Public Lands Have Helped Define Who I Am

Lew Carpenter is a director of conservation partnerships at the National Wildlife Federation. He lives with his wife and his dog Hugo in Colorado.

There is a large painting that hung in my father’s home for many decades illustrating a dense batch of woods and a small boy disappearing into them. The imagery reeks of curiosity, adventure and the wild unknown.

He told me he bought it because it reminded him of me as a child growing up in Colorado. On my 40th birthday he offered the painting as a gift, and it now hangs in my home, reminding me to stay curious about the wild world.

I’ve been fortunate that my love for public lands translated into two careers spanning 35 years; first as a journalist, outdoor writer and editor and now as a Director of Conservation Partnerships for the National Wildlife Federation.

Without public lands I’m not quite sure where I would be, what I would be doing or who I would have become. They have been that significant of an influence on my life.

Every month of my time on this earth offers a new experience and memory on public lands. I’ve been fortunate to hunt and fish from Alaska to Central America, California to Michigan, Wyoming to Louisiana and many, many points between.

I can’t tell you what activity on public lands I enjoy the most, because they all fill different primordial needs. Running along the inshore Southern California Bight in a Boston Whaler as the sun set and the box plugged with yellowtail seems dreamlike to me now. And at the time I couldn’t imagine feeling more alive with the salty headwind, the subtle heave of the boat across benign, rolling waves and the harbor lights growing brighter as darkness fell.

That’s a far different experience than my recent trip to the Collegiate Peaks of Colorado for a week of camping, soul searching and the majestic quiet of altitude, epic mountain peaks and a bright moon slicing through the canyon at night.

And, this week, when I should be fishing the marshes of the Mississippi River Delta as I’ve done every fall for the past 20 years (except for the devastation years of Hurricane Katrina, the BP oil spill and, now, the pandemic), or the cancelled October trip to northern Michigan for grouse and woodcock — I find myself wanting, even with all the vast public land opportunity the West brings.

The pandemic has renewed my gratitude for the wild places I love but currently are out of reach; and it has spawned new exploration for forgotten gems just outside my front door — like kayak fishing on big mountain impoundments, quail hunting high desert grasslands and running my blood tracking, wire haired Teckel through tree-choked watersheds and valleys.

There is a place I go more than any other — its majestic canyon walls of granite clearly forged by the gods. A great western river flows through it, and the fishing satisfies me as well as anywhere. The beauty of the place is from what public land dreams are made.

I’ve taken scores of novice anglers to the site, changing their lives forever. And I’ve taken seasoned (some might say salty) old angling codgers from across the country there, too, and they take every opportunity to return with me when they can to fish, observe and soak in its magic.

I’ll make my way back to the marshes of Louisiana and the grouse forests of the north soon enough. In the meantime I’ll hunt the high desert for pronghorn, pheasant and quail; fish the great western watersheds; and scour the Rockies for mule deer and dusky grouse as the pandemic slowly releases its grip. One of the greatest gifts our forefathers wrought for current generations is the public estate, and I’m grateful for that every day.

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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.