“Nature Is Where I Go to Remember Who I Am If I Feel Lost”

Meg Morris is the digital campaigns manager for public lands at the National Wildlife Federation.

I often say I grew up on a mountain side — literally. My parents took me on long backpacking trips as soon as I could sit in a pack. (I still have my mom’s North Face pack and when he’s ready, I will have my Dad’s pack that has been with him since the 1970s). They bought land in the New Mexico mountains, and we spent an entire summer living in tents! As a child, my whole being was consumed with the outdoors. I scrambled mountainsides collecting mica (my Dad called it “poor people’s glass”). I learned to swim in a pond in high country mountains. I spent hot sunny days catching horny toads and watching clouds as a pastime. The outdoors were a defining part of my life. So, when I turned 18 and graduated highschool ….off to the city I went!

Now, (especially now) I don’t get to be outside often, but when I do it takes just seconds to remember how free and calm I feel in nature. Working at the National Wildlife Federation has given me amazing opportunities to experience public lands in new ways: rafting Brown’s Canyon in celebration of the national monument designation, laying on my belly in the snow watching sage grouse strut as the sun rose over the Wind River Range, sitting on the banks of a river in the Rio Grande National Forest watching women teaching each other to fish, marveling at the petroglyphs in the Caja del Rio in New Mexico. Those memories are priceless. And they help me appreciate public lands in new ways.

In this time of coronavirus, when I can’t go to the mountains that tempt me every day, I have learned to fall in love with the public lands nearest to me. I live very close to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge. When I am feeling overwhelmed, or feeling like this pandemic may never end, I go there. I sit and watch the mule deer, the white tail, the bison, the birds and I feel a great sense of calm. Recently, my son and I watched bison in the snow. I was contemplating their long story of survival and strength. As we watched the snow fall and the birds drift in the sky my son said, “Mom, this is WAY better than a virtual tour.” I choked back my tears and held onto my gratitude. And I said, “Yeah, buddy it is.” We are among the lucky ones to have a nearby place to remind us that wildlife and this earth have survived so much more than we can comprehend.

What public lands mean to me and my family continues to evolve. Nature is where I go to remember who I am if I feel lost, it’s where I go to find my strength if I feel weak, and it’s where I will go when I can once again visit the mountains that flank my city but are out of reach. They are the places of happy memories of my past and the places I can’t wait to visit again. To smell sap on trees, hear gravel and pine needles under my feet, to feel mountain river water on my toes … I neve realized how much I loved those things until I wondered if I would experience them again. When this is over, I will once again scramble up a mountain side, and then, I will work to ensure those places are there for anyone else who needs to scramble, or hope, explore, or just remember how to just be. And if my love note had to fit on Post-It it would simply say, “thank you.”

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. It’s why Congress should fund the program permanently. Follow the movement along at #FundLWCF. Learn more here.

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Would you like to write about public lands that you cherish? Please email Mary Jo Brooks at brooksm@nwf.org for guidelines.