.
Oh, my.
If you don’t know what to do when you get to a park, I suggest you talk with naturalists like Wendy Weirich at the Rocky River Nature Center, or, Paul Motts in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. These leaders, along with hundreds of naturalists in the northeast Ohio area have a to-do list that would take a lifetime (of enjoyment) to complete.
I thought about the survey’s respondents while hiking this morning. My first suggestion for something to do would be to just look around. You don’t have to “do” anything in a park. There is no on/off switch.
We’ve created a culture that needs entertaining. Theme parks, and most television programming, frees our minds of the necessity to create. Children go to DisneyWhatever and live someone else’s dream. They know what to do when they get there: Thinking not required.



In a span of about five miles, I counted more than a dozen things that I considered a challenge. Bird calls and identification are constant. Yes, many of these challenges require a certain level of knowledge, skills for lack of another term. That’s why we have naturalists and books. Yet, knowing the shredded stump was probably the work of a skunk looking for bugs, or the oval-shaped holes in the tree were made by a Pileated Woodpecker, is not rocket science. It’s natural science.



The real challenge, the things that require some brain work, are finding a make-shift hiking staff leaning against a tree, for example. The why or what of such a simple act require some thought. It demands the person use his or her imagination. Grist for the writer’s mill.
What you do with yourself when you get to the park, matters most.