Do you remember Crosby, Stills & Nash’s Teach Your Children? We sang it to our kids when they were young. They could well sing it to us now.
You, who are on the road, must have a code, that you can live by,
And so, become yourself, because the past, is just a good-bye.
Teach, your children well, their parent's hell, did slowly go by,
And feed, them on your dreams, the one they picks, the one you'll know by.
Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh, and know they love you.
That's the way it is when teaching values to young children. They will usually value what they see their parents valuing. When they get older, quite often they retain and expand those values.
The value we are discussing here is our National Parks. The photos below were taken just outside a National Park near us and just inside the same park. Contrasting the stark difference, wouldn't it be a shame if there were no nature to value--only urban sprawl for yourselves, for your children, for their children. If that land is turned over to state or local governing officials, quite often it ends up in commercial hands or governing hands heavily influenced by powerful commercial interests—mining, lumbering, development, signage. That value, once lost, is lost forever.
Take your kids and grandkids to the parks! Feed them on your dreams!
Gatlinburg, Tennessee
Great Smoky Mountains National Park Forest River. Img Via: gsmnp.com