50 Great Public Land Destinations website offers day trips and more
by Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist (read the original in Noozhawk by clicking here)
Last column I gushed about HR 1957: The Great American Open Spaces Act (GAOA), signed by the president earlier this month. In this contentious time, the GAOA is a testament to the importance of open spaces to people and every living thing on the planet.
Reminiscing about my visits to America’s open spaces was enough to get my travel juices flowing. Then I ruminated about overnighting in the pandemic era and hesitated.
Enter a timely new website compiled by UCSB lecturer Deborah Williams. Williams, also a Goleta Parks and Recreation commissioner and past presidential appointee to the secretary of the Interior, highlights 50 Public Lands destinations within 300 miles of Santa Barbara.
She created the website while teaching a public lands class at UCSB. The intended recipients, however, are not only students but also Santa Barbara newcomers and visitors, health care professionals, parents, and even long-time residents.
Being a numbers person, I wondered why she chose 50 sites and how she picked 300 miles as the limiting distance. She told me she wanted the website’s scope to be manageable and intentionally curated. “It is easy for sites to be overwhelming in size, and I strove to avoid that.”
The 300 miles radius was chosen after analyzing her initial data. “My goal was to have a majority of the remarkable, highlighted public land destinations be places that students and others in Santa Barbara could reach by walking, biking or taking public transit,” she reasoned.
“Since many of my students glowingly name Yosemite National Park as their favorite public land destination and are passionate when describing their memorable adventures there with family and friends, I knew that Yosemite needed to be included,” she said. “How far is Yosemite from UCSB? 298 miles. This is why I chose 300 miles as the outer limit.”
Chances are you’ve been to quite a few. Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden comes to mind as well as Ellwood Mesa’s butterfly preserve. Chances are greater you will find many you’d like to return to or visit for the first time – and still be able to sleep in your own bed that night.
I’m almost always up for a trip to the Anza Borrego State Park (not a day trip!), but I have yet to visit Ventura’s enticing Santa Paula Canyon and Punch Bowl Trail.
Public land set-asides protect not only natural spaces, but also land of historical and cultural importance. The guide highlights many of these destinations, including Chumash Painted Cave State Historic Park, Stow House, El Presidio de Santa Barbara and Manzanar National Historic Site.
Besides safely getting out of our rut of home — work — grocery store, open space can restore our humanity. One of my favorite early naturalists Aldo Leopold wrote: “We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love or otherwise have faith in.”
Williams and I share the hope that 50 Pubic Land Destinations inspires action. The action Williams anticipates is to “inspire and facilitate the exploration of public lands in and around Santa Barbara … to enhance not only our mental and physical health, but also to build champions for the protection of our public lands going forward.”
She also hopes others will design similar 50 Great Public Land Destinations websites for their states and other areas of California.
I parochially doubt any other small area can boast as many world-class public spaces. But I hope, if you visit some of these, you will be masking and distancing to protect yourself and others. Building on Leopold’s quote, perhaps being in nature can teach us respect for each other and for the land.
Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist
Karen Telleen-Lawton is an eco-writer, sharing information and insights about economics and ecology, finances and the environment. Having recently retired from financial planning and advising, she spends more time exploring the outdoors — and reading and writing about it. The opinions expressed are her own.