Parks are wonderful. There is no doubt about it. 

Great visionaries set the bar, and set it high, by carving out Central Park in New York City, The National Mall in Washington, D.C. and our system of National and State Parks.  If you’ve never explored Central Park you’ve really missed something.  It is a wonderland.  And, as you walk around it for the first time, you’ll think you’ve been there before, as it has been featured as backdrop in hundreds and hundreds of movies and TV shows.  Likewise, the Mall in Washington, with the Lincoln Memorial at one end and the Capital at the other and the Washington Monument and Reflecting Pool in the middle, surrounded by lovely government buildings, including The Smithsonian Institution buildings---every American should be so lucky to visit.   

Landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted so tenaciously demanded that “his” parks (Central Park included) be preserved and not be built upon, that his health suffered from the arguments. His battles with the political forces in Chicago during the construction of the remarkable site for the Columbian Exposition of 1893 to keep The Wooded Isle free of buildings—a battle he only partially won—wore him down in his later years  to the point that he was nearly incapacitated.

But, Chicago certainly got the point:  Few cities have done a better job of preserving parkland, and particularly their valuable coastal properties, for all to enjoy. Drive, bike, or walk along Lakeshore Drive and you’ll enjoy miles of spectacular views of both Lake Michigan and the city skyline.

(Try that in Palm Beach, Florida.  Good luck.  On one side of the road are the fabulous houses and condos.  On the other side is the beach, but you can’t see it, or the Atlantic Ocean because the property owners have built fences and hedges to keep people from seeing “their” view. Nice.)

I spent a summer, back when I was twenty-years-old, working for the park department of Kansas City, Missouri—a city known for a wonderful system of parks.  I lived with a roommate in the watchman’s apartment in a boathouse in the middle of the second largest municipal park in the United States.  Swope Park was huge, and contained the zoo, an outdoor theater, golf courses, the training facility for the professional football team, trails, ball fields, picnic grounds, public swimming pools, and “the lagoon” which is where I lived and where people could rent canoes and paddle boats.

It was wonderful to go to bed at night hearing lions roaring and elephants trumpeting in the distance, and to wake up to the “crowing” of peacocks and other exotic birds.  It was terrific to see people having fun picnicking and playing softball and swimming and flying kites.

Yesterday, Dr. Routemeister, Dr. Megahertz, Dr. Cyclotron and I took our usual Saturday morning bicycle ride and headed for the brand new Falling Waters Trail, the linear park that follows an old railroad bed from Concord to Jackson. 

It was absolutely spectacular, with smooth pavement winding through fields and woods and marshes and even right through the middle of Lime Lake.  We saw lots and lots of people out using the trail, hiking, biking and running.  What a marvelous recreational resource for the people of Jackson County and the surrounding areas.

Likewise, the brand new trail running through Albion is a wonderful addition to the community, linking several parks as it courses along the Kalamazoo River.  I can’t wait until these two trails get hooked together with OTHER trails.

Big parks, little parks, linear parks, Bert Parks—what?  Well, you know what I mean---people use them and love them, and as our country gets more and more crowded, and as life gets tougher and tougher the parks will become even more valuable to every one of us.

                                  © by Jim Whitehouse

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