Month: June 2021

I loved to fish when I was 7 years old. Summers were often spent catching minnows in the creek, fishing for sunfish and bullheads at Wally’s Pond, or early Sunday morning fishing with my dad to the bayou of the Wapsie River.

Wally’s Pond was a tiny body of water that was a few feet deep. It was a short half-mile from our farm on a gravel road. My neighbor, Russell, and I used to fish at the Pond about once a week in the summer.

We used sturdy long sticks as poles and tied lines, floats, sinkers, and hooks to the sticks. Earthworms were dug up from damp places on the north side of livestock buildings. We carried the worms in a tin can.

Most days we didn’t catch anything and soon grew bored with fishing. However, some days we were lucky. One such day, I caught a 5-inch-long sunfish. I was so excited and wanted to take it home to show my dad. Russell had the brilliant idea that we should empty the worm can and put water in it so the fish could stay alive until we got home. It was a good plan but dumping the worms on the ground resulted in them trying to escape. I had the second brilliant idea of putting the worms into one of my shoes.

I was wearing the new school shoes that I had gotten a few days earlier. They were Buster Brown Saddle Shoes, and I was so excited to have them. I begged mom to let me wear them to the pond and she finally relented and said yes. With the new excitement of having caught a fish, we continued fishing longer than usual that day. We knew we had better head for home. I planned on throwing the worms into the pond to feed the fish before we left, as we always did. 

I picked up the shoe to heave the dirt and worms into the pond and my fingers slipped. The whole shoe went floating through the murky water until it disappeared. Russell and I stood there with our mouths open. We knew we couldn’t go into the pond, and I knew I was in big trouble. My mother was going to kill me as this was my only pair of shoes for the new school year.

I limped home with one shoe on and the other foot barefooted. I told my mom that there had been a slight accident and somehow my shoe had fallen into the pond. She was mad. “You are just going to have to go barefoot to school next week” she said. “How could I be so careless?” she asked. I cried, of course, and wondered how my feet would fare when it got colder that fall.

The next day, we went back to Cedar Rapids. I got a new pair of shoes for school, just like the ones I had had for two days. I learned some important lessons from my shoe disaster: 1. Don’t put worms in your shoes, 2. Don’t accidently throw a shoe into a pond, and 3. Moms can get mad, but they will not let you go barefoot to school.

Several years ago, my associates and I published a research study about “what parks mean.” We found that parks, whether local, state, or national had personal and social benefits as many of us have experienced. However, the unifying theme that clearly emerged from the essays analyzed was the idea of memory-making. Parks make memories.

I think about parks often since I either volunteer or hike essentially every day in Rocky Mountain National Park. I recognize that an iconic beauty like Rocky can be different from a local park or green space. And yet, the theme of memory-making applies across the board.

I had a favorite childhood park. It was a county park, Pinicon Ridge, only three miles from our farm. Growing up on a farm is a nature experience but going to a park with trees and picnic tables and a tower to climb to see the panorama above the trees was a treat. I have many recollections of the numerous Sunday nights when the family went to the park, sometimes with another family, grilled steaks/hamburgers, ate fried potatoes or potato salad, enjoyed our fresh garden veggies, and often had homemade (my favorite was apple) pie for dessert. Now that my parents are deceased, I remember the times with my family even more fondly.

My adult life includes evocative remembrances of parks: hearing the wolves howl on a very rainy and challenging backpacking trip at Isle Royale, climbing my first mountain (Twin Sisters) at Rocky Mountain National Park and developing a lifelong passion for high places, traversing most of Mt Ranier on the Wonderland Trail, and seeing the BIG 5 animals at Kruger National Park in South Africa.

In dissecting the essays for the paper we wrote, we found reminiscences were most often based on the human interaction with landscapes as well as the connections people had with others during their park visits. People talked about coming to a particular park as a child and then wanting to bring their children, and later grandchildren, to experience those meaning-imbued places.

Hundreds of thousands of people want to visit Rocky Mountain National Park this summer. Some have been visiting Rocky for years but missed last year because of the pandemic. Others are visiting for the first, and perhaps only, time.  I want them to experience positive memory-making, but I am worried that it may not always happen.

Rocky Mountain National Park has currently restricted access to the park to certain places at particular times. This approach is not popular with some people, and I certainly miss the freedom in the summer to go wherever I want when I want. However, this land and our wildlife simply cannot sustain opportunities for memory-making if overrun and overcrowded. Our park is being loved to death.

Parks can be protected in the future if people feel an affinity and desire to support these places in their local communities as well as nationally. Limits exist, however, to how many people can enjoy an outdoor spaces before they become depreciated. Parameters are necessary. To save National Parks requires that more outdoor spaces for memory-making are made available on municipal, county, regional, and state lands.

Parks make life better because they provide a connection to personal and social pasts, and present realities. They must be preserved, managed, and remembered to foster enduring connections into the future.

Fifteen Bighorn Sheep came running down the ridge, crossed the road, and headed for Sheep Lake #3. I grabbed a Stop/Slow sign and headed to the road. They had already crossed but we never knew when they would be coming back.

As I situated myself on the side of the road and waited, three light colored fluffy coyote juveniles came sauntering along in the meadow 100 yards from the lake. Suddenly one of the bold coyotes bolted toward the sheep. The sheep immediately scattered and almost before I could get my STOP sign held up, were sprinting back across the road headed uphill. Four of them broke off to the right headed toward Morning Point, and 11 headed left with one of the coyote siblings on their hooves. The other two coyotes sat placidly by the lake and began howling for their brother/sister. A few minutes later the ensuing coyote came trotting back and crossed the road to re-unite with his/her kin. A lone coyote could not take down a Bighorn unless it was a lamb, and only ewes and ram yearlings were part of this day’s group.

Such was the high drama on my first day of the 2021 volunteer season as part of the Bighorn Brigade in Rocky Mountain National Park. Volunteers assist the sheep in crossing the busy road and engage visitors in conversations about the sheep and the park.

Bighorns are the symbol of Rocky Mountain National Park. Before the park was designated over 100 years ago, several thousand sheep were in the park. They were hunted massively and have suffered from disease over the years to the point where there are now estimated to be only 300-400 living stably in five herds in the park.

The Bighorns that visit Sheep Lakes live in the Mummy Range. They make their 3 -4-mile trip to Sheep Lakes to eat the minerals in the mud. After a long winter of eating dry grass, their bodies are depleted of elements such as sodium, magnesium, and selenium. They do not come to eat the grass or drink the water but only for the minerals during the months of May-early August. The sheep are unpredictable regarding when they come and only show up about 30% of the days in the summer. They may stay only a few minutes or, sometimes, several hours. If they feel unsafe because of predators or too many people, they may not journey to the lakes.

I am in my sixth year with the Sunday Bighorn Brigade group (The sheep were on their own in 2020!) For almost 30 years, park staff and volunteers have monitored the area to assist the sheep from becoming stressed when crossing (unless a coyote is chasing them).

Many moose now frequent Sheep Lakes to eat the water plants growing in the lakes and to cool off in the summer. Three years ago, the Sunday Bighorn volunteers saw almost as many moose as sheep. We threatened to petition to change the name to Moose Lakes!

Visitors to Sheep Lakes are a mixed bag with of low drama. Some know nothing about sheep and wonder what all the fuss is about. For some the predominant question is, “Where is the nearest bathroom?” Other visitors come regularly to see if the sheep are there—Sheep Lakes is a part of their park routine. On their last day of vacation, one couple I met stayed all day in hopes of seeing the sheep one last time before they headed home to Arkansas. They brought their breakfast and several hours later pulled out sandwiches for lunch.  

Being part of the dedicated and passionate Bighorn Brigade is a delightful part of my week. I love the sheep, and like many other volunteers and visitors, am resolute to reduce drama except for the excitement of beholding the sheep.

I forgot how much I loved gardening until the past two years when I had a chance again to get my hands dirty with vegetable gardening. Smelling the earth, seeing the earthworms, planting tiny seeds, watching them grow, fighting the battle against pesky weeds, and eating the lovingly grown fresh produce is wonderful. My newfound connection to gardening is as a volunteer at the MacGregor Ranch Garden.

The garden is part of historic MacGregor Ranch. The homesteaders who lived there had a large garden. Our efforts represent times past when people relied heavily on gardens for food for summer and winter. Volunteers plant the garden with traditional vegetables—carrots, onions, beets, potatoes, cabbage, and squash, although we also planted kale and kohlrabi last year and I doubt the settlers had those veggies. The volunteers share in the harvesting of the vegetables when they mature.

Growing up on an Iowa farm, gardening was in my DNA. The family garden was a supply of food year around. Mom wasn’t big on flowers, but she loved the vegetables and I learned to love them similarly.

When I joined 4-H as a 10-year-old, I had my first 4-H garden project. The garden was the minimum required, 10 feet by 10 feet. The next year I begged for more, and eventually I was responsible for the whole family garden as my 4-H project. Sometimes I had extra vegetables to give away or to sell a bushel or two of tomatoes. Every summer included a garden judging when a judge and the 4-H gardeners in the area visited each other’s gardens. We were rated on how weed and insect free the garden was. When I was in my teens I became a junior garden judge. I loved seeing other people’s vegetable patches.

A second part of the 4-H project was to take vegetables to the county fair for judging on size, color, and conformity. My mother was hospitalized during my first county fair and my grandpa helped me with the 4-H exhibit. I had some insect holes in the tomatoes, and he told me to turn them upside down and no one would notice. Little did I know that the judge would pick them up. I got a red ribbon that year but learned a lot and always got blue ribbons years after.

Gardening in my adult life has been a trial. In Wisconsin, we had a garden in the yard not far from the water on the lake where we lived. The garden flourished but I had no idea that muskrats could be a pest.

Gardening in North Carolina was a disaster. The ground was not the fertile black earth of the Midwest. I could grow nothing in the shade of the trees despite how much dirt I hauled in. The plants were totally spindly, and I got no produce. I gave up after two years and grew some tomatoes and herbs in pots on my patio deck. I never found patio gardening as satisfying as having dirt to dig.

I share the MacGregor Garden with three dozen other volunteers. We endeavor to battle rodents, keep ungulates out, and monitor irrigation for this high desert area. We are successful, however, and I love watching this garden grow!

I got an email recently from my university alma mater congratulating me on having graduated 50 years ago that day. I was aware of this upcoming 50-year marker since I had gone to my high school class 50^th reunion four years previously, but the email reminded me overpoweringly of the passage of time.

“Like sand through an hourglass, so goes the days of our lives.” That phrase from the popular soap opera has many meanings to me these days. Where does time go? How can I be the age I am today? I don’t feel like a senior citizen, older adult, or whatever people of my ilk are called.

I remember growing up when time seemed to stand still while waiting for something special to happen. It seemed like Christmas would NEVER come. The promise of school being out and having a summer vacation time was eagerly awaited. Summer was a welcomed eternity. I liked going to school but liked more the freedom of summers on the farm and having the playtime to do what I wanted.

Now I feel like time is speeding. Perhaps it is because they say time flies when you are having fun, and I am, but I would just like it all to slow down a bit. I feel like I never have enough time each day to do everything I want to do.

I have been a scholar of leisure throughout my professional career. We all yearn for a balance of life that includes enough time for all genres of meaningful activities including work and leisure. Leisure and what it affords cannot be taken for granted.

One of the ways that leisure is quantified is as “free time.” I find that idea rather curious since nothing is completely free. Constraints are omnipresent.  As I have argued elsewhere, with freedom comes responsibility. Each day I think about my mostly free time–what I want to do, how I want to do it, and try to assure it does minimal harm to me or others in my use of time.

All of us have the same amount of time each day. Because of responsibilities, however, we do not have uniform free time opportunities. Decisions about the use of time vary. Some folks have obligations that require serious amounts of time such as caregiving. Others have greater choice in organizing their lives as I gratefully feel now in my encore performance (aka retirement).

Nevertheless, we do not have the same amount of time on this earth. Running out of time on a daily basis does not seem nearly as consequential as running out of time on this earth. I think about how I can make the most of my remaining days. I miss my family and friends who were limited in their earthly time. Although I would like to slow time down, I also want to enjoy each minute and be grateful for all the sands through my hourglass.