National Park Week: What and when is it, and what might it mean to you?

Desiring less frazzle?  Inspiration you seek?

Search nps.gov; click National Park Week!

16-23 April, two thousand-seventeen,

Your heritage celebrated!  Be part of the scene!

©  Forrest W. Heaton  April, 2017

Did you know that on National Park Week weekends, every park will give you FREE ADMISSION?  Did you know that kids of all ages earned JUNIOR RANGER BADGES in parks all across the country on April 15, Junior Ranger Day?  Do you have your plans set to CELEBRATE EARTH DAY, April 22?  If you answered "No" to any of these questions, go to www.nps.gov to find countless exciting park visitation ideas--all guaranteed to reduce your frazzle, find your inspiration, celebrate your heritage, be part of the scene!

Check out this funny video from 2016. We know it's out of date but had to share it with you anyhow! Enjoy!

How can you add years to your life and life to your years? Consider this thought:

How do Parks & Poetry reside side-by-side?

What do they share together?

They penetrate with peace, in permanence they abide,

They can refresh your mind forever!

©  Forrest W. Heaton  April, 2017

Studies provide overwhelming evidence that poetry can and usually does stick in your mind more easily and longer than prose--witness the nursery rhymes and songs that you learned as a kid that still seem as fresh and fun as the day you learned them.  Studies also provide overwhelming evidence that the mind is refreshed by being near or in nature--nurturing peace and well-being.  When mixed with each other, parks and poetry can add years to your life and life to your years!

Example: Imagine Wendell Berry, standing in the midst of a National Park or a place of wild things, writing his stunning poem below:

“The Peace of Wild Things”

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 Wendell Berry

Yes, most assuredly, Parks & Poetry can live wonderfully side-by-side . . . adding years to your life and life to your years!

National Parks: Teach Your Children

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

Mixing Poetry and Art.

A friend, preparing for our community's upcoming Poetry Group meeting, sent this New Yorker cartoon to me, asking if I would write a poem about the cartoon. He wanted to share it with the Poetry Group. In Mary's and my opinion, it's always fun to mix poetry and art. Here's my effort:

Thievery

One can learn from thievery,

What is a dog's priority;

Of all the things that the thieves stole,

The most treasured was his bowl.

©  Forrest W. Heaton  April, 2017

Using Poetry as a Thank You Card

On the occasion of Beth & Harris Cooper, neighbors in Fearrington Village, NC, having given Mary & me a gift of a batch of their famous cookies they create and bake for friends (and themselves), yours truly having written the poem below as thanks for their kindness, the photograph and poem commemorating the occasion, April, 2017.

My own Burma-Shave-style advertisement.

Too many meetings?
Congestion on the street?
Come on out,
To where the air is sweet!
National Parks!

Burma-Shave Poetry

Anyone remember Burma-Shave signs? (Just us, huh!?) Well, they looked like this:

The Burma-Vita Company promoted their brushless shaving cream by posting a set of signs together along roadsides—all fun to read, the campaign hugely successful! This started in 1925 (just nine years following Congress’ creation of the National Park Service, we might add) and ended in the mid-1960’s.

I will share with you here on my blog a few of my own Burma-Shave style poems. Here is my first! 

Recognize this pattern?
Fun on trips they gave!
Signs by the roadside,
On last sign they’d rave . . .
Burma-Shave!