Dear Mr. Vogel -
First, let me thank you for your 35 years of service with the National Park Service. You help preserve something that we of November Project cherish — our national parks. I encourage you to check out the Facebook and Instagram accounts of those of us who are part of the November Project community. You will see pictures of us around the National Mall, of course. But you will also see us hiking Old Rag in Shenandoah — or in Denali, or in Bryce, or in Moab, or in Acadia, or in Yosemite, or in Yellowstone, and those are just the places I can recall where I have seen our community enjoying our National Parks. In short, what you and the NPS do, you do for people like us, and we appreciate it.
I must admit, that I have struggled to write this letter. I struggle in part because it is so easy to cast you as Mr. Vernon in a modern retelling of The Breakfast Club; we, of course, are the kids sentenced to a day of detention. And here I sit writing my essay telling you who we are.
I suspect you and I are similar in age (I am in my 50s), and I suspect you (like me) saw that movie in its original theatrical release. Perhaps you (like me) were moved by it. Distilled to its essence, the point was that Mr. Vernon failed to see the students for who they truly were; instead, he saw them by their stereotypes: a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal.
I suspect you see November Project as a stereotypical activity or group that is commonly regulated in our National Parks. We seem to be wearing matching clothes and seem to all be doing the same thing. Or at least from a distance, that is how we appear. I encourage you to take a closer look.
We are diverse individuals who have joined together to form a community. We may exercise together, but that is not what binds us. Get to know us and you will see that we sprint up stairs, and we struggle to get up the stairs aided by a railing or cane. Get to know us and you will see that we are young, and old. Get to know us and you will see that we are healthy, and terminally ill. Get to know us and you will see that we are soldiers, and civilians. Get to know us and you will see that we are solid, and we are broken. So what binds us?
We are a community. We welcome everyone. We offer encouragement. We offer hugs. We connect at a human level. And we do it in the most visible places we can. We want to be visible because we want to interact with the larger community. Lot’s of groups regularly run on the National Mall (will the NPS also be asking them to obtain permits?). We merely do that one day a week for an hour. But we also go out into the larger community. In two years with November Project, I have interacted with more of DC than in my previous 18 years of living and working here. We work to be part of the larger community. As an aside, I have exercised with November Project in several different cities, and the same is true in each of them; we exercise in iconic places, and we get into the community; both are important to who we are.
The National Park Service rightly asks that organized athletic activities seek a permit. We are not an organized athletic activity like those the NPS rightly regulates. We are not playing games where we seek to exclude anyone or to have exclusive use of a space. We want to interact with those around us. And when we do, the universal reaction is positive. We have been joined by tourists, brides and grooms, and even off-duty NPS officers. We are sometimes joined by the men and women from the Army who regularly run the stairs at the Lincoln Memorial (will the NPS also be asking them to obtain permits?). We make the Lincoln Memorial, and all of the other places we gather, a happier place, not just for ourselves but for those around us.
And while our group can be large, we do not overtake a location. Our workouts occur early in the morning. Even our largest workouts have paled in comparison to the number of people on the Lincoln steps in midday or on a weekend.
My suggestion, as you contemplate how to deal with us, is get to know us. Join us at the Lincoln Memorial at 6:30 some morning. Put on some exercise clothes and blend in. Don’t tell us who you are. Participate, and see us for who we truly are. I am confident that you will see that we are exactly who you want using your parklands. And we are using them in a way that should make the National Park Service proud of how it carries out its mission.
Sincerely,
Ron Buch