By Julie Lovett, park interpreter, Bull Shoals-White River State Park
As far back as I can remember I have enjoyed being outdoors. As a child growing up in rural Kentucky, my free days were spent in the woods. I explored the creeks and hills, watched snakes and deer and other wildlife, and didn’t go home until just before dark. A tent in our back yard was my summer sanctuary. I dragged my little sister out with me only to terrorize her with scary stories until she threatened to tell on me.
As a teen and college student, I took road trips with friends to float a river, hike a trail, or fish a lake. Our family vacations never involved camping, floating, fishing, or hiking, so I don’t know how nature was instilled in me, but I’m so thankful it was.
The stories I share about how smart animals are and how beautiful
the outdoors can be, and the amazing things that take place in nature,
are sometimes most appreciated by the children.
As an adult in the working world, my getaways were almost always a trip back into the wild. I longed for a career that would immerse me in nature, and I finally found one. As a park interpreter for the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism, I have been able to share my love of the outdoors with thousands of park visitors. I have especially loved the children I have met through school groups that visit the park, nature camps we offer, or just meeting them in the park. They have a sense of wonder that most of us have lost or never realized. They are awed by the simplest things. The stories I share about how smart animals are and how beautiful the outdoors can be, and the amazing things that take place in nature, are sometimes most appreciated by the children. If just one child out of 10, or even 100, gets it, I have done my job, I have made a difference in how that one child perceives this planet we all share, and maybe he or she will go on to make an even bigger difference.
There are so many books and quotes by adventurers, outdoor enthusiasts, writers, conservationists, and environmentalists that have inspired me that I could never name them all, but one of my favorites is from Reflections on Walden Pond by Henry David Thoreau: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
Nature has a lot to teach us all if we are willing to listen and learn. It doesn’t know good and evil; it knows only balance. In the wild, the wolf pack takes only one elk, the giant redwood tree takes only the water it needs to grow. Only humans take more than they need. If we are going to achieve the balance nature teaches us, we are going to have to change dramatically the way we treat our planet and one another. I hope we learn.
Read Julie’s Marvelous! Woman profile: Julie Lovett
M! February/March 2015
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