Solutions: PUBLIC LANDS PUZZLE # 1

Spoiler Alert:  These are the answers to my recently launched "Public Lands Puzzles" series: Word puzzles naming our nation's vast and beautiful public lands. To get next month's installment, just drop me an email.

Uh-oh. Are you stumped?  Find the answers to Public Lands Puzzle # 1 here:

Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Folkston, Georgia 

Scrambled: KKOOEEEENF ANNOLIAT FELLIDWI FREGUE

Known to early Indian tribes as “The Land of the Trembling Earth,” the Okefenokee is a vast cypress swamp (actually a type of peat bog) on the Georgia-Florida line. Think alligators -- lots of alligators.  My favorite adventure there:  Watching a family of sandhill cranes step delicately through the wetlands. The baby was still young and clumsy on long unsteady legs, like a foal.  He kept falling down in the muck. See samples of our work on the visitor center. 

El Yunque National Forest, Puerto Rico  

Scrambled: LE QNUUEY LITAAONN SOFETR

The only tropical rain forest in the USDA Forest Service system, El Yunque is a tropical paradise of lush vegetation, bright flowers, and rare Puerto Rican parrots.  We worked on interpretive trail signs here.

Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area, Ft. Smith, Montana

(Scrambled: IGBNHRO YNNACO TANOILAN TRRAEIGCNE AAER)

People in Montana call this “the grandest canyon of the northern Rockies” because of its astonishing geology and 1,000-foot-high canyon walls.  I loved the windswept vistas, wild horses, abandoned ranch sites, and the (never realized) chance to spot a sure-footed bighorn sheep.  Take a look at our Long-Range Interpretive Plan for this site. 

John Muir National Historic Site, Martinez, California  

Scrambled: NJHO RMIU IANTONLA SRITOIHC IEST

When he wasn’t out exploring Yosemite Valley, the father of the National Park Service lived in this Victorian mansion and managed his father-in-law’s orchards.  John Muir’s grandson attended our interpretive planning workshops, and on our afternoon off, we climbed nearby Mt. Wanda (named for Muir’s daughter).  View our Long-Range Interpretive Plan.

Hope you enjoyed the quiz.  Stay tuned for another one next month.

Olympic National Park

The Pacific Northwest is really cool country -- especially the Olympic peninsula and Olympic National Park. I'm just back from a week out there, working on exhibits for the park's Hoh Rain Forest visitor center, and seeing amazing sites: 700-year-old trees, great big elk, snow-covered mountains high in the distance. Wow.

Washington Monument Repairs

When's the last time you looked out over Washington, D.C., from the top of the Washington Monument? Try it again this spring, when this iconic landmark reopens, with earthquake repairs and new exhibits planned by a team including yours truly. 

Goolrick Interpretive Group was lucky enough to work with Healy Kohler Design, Color-Ad (fabrication), and NPS personnel from the Monument and Harpers Ferry Center; together we spent the last six months or so creating new exterior and interior exhibits for the Monument. 

Nature's Navigators

Every time I work on interpretive panels for another National Wildlife Refuge, I am astonished – again! – by the incredible journeys made by millions of birds every year.  These mallard ducks arrived last fall at Clarence Cannon National Wildlife Refuge, a 3700-acre refuge along the Mississippi River in southern Missouri.  This extraordinary photo looks like a watercolor, but it was shot by a refuge staffer at Clarence Canyon.

When you live in the city and spend too many days indoors, as I often do, it’s easy to forget that the age-old cycles of nature are still out there, just outside the window.  Every year, waterfowl and songbirds fly thousands of miles across the continent, summering in the Canadian north and wintering in the southern North America, Mexico, or farther south.  My favorite, especially when I see them on my deck here in Atlanta:  tiny ruby-throated hummingbirds, who winter in southern Mexico and, come early spring, fly 500 miles across the Gulf of Mexico without stopping to spend their summers in the U.S.

 Working with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and Malone Design/Fabrication, Allie and I wrote the content for a series of wayside exhibits (coming soon!) for two observation decks and a nature trail at Clarence Cannon NWR.

Travelling El Camino Real

Thanks to funding from the FHWA National Scenic Byways program, we have a great assignment this fall:  creating interpretive signs for a section of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail in Santa Fe, NM.  This historic route, translated as the Royal Road to the Interior Lands or “the King’s Highway,” ran from Mexico City (the 17th- and 18th-century Spanish colonial capital) northward as the Spanish explored and settled in what is now New Mexico.  

Our first assignment was to take a walk under clear, bright blue, impossibly sunny skies.  (Tough job, but somebody has to do it!) We followed the path laid down by Santa Fe County Open Space and Trails and used our GPS to record the best spots for interpretive signs.  Then we met with local residents of the nearby Agua Fria, a designated Traditional Historic Community, where many residents can trace their lineage – and their land lots – back many generations to the very first Spanish settlers in the region!  We’ll be working on a total of nine signs along the route from Agua Fria into downtown Santa Fe.  Thanks to our design client, Content Design Collaborative, for pulling us in on this cool (hot!) project.