Time to spring ahead and appreciate the park?

 Park Season is “nearly’ Upon Us

This weekend marks the “Spring Forward” point in our time calendar.  Now this blog has had several references to this whole time shifting concept so we’ll only touch upon it “quickly” so that like an hour  on the weekend it doesn’t get skipped altogether.  Some folks continue to think of this skipping  forward  as the loss of an hour of sleep, however, pray tell...let’s flip the script a bit.  You are an hour closer to payday.... you get an hour older without aging  a bit...and best of all since you’ve entered daylight savings time you can take some extra minutes down to the Rolex Chronological credit union and make a deposit  of daylight everyday  until we go back to standard time.  By the way are we at all certain time has standards?  Have you seen your toes lately?  Do you think the time they are experiencing has any standards...if so it certainly has no empathy and probably no morals.  

Anyway enough time used there.... if in fact  we have more usable daylight. It means more time to be spent outdoors and every March 8th, just prior to the change in time,  marks the founding of one of the most remarkable places to spend outdoors—Yellowstone National park.  Now for me  there are some spectacular  parks in the town(s) I gre up so before we go visit ol’faithful a salute to North Hill park and Mosquito Park on  the North side and Perkins, Dankwardt, and of course, Crapo Park on the southside.  Oh and as state parks  go Lake Geode has had some glory days.  

As I plow through here and get ready for park season...maybe this Burlington, Iowa parks need a post of their own and not just a nod....so look for that next... On to Yellowstone.

Yellowstone was our first National  Park and if you are a believer in “go big or go home” this fits the bill at 3400+ square miles.  Oh and speaking of big.... Yellowstone sits  right on top of a huge volcano-like geological feature and thus Old Faitful and it’s pals put on  a boiling liquid show regularly.  So starting  150 years ago Yellowstone became the world’s first.National Park...so the next time  the U. S. Gets called out for not being aware of the planet we can say “we started this.”

Yellowstone  is home to a healthy Grizzly bear population and an abundance of Jerry Lee Lewis  Geologists  who tell us there’s a whole lot of shakin/ goin”  on due to the 1,000 to 3,000 annual earthquakes rumbling through Yellowstone.  Now we’re not talking  Yellowstone being  like the park at your schoolground—you know the one that used to have “monkey bars” anchored in asphalt because  you wanted to maximize the potential for injury made possible by kids  crawling. On metal  bars with bolts to catch scarves on, crossmembers to hit teeth and heads on, and a landing. When you fell that guaranteed you fell on someone else or a non-give surface.  No, while you can run  through and around a lot of parks, Yellowstone would meanrunning around or through someplace the size of Delaware and Rhode Island  combined and it will remain  a better place to visit...unless we can put a fence around  those two states which has been suggested on occasion.  

Yellowstone  calls three different  states home...mostly  in Wyoming but stopping for a cup of coffee. In Montana and a shot of potato vodka in Idaho?  Yellowstone features great water falls and forest land along with hot springs and guessers like old faithful.  Now this spout spurts every 93 minutes on the average And not the same time on the hour every hour as the myth Seems to imply.   On the other hand  why should the park keep track  of time when we decide to skip an hour here and add an hour there and add a whole day every four years?   

Peace and Joy and Yellowstone

Life, like Yellowstone. Has many wonderful features and one might think  it should always be a source of joy,yet like Yellowstone we often have things brewing below the surface and some of them “hot” spring to the surface  regularly.  Life  has massive features that have been  around for what seems like forever and yet events come along  often that shake up  the situations at hand.  Like Yellowstone, we can recognize that life  his a marvelously  complex and changing  place and while we are in it we can view it with curiosity and share its interesting  parts with others.  Are there some  bounds on life...yes...like. Yellowstone...there are some bounds...but the borders of what we can do often exist far beyond  our current visions.   

Anyway speaking about  getting beyond—and time—-this has used about enough to both of those for us today... so more tomorrow with parks....I’m glad we have a National Park system and that life is often like a stroll in the park —-full of grizzly bears, earthquakes, and sitting on disruptive.forces...and still cherished and rightly  so.

More tomorrow  Get ready to Spring....sooon.