Life and the Nature of Life—in Parks

Parks are places for recreation, and that suggests play, leisure, sport. Many parks are of exactly that kind, and fortunately so; we need our city parks for softball games, our state parks for a family reunion. Recreation re-creates, rejuvenates people when they are worn from work. But outdoor, natural parks are much more, and more fortunately so. These grander parks in the greater outdoors provide dimensions of depth belied by their vacational and recreational settings. Parks are places so protected that we can simultane-ously get "away from it all, " away from the workaday week, from the labors of town, factory, farm, and "back to it all, " encountering the park-protected reserves of elemental nature. This is recreation, if you like, but this recreation is set within creation. Some of the recreation is relaxation, unwinding from daily labors; deeper down the re-creation is restoration of perspective on the nature of life, reen-counter with the creation. Parks recreation preserves human life by re-creat-ing it. We figure out who we are and where we are. The last part of that ques-tion must be answered in culture, for human life is "by nature " cultural. But the first part, the fundamental ground, is answered in nature. "By nature, " too, we are embodied creatures, residents on landscapes, earthlings, placed in a more inclusive, more comprehensive community of life and life support. In that sense, parks protect a full answer to the question of human identity. Parks are philosophical places; let's play with that idea. "Know thyself." Socrates insisted: "An unexamined life is not worth living " (Plato, Apology: 38). On that score he was quite right. Socrates also said, "You see, I am fond of learning. Now the country places and trees won't teach me anything, and the people in the city do " (Plato, Phaedrus: 230d). So he loved his Athens, and we indeed ought to be good citizens. But Socrates was quite wrong about learnin