A Life Defined by Wild Places
Michael Cravens is the advocacy coordinator for the Arizona Wildlife Federation.
My childhood growing up in the Missouri Ozarks was special and I look back on those years fondly. Times were different then and children were free to roam, explore, and learn about the natural world on their own terms. I was no exception. Growing up on the edge of a small town, I would simply leave in the morning and spend the entire day fishing in creeks, hunting for rabbits and squirrels, and exploring the Ozark hills and valleys with no regard for property boundaries. When darkness fell, I would find my way back home exhausted but happy, happy in the way that a young boy should be, dirty and hungry but filled with an unquenchable curiosity about the natural world.
While the Missouri Ozarks are where I developed my love of nature, as I grew into a young man, so did my curiosity about places further and further from home. This curiosity took me across our country’s vast public lands from east to west on all sorts of wonderful adventures and it’s this same curiosity that eventually led me to Arizona. My wife and I moved here nearly ten years ago. We came here for a few specific reasons: vast public lands to recreate on, abundant and diverse habitats to explore, and equally ample and diverse wildlife populations. We were young and free when we came here and only planned to spend a couple years exploring this great state before returning home to Missouri. Those two years have now turned into ten and we’re still here and still loving this beautiful state. A great deal has changed in that time. We now have two amazing children, careers, and a wonderful circle of friends. In short, Arizona has become our home.
As an adult, I have changed very little. I still long to spend as many days afield as I can, I still enjoy fishing in creeks, and I still have that unquenchable curiosity about the natural world. All that really has changed is that I now do these things with my family. There’s rarely a weekend we’re not out taking full advantage of this beautiful state and its vast public lands either camping, hiking, wildlife watching, or hunting and fishing.
Our public lands, those lands that I and every American citizen own, are uniquely part of our national identity. Nowhere else in the world do the people have a birthright to such wealth regardless of their social status or their bank accounts. In Arizona, I am blessed with over 30 million acres of public lands that host an amazing diversity of habitats and wildlife. These lands provide a vast array of uses from timber harvest and cattle grazing to countless recreational activities that my family takes full advantage of.
Mine is a life that has been defined by wild places, wildlife, and the public lands that have allowed me access to them. Public lands are the reason I live, work, and am raising my family in the west. As a sportsman, I take great pride in the fact that my family eats the healthiest and most environmentally friendly meat available. As a parent, I insist that my children have access, albeit in a more a supervised way, to the same things that allowed me such a rich and rewarding childhood. And finally, as a society, living busy and stressful lives working and paying bills in crowded cities, we need our public lands to escape to, where we can reset our internal clocks, and rediscover that natural curiosity that we all had as children.
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So many of our country’s parks and public lands written about in these love notes would not exist but for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). This important conservation program was permanently funded when Congress passed the Great American Outdoors Act earlier this summer. You can learn more about the Land and Water Conservation Fund here.
Would you like to write about public lands that you cherish? Please email Mary Jo Brooks at brooksm@nwf.org for guidelines.
