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Preserving Paradise: The Significance of National Parks and the Healing Power of Nature · The Seed Project

0:02
Welcome to The Seed Project.
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It's a podcast that nourishes your heart, mind, and soul.
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I'm your host, Charlotte Edwards.
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I believe everyone plants a seed in each other, whether it's a seed of knowledge, inspiration, or impact.
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I created this podcast so we could have real conversations, create connections, and grow into the best versions of ourselves.
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Everyone has a story to tell, so let's share ours together to empower, heal, and grow.
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Laugh and learn.
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Grab a cup of coffee and let's start planting.
0:43
Samson Q2U Microphone-15: Hi, everyone.
0:44
Samson Q2U Microphone-15: I am thrilled to welcome my guest today.
0:46
Samson Q2U Microphone-15: Cameron Saban to the podcast.
0:49
Samson Q2U Microphone-15: Cameron is the visionary behind the national park diaries and educational, YouTube channel.
0:54
Samson Q2U Microphone-15: Committed to sharing stories from our planet's Ms.
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Samson Q2U Microphone-15: Treasured protected areas.
0:59
Samson Q2U Microphone-15: His mission is to enlighten, inspire people about the marvels of national parks and other sanctuaries.
1:07
Samson Q2U Microphone-15: Encouraging them to explore and preserve these precious places for generations to come.
1:12
Samson Q2U Microphone-15: Karen's deep affection for these parks.
1:15
Samson Q2U Microphone-15: It's rooted in a lifelong journey.
1:17
Samson Q2U Microphone-15: Of outdoor exploration and a transformative college experience that deepened his understanding of conservation and the significance of these natural wonders.
1:28
Samson Q2U Microphone-15: Cameron.
1:29
Samson Q2U Microphone-15: Thank you so much for joining me today.
1:32
Cameron: Yeah, absolutely.
1:33
Cameron: I'm happy to be here.
1:34
Cameron: Thanks for having me.
1:35
Charlotte: Can you tell us a little bit about how you got interested into the national parks and the history behind starting your YouTube channel, the national park diaries.
1:46
Cameron: Yeah, so national parks for me, are kind of a long but a little bit circuitous journey.
1:52
Cameron: I first went to a national park.
1:54
Cameron: It was Rocky Mountain National Park out in Colorado.
1:56
Cameron: It's the first one I ever visited.
1:57
Cameron: And we went there as just like a family vacation.
2:00
Cameron: And after that, I believe I went to Yosemite when I graduated from high school, and those are my two first introductions to parks.
2:08
Cameron: I definitely didn't grow up like a national park super fan, right?
2:10
Cameron: Like a lot of people have, and they have these formative experiences in national parks, and that's their whole family vacations, and they do stuff like that.
2:18
Cameron: That wasn't really me.
2:19
Cameron: Like I said, we visited them a couple times here and there as I was growing up.
2:23
Cameron: But for me, the most part, or for getting into national parks for me was really in college.
2:28
Cameron: When I majored in conservation biology and I really just gravitated to park issues and land management issues because I started thinking about these things and the intersection of people and land and how we use the land and our relationship with the land was just really fascinating to me.
2:47
Charlotte: Was there a specific class that you took that led you down that direction or you knew that you wanted to go in conservation
2:54
Cameron: Yeah, no, I, when I got to college I wasn't really anticipating being in conservation at all.
2:58
Cameron: I was actually an engineering major to start off with.
3:01
Cameron: But then it was just like a random biology class that I took that really spurred my interest in conservation and ecology and.
3:10
Cameron: The natural world, it was called conservation issues and that really just got my mind going and I started thinking about all these different relationships and how people interact with the land and that ultimately got me really interested in national parks because they're really at the intersection of a lot of these issues, and they have been historically and they continue to be today, and then from there, it was a slow burn for me to get from that point when I graduated college to when I started National Park Diaries, but yeah.
3:38
Cameron: In the background in my mind desire to help people learn understand and educate people about national parks and conservation, that was always just bubbling around up there.
3:49
Cameron: And then, one day, it was almost like the little light bulb went off and I was like, Oh, you know, YouTube and national parks and education.
3:57
Cameron: I'm going to do that because I didn't really see it on YouTube at all.
4:00
Cameron: And that's when I started National Park Diaries.
4:03
Charlotte: I'm a big national park fan myself.
4:05
Charlotte: we're so blessed to have them when you were in college, did you just start exploring more national Parks, because I know you said you just went to a couple when you were growing up,
4:15
Cameron: Yeah, absolutely.
4:16
Cameron: I started incorporating them more and more and, I'd visit a few parks here and there and start to develop how I was thinking about these things.
4:22
Cameron: Then, now today I visit.
4:24
Cameron: Several parks a year, and I'm always trying to plan trips around them.
4:27
Cameron: The beautiful thing about national parks in America is they're everywhere, right?
4:31
Cameron: We do have the 63 big national parks, you know, your Yosemite is your Yellowstones, your Rocky Mountains.
4:36
Cameron: We also have things like historic sites and battlefields and recreation areas and lake shores and seashores and all of these different areas that are all encompassed under the national park system.
4:47
Cameron: And you can find those pretty much everywhere.
4:49
Cameron: Once I started to really get into national parks and national park issues, that's when I started going out and just exploring everything I can.
4:57
Cameron: So even when we're going like somewhere like New York City, right?
5:00
Cameron: There's five national park sites in lower Manhattan in New York.
5:04
Cameron: And so I made that a prior priority when we went to New York last year, is to go and see the national parks of Manhattan.
5:10
Cameron: And we do that pretty much everywhere.
5:11
Cameron: If my wife has a conference, a work conference that I'm going to tag along for, we're looking for national park sites, and we're just going to try and incorporate that into our vacation..
5:20
Charlotte: I was actually in Manhattan, six weeks ago.
5:22
Charlotte: It's amazing, when you start looking around, we went in Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and the different historical sites, because like you said, you think of the big, ones, and forget of all the additional sites.
5:35
Charlotte: Every site is also.
5:38
Charlotte: Encompassed in the entire park system and those are all protected is it more because of the history of it?
5:43
Charlotte: Or is it because of the land?
5:46
Cameron: Yeah, there was a an MPS director named Horace Albright.
5:49
Cameron: And he had a push to really incorporate the entirety of America's, natural and cultural history and in the National Park Service.
5:59
Cameron: So.
6:00
Cameron: Up to that point, it was really like we said that the big natural scenic parks like Yellowstone Yosemite, those, those iconic ones.
6:08
Cameron: But he had a vision of having the National Park Service interpret not just the scenic wonders and the natural beauty of America.
6:17
Cameron: To really incorporate the full story of the United States, right?
6:21
Cameron: And so that's where we get all of these historic sites and battlefields and historical parks.
6:27
Cameron: And we've got Civil War Battlefields, revolutionary War, battlefields War of 18, 12.
6:31
Cameron: All of these sorts of formative historical places in the history of the United States are now under the protection of the Park Service.
6:39
Cameron: And we can go there learn about them and benefit from.
6:43
Cameron: They're being there.
6:44
Cameron: It's one of those things that's evolved with national parks as a whole, they, started off as just the big scenery places, right?
6:53
Cameron: And then we incorporated these more historical areas.
6:56
Cameron: And then we even sort of moved away from just pure scenery.
7:00
Cameron: We started protecting places for their ecological and ecosystem value.
7:04
Cameron: So even if they weren't the most scenic, or they didn't have the most, this does are the most beautiful places for you to go and look out at like Yosemite Valley does.
7:13
Cameron: We recognize that a place like Congaree here in our home state of South Carolina has tremendous ecosystem value outside of just the views, right?
7:21
Cameron: Because when you go to Congaree, it admittedly doesn't have the views that Yosemite does, but that doesn't make it any less important or worthy of protection, doesn't make it any less special, right?
7:31
Cameron: So it's, it's a thing that I find very interesting about parks throughout their history is just how they're Great.
7:38
Cameron: How they've changed how they've evolved in terms of what we want out of them and what we want out of their protection from scenery to history to ecological value.
7:46
Cameron: And who knows what that will look like in the future as well.
7:49
Charlotte: there are certain families that love to travel and see all these park and have for.
7:56
Charlotte: Many years, depending on how you plan your family trip.
7:58
Charlotte: But I think, one of the benefits of COVID was nobody really wanted to go places that they were inside.
8:06
Charlotte: There was a big push for parks.
8:08
Charlotte: I felt like so many more people.
8:10
Charlotte: Started exploring more because they could still take a family vacation get outside and see the beauty and the history that America has to offer.
8:20
Charlotte: I thought that was.
8:21
Charlotte: Something positive out of it.
8:22
Cameron: I think, among all of the things that came out of COVID was we had this sort of return to nature, right?
8:29
Cameron: So at a time when we didn't have access to any of our more traditional forms of, Okay.
8:34
Cameron: Entertainment, like going to the movies, going to restaurants, going to parties and hanging out with your friends and enclosed spaces, like all these indoor things that we take as entertainment today and social settings, we didn't have any of that, right?
8:47
Cameron: And so parks and protected lands and public lands were our respite.
8:54
Cameron: That's where we went to escape from the madness that was happening.
8:57
Cameron: Happening, right?
8:58
Cameron: And so I think we really got to see the benefits of nature and the benefits of access to nature, right?
9:08
Cameron: If you were able to get out into the parks if you were able to take a journey and go to the parks, that was great.
9:15
Cameron: But then what if you were in a place that didn't have an access to a park and you also didn't have access to your traditional entertainment options because they were inside, I think that highlighted, park disparity and just how much we need to make parks accessible to everyone and all places and not just national parks.
9:35
Cameron: Of course.
9:35
Cameron: Right?
9:35
Cameron: Like, we're talking city parks and state parks and all manner
9:38
Charlotte: green spaces.
9:39
Cameron: Yeah, absolutely.
9:40
Cameron: Yeah.
9:41
Charlotte: Yeah, for sure.
9:42
Charlotte: I think that Nature has so many different benefits regardless, like you said, of the parks, whether it's for your physical health, your mental health social interaction, or, a lot of people also have a spiritual connection to nature as well.
9:55
Charlotte: Do you have a favorite park?
9:58
Cameron: yeah, yeah, my, my favorite part seems to change all the time.
10:02
Cameron: the first National Park I ever went to was Rocky Mountain National Park all the way out in Colorado.
10:07
Cameron: For the longest time, I have said that my favorite National Park is Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
10:12
Cameron: I would probably give them the edge.
10:13
Cameron: I think, I took a return trip to Rocky last year in the fall, and it blew me away.
10:19
Cameron: It was absolutely incredible.
10:20
Cameron: Just the temperatures.
10:22
Cameron: The senior that I saw, the, the aspens were changing colors.
10:27
Cameron: The Alpine was changing colors.
10:29
Cameron: It, it gave the Smokies a run for its money.
10:32
Cameron: But today, I still consider the Smokies my favorite because like you're mentioning, some people have like spiritual connections to places.
10:38
Cameron: And for me that's the Southern Appalachians, like the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and that entire.
10:46
Cameron: Southern Appalachian area.
10:48
Cameron: It's just really special to me and really important to me because like we were talking about earlier when I was sort of going through this formative experience of, developing a love and a passion for parks.
10:58
Cameron: I was in the upstate of South Carolina going to college and the Blue Ridge and the Smokies were very accessible to me.
11:05
Cameron: So it was sort of like a proving ground for me as a place where I just kind of came of age in terms of my love and experience with parks.
11:13
Cameron: Can't separate Great Smoky Mountains National Park from that period of my life.
11:17
Cameron: And so I just always have that.
11:22
Cameron: Connection with it.
11:23
Cameron: All the other parks that I go out and now I visited out west, I've been to Yellowstone.
11:26
Cameron: I've been to Glacier.
11:27
Cameron: I've been to Yosemite.
11:29
Cameron: I've been to two national parks in Alaska.
11:30
Cameron: I've been to Denali and Kenai Fjords.
11:32
Cameron: And I was just recently in Joshua Tree.
11:34
Cameron: So I've been to a lot of like, you know, the spectacular Western parks that have this amazing scenery.
11:40
Cameron: But when it comes to my favorite, I just always have to come back to the place that's important to me and special to me, like at a spiritual level.
11:46
Cameron: And that's the Smokies.
11:47
Cameron: So yeah,
11:48
Charlotte: Yes.
11:49
Charlotte: I understand what you're saying about the connection piece.
11:52
Charlotte: I think being in nature gives you connection.
11:55
Charlotte: To, yourself as well as the outdoors I have been to several national parks.
12:01
Charlotte: I've been to, you know, semi Sequoya.
12:03
Charlotte: Sequoia Kings canyon, Joshua tree, smokey mountains.
12:07
Charlotte: Just kind of name a few that we've been to.
12:09
Charlotte: But I'd have to say for me right now, my favorite is Acadia.
12:14
Charlotte: Last year I was going up to Maine for a retreat.
12:18
Charlotte: And I was able to add a couple of days to my trip so I could.
12:20
Charlotte: Make it up to Acadia.
12:23
Charlotte: I've always wanted to see the sunrise on the top of Cadillac mountain.
12:27
Charlotte: It's been on my bucket list for a couple years.
12:29
Charlotte: Like crazy thing was since this was a last minute trip.
12:33
Charlotte: The only way for me to get to the top of Cadillac mountain was for me to hike it.
12:37
Charlotte: Which seemed kind of a daunting task for me being, from the flatland of the low country of South Carolina.
12:45
Charlotte: And also given the fact that I had to wake up at three o'clock in the morning and start hiking by three 30.
12:51
Charlotte: To make it to the top in time for sunrise.
12:55
Charlotte: that experience really pushed me out of my comfort zone.
12:58
Charlotte: It made me.
12:59
Charlotte: Face my fears, dig deep, kind of going through the woods by myself in the early morning.
13:06
Charlotte: I really thought that I would have seen.
13:09
Charlotte: A lot more hikers, but only two passed by me.
13:12
Charlotte: The entire hike up there.
13:15
Charlotte: Which in turn ended up actually being more of a blessing.
13:19
Charlotte: Because I was able to have.
13:23
Charlotte: Like you said more of a spiritual awakening to be in the dark connect with nature.
13:28
Charlotte: Look up to the stars and see how small you are in this vast, great, beautiful world that we live in.
13:34
Charlotte: It was a really special moment for me to be able to get up there in time to watch the sunrise.
13:40
Charlotte: Overcome my fear of hiking in the dark by myself.
13:43
Charlotte: It was also freezing cold.
13:45
Charlotte: I think it was like 35 degrees, which is a shock to the system coming from South Carolina.
13:52
Charlotte: But it was a peaceful morning.
13:54
Charlotte: It was a wonderful life-changing experience for me.
13:58
Charlotte: To be able to connect with myself and really see what I was capable of.
14:05
Charlotte: Then once I got to the top, to enjoy the beauty, the beauty of the landscape, the beauty of the sun coming up of.
14:11
Charlotte: Over the water.
14:13
Charlotte: It was in the fall.
14:14
Charlotte: I got to see all the different fall colors.
14:16
Charlotte: It was just spectacular.
14:19
Charlotte: Um, I think it was John Muir.
14:22
Charlotte: There's a quote by John Muir and he said, Every walk in nature.
14:28
Charlotte: One receives far more than he seeks.
14:31
Charlotte: And I just think that's really true when you take a walk in the woods and especially a walk in the woods.
14:38
Charlotte: By yourself.
14:39
Cameron: yeah.
14:39
Cameron: No, I, I couldn't agree more and I'm so pleased to hear that you have that experience in Katie.
14:45
Cameron: I haven't been up there yet.
14:46
Cameron: It's my only East Coast part.
14:48
Cameron: Well, I guess outside of the Florida parks, but the upper Eastern seaboard parks, Katie is the last 1.
14:54
Cameron: I have yet to go to and it will probably be.
14:57
Cameron: One of the next couple visits, just because I have heard so many good things and I just want to go up there and experience it.
15:03
Cameron: But I'm just so glad that parks are there for those types of experiences, like, just us to having this conversation here on your podcast, and we can sort of extrapolate that out to everyone who's had that sort of experience and parks and the fact that they're there and that they can provide just it.
15:20
Cameron: The places for people to go unencumbered and have these life changing informative experiences.
15:25
Cameron: I think that's just really special and really important.
15:28
Cameron: And I'm forever grateful to the people way back and, you know.
15:32
Cameron: 1872 when they protected Yellowstone for the 1st time.
15:34
Cameron: I don't know that they could have quite predicted, right?
15:37
Cameron: Like where the parks would be and the types of experiences that people will be having in them today.
15:42
Charlotte: I do think that too, my family's big history buffs, to think back about John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt, all these wonderful people to have the vision of how quickly.
15:56
Charlotte: America was changing and how important the land, the beautiful vistas and the scenery but just to have the vision that this is something worth saving when back then it was, The excitement of the development the excitement of building a community and a society and how far we'd come as a civilization.
16:19
Charlotte: But to have the forethought that you can have both, you can still be a thriving community and also protect the natural habitats because they offer so much to you as a human being.
16:35
Charlotte: We can obviously go through the habitats, the, the ecology of it, but from also the human spirit, to be able to go out in nature.
16:43
Charlotte: Whether you're development pro or conservation pro, regardless of that, but just as a human being to go outside and feel the sun on your face, to be able to go for a walk, to breathe clean air, to explore It's so good for your soul.
16:59
Charlotte: I think for them to have the forethought that we need to protect these places so all of humanity has an opportunity to visit these spectacular places, it's just amazing.
17:13
Cameron: Yeah.
17:13
Cameron: That's perfectly said.
17:15
Cameron: Very well said.
17:16
Cameron: And I think about this a lot just with the foresight.
17:19
Cameron: These people have these early leaders and early conservation adopters just.
17:24
Cameron: How far ahead they were thinking, they were seeing the world changing so rapidly and so quickly and we have similar things today, right?
17:31
Cameron: Without how quickly the world is changing, but obviously the conservation movement is.
17:36
Cameron: Not in its formative years right now, it was as formative years in the age of industrialization.
17:40
Cameron: And just when I think about leaders, like you said, like mirror and Roosevelt and, uh, Horace Albright and Stephen Mather, early park service leaders and conservationists, like the Muries and people like Aldo Leopold.
17:53
Cameron: The way that they were thinking about these issues and the knowledge that they had to be able to say This isn't for us, right?
17:59
Cameron: Because these people were also older, when they were coming and advocating for these places.
18:03
Cameron: And, obviously Teddy Roosevelt wasn't going to be in the presidency forever.
18:07
Cameron: So he had a limited time to be able to make an impact.
18:09
Cameron: And he's like, this isn't for me.
18:11
Cameron: None of those people were like, this isn't for me.
18:12
Cameron: This is for future generations.
18:14
Cameron: And that's obviously a.
18:16
Cameron: Guiding principle of the park service today is, they're protecting resources, not for today, but for tomorrow.
18:23
Cameron: And, each time a new day comes, they're protecting it for the next day and the next day and the next day, just for future generations to be able to enjoy.
18:30
Cameron: And, yeah, I frequently just get lost in thought about how much foresight they had to be able to put this system in place and how beneficial it would be to so many millions of people.
18:43
Charlotte: I completely agree.
18:45
Charlotte: What I love about the national parks is that they've made it accessible to so many different types.
18:52
Charlotte: Of people.
18:53
Charlotte: It doesn't mean that you have to be an avid hiker and climb the highest peak.
18:58
Charlotte: You can go for a beautiful scenic ride enjoy a picnic area.
19:02
Charlotte: Walk out to a beautiful overlook or Vista.
19:06
Charlotte: whEther you're the novice sightseer to the outdoor Explorer, the national park system has really made it accessible for.
19:15
Charlotte: All sorts of outdoor enthusiast.
19:18
Cameron: Yeah, absolutely.
19:19
Cameron: I think they're one of the things I love about the parks.
19:23
Cameron: Like you said, it's just there's something there for everyone.
19:25
Cameron: You can come here.
19:27
Cameron: And Congaree, I'll use it as an example again, and they've got a nice little handicap accessible boardwalk, right?
19:33
Cameron: That's like a mile loop, and you can go around the whole thing and get a really good understanding of the floodplain ecology that Congaree is most famous for, but then there's also trails that are like, 10 miles on 10 plus miles long that you can go out there all the way to the Congaree River and get into the Congaree wilderness in the backcountry.
19:52
Cameron: Or a park like Yellowstone is famous for this, right?
19:56
Cameron: You have places like Old Faithful and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and the Mammoth Hot Springs area that are Pretty well developed.
20:04
Cameron: I mean, like there's hotels and shuttles and roads and all manner of visitor infrastructure here.
20:12
Cameron: Yellowstone Wilderness is one of the biggest and most vast in the United States.
20:16
Cameron: So you get a few miles off that trail and you just are completely transported to a different world, all within the same park.
20:23
Cameron: And I think there's examples of that all across the park system.
20:27
Cameron: It's obviously a good thing, because you can appeal to so many more people and get so many more people interested in protecting these places, right?
20:34
Cameron: Like, if you only had backcountry wilderness experiences, you're not gonna get as many people as you can to care about these places.
20:43
Cameron: Backcountry wilderness experiences are important, don't get me wrong, and they're absolutely critical and necessary for, like, large scale conservation projects.
20:53
Cameron: But if you're trying to get people interested in them, and especially in the long term...
20:57
Cameron: I think you have to have accessible opportunities as well, uh, and so that's where I'm really grateful to the Park Service.
21:03
Cameron: It's just their emphasis on accessibility and getting people out into the parks to not only experience them, but to understand them and appreciate them as well.
21:14
Charlotte: I think the park system is doing a great.
21:17
Charlotte: Job at providing a lot of different educational opportunities.
21:21
Charlotte: They are reaching people at all.
21:24
Charlotte: Generations.
21:26
Charlotte: I know that my son loves exploring.
21:28
Charlotte: I know when we went to Sequoia, His favorite thing was to climb through the big hollowed out sequoia tree and try to jump up with his arms outstretched to see if he could reach the diameter of the tree so they're doing a great job at reaching all the different age ranges
21:46
Cameron: Yeah, absolutely.
21:47
Cameron: You look at like the Junior Ranger program.
21:49
Cameron: With the National Park Service where they can go and they have little booklets and activities that are accessible to kids to be able to make the information and the same sort of interpretation.
22:00
Cameron: They're telling the same story, no matter how old you are, to adapt it in a way that kids can go and experience these things and have a little bit of interactivity with it.
22:09
Cameron: They get the stamp and they get to say the Junior Ranger pledge and they get the little booklet that they can, fill out and learn about all these things.
22:15
Cameron: That's going to build a park fan for life.
22:19
Cameron: Like they're going to go and do that.
22:21
Cameron: And they're going to want to go and do the other ones, right?
22:22
Cameron: Like, oh, I got the junior ranger badge at Yosemite.
22:25
Cameron: Let's go here next summer and let's go get the junior ranger badge over there.
22:28
Cameron: And that's how you build a lifelong park fan for sure.
22:32
Charlotte: I did want to ask you a little bit more about your YouTube channel.
22:35
Charlotte: Is it more of a documentary educational channel or is it.
22:42
Charlotte: Come explore with me.
22:44
Charlotte: As i discover the national parks
22:47
Cameron: Yeah, so National Park Diaries really, first and foremost, is an educational channel that's what I saw when I wanted to start on YouTube I noticed this, if you want to call it like a gap in the market I didn't really think anybody was covering national parks the way that I wanted to cover them, from this educational perspective and helping people understand how these places work, why they're important, every chance I get, I want to get out into the field and tell the stories from there.
23:15
Cameron: Even when I do that, that's really purely from an educational perspective.
23:18
Cameron: I tend to stay away on National Park Diaries from Like a vlog or like a trail guide style of episode that really purely documentary style, short form documentaries.
23:28
Cameron: the entire philosophy behind National Park Diaries is about educating people about national parks and helping them understand why they're so important and why they're worth protecting.
23:37
Cameron: And so every episode I make is, is.
23:41
Cameron: Made with that through line in mind.
23:43
Charlotte: And probably being on a YouTube channel, you probably have a.
23:48
Charlotte: Large audience range, probably also tailoring more towards.
23:53
Charlotte: Uh, younger generation
23:55
Cameron: Yeah, absolutely.
23:57
Cameron: I appreciate the generational comparison you brought up because if you look at National Park statistics, they're actually excuse older.
24:05
Cameron: So a lot of people who visit National Parks are older.
24:08
Cameron: And, uh, that's kind of an issue if you're, like, thinking long term about park visitation and park stewardship, right?
24:17
Cameron: You want to be raising that next generation of park lovers like we were talking about but if your visitation is skewing older and you're losing more and more younger people, uh, to meet them where they're at, right?
24:27
Cameron: And so YouTube is where young people are at.
24:30
Cameron: I feel so old saying, like, young people.
24:32
Cameron: I feel like I'm still one of the young people, but, um, You know, that's where, that's where, where
24:37
Charlotte: are still, you are still one of the young people.
24:39
Cameron: Yeah.
24:40
Cameron: So I'm going to stay that way.
24:42
Cameron: But that's where younger audiences are at this.
24:44
Cameron: They're on YouTube.
24:44
Cameron: They're on social media.
24:46
Cameron: And so I hope to, be able to bring the sort of in person interpretive materials that the Park Service uses when you go and visit them and make them a little bit virtual on YouTube and and help people.
25:01
Cameron: Form that relationship, maybe digitally to where they can move it online afterwards, like they'll come to YouTube and be like, wow, this, this channel is really cool and learning about national parks and but I've never been to one, or I've only been to this one, maybe I'll go out and venture to the next one, so it's as much that as it is reaching out to existing park fans, because I do have a lot of people, of course, who are, national parks, who are fans like me, who just.
25:22
Cameron: Want to share in this community and be part of a community of a fellow park lovers, and they've been to way more parks than I have.
25:28
Cameron: Right.
25:29
Cameron: And so there's that segment of my audience.
25:32
Cameron: And then there's the people who maybe have never been to a national park, or thought what I was talking about was interesting and now they just want to learn about national parks and hopefully inspiring that digital learning atmosphere to translate into physical protection and physical passion to go out and visit these places.
25:49
Charlotte: Yeah, I think that's, what's so great is trying to.
25:53
Charlotte: Promote the parks and really create passion for people to go out in nature and visit these spectacular places.
26:04
Charlotte: Cut almost like looping back to your smokey mountain experience and mine and Acadia.
26:09
Charlotte: Those experiences become core memories for you.
26:13
Charlotte: Of how parks and nature can create a life-changing experience, but also more importantly has great benefits to your overall health and wellbeing.
26:24
Charlotte: I have a very deep connection with nature.
26:26
Charlotte: if I'm stressed out or overwhelmed, I need to take a break and I need to go outside.
26:32
Charlotte: I need to.
26:33
Charlotte: Ground myself in nature in that kind of is what hits my reset button.
26:38
Charlotte: It helps me decrease my stress level or tap back into my creative side.
26:44
Charlotte: And so I think.
26:46
Charlotte: Helping people understand that.
26:49
Charlotte: Nature.
26:51
Charlotte: The parks all of these have really healing benefits.
26:55
Charlotte: That can help your overall wellbeing Being I, love everyone to have that opportunity to go to the National Park.
27:03
Charlotte: But I still think by even starting with your neighborhood park or your state park and getting into the Nature bug, so to speak, of how important nature is for your overall well being and then that will cascade into, let's go all around the country and see, this is what our topography looks like, here in South Carolina, but then over in Arizona, let's go to the desert.
27:29
Charlotte: Let's go to Sedona.
27:30
Charlotte: Let's go to the Grand Canyon.
27:32
Charlotte: I think the importance is it's really trying to get people out in nature as a whole.
27:37
Cameron: Yeah, that's perfectly well said.
27:39
Cameron: We're on the same page here.
27:39
Cameron: I think we have very similar philosophies on parks and conservation because.
27:45
Cameron: That's, yeah that's what I want people to take away from National Park Diaries, and I know the channel is called National Park Diaries but National Parks are like the vehicle, right?
27:53
Cameron: I am trying to impart conservation and promote parks in general here, so there's been a couple of times where I've covered state parks and a couple of times where I've covered international parks, because it's not just about national parks, right?
28:06
Cameron: I don't want to limit it.
28:08
Cameron: My philosophy and like you were talking about the benefits of parks do not stop at national parks like they trickle down to all sorts of public lands from national parks to national forest to wildlife refuges to state parks to your local parks to other parks and other countries.
28:26
Cameron: Right?
28:26
Cameron: So it's, it's, it's really for me, like you said, about promoting parks in general, in order to Reap all of these benefits.
28:34
Cameron: Like you were saying, we're talking about the health benefits and you've got the ecosystem services that parks provide these sort of recreational opportunities in terms of physical health.
28:44
Cameron: I just did an episode recently on the economic benefits of parks, right?
28:47
Cameron: Like, national parks alone generate 50 billion dollars for the US economy.
28:52
Cameron: And so, Approaching things as a promotion of parks in general and not just limiting it to national parks.
28:59
Cameron: I think is so important to instill that philosophy and ultimately change the way people think about parks, right?
29:07
Cameron: I don't want them to just be a place where.
29:11
Cameron: You go and snap that photo for Instagram, right?
29:14
Cameron: Like you were saying, I want people to be able to see them as these places where you can have life changing experiences and spiritual awakenings and parks.
29:22
Cameron: And then that ultimately trickles down, right?
29:24
Cameron: Like, when you change your mindset about a park like that, then you're ultimately going to go and maybe, like you said, take your kids across the country, then the next few years, or you're going to volunteer at that park or donate money to it, or whatever.
29:36
Cameron: Just go and visit them more often.
29:38
Cameron: And then you're going to be more likely to want to see more places protected and with more places protected, more people have access to them.
29:44
Cameron: And then more people are experiencing the benefits of parks, right?
29:47
Cameron: And then it's just this big giant trickle down effect that I firmly believe you can start at the individual level with just inspiring a love of parks and nature and conservation, like you said.
30:00
Charlotte: Yes.
30:00
Charlotte: I wholeheartedly agree.
30:02
Charlotte: That's why I named this podcast, The Seed Project.
30:07
Cameron: Yeah, that's a wonderful name, by the way.
30:08
Cameron: That is, that is awesome.
30:10
Charlotte: Thanks.
30:10
Charlotte: I firmly believe every individual has the opportunity to plant a seed and you are doing a phenomenal job of planting seeds how important nature in the park system is and how we need to continue to plant.
30:25
Charlotte: Those seeds and pass them on to our friends our family members and to our children to instill a love of nature they can forward on to the next generation.
30:36
Cameron: Yeah.
30:37
Cameron: Yeah.
30:37
Cameron: No, you build a house one brick at a time, right?
30:39
Cameron: It's just about putting one foot in front of the other, laying that brick one on top of the other and just keep on, keep on going.
30:46
Cameron: that's all we can do as, as individuals.
30:47
Cameron: You just got to put in the work and you touch people's lives one at a time.
30:51
Cameron: You just build up this community and you build up a little bit of momentum.
30:55
Cameron: I think that's, again, something that YouTube has taught me, but it's also just part of that through line of what I'm trying to talk about is helping people understand parks, one at a time, if I touch one person's life and they go out and, like I said, volunteer in the park, so they take their kid there, they donate money, whatever it is, you know, that creates a web of interconnected relationships and dynamics.
31:17
Cameron: And I think that's, A really important lesson to take away as well.
31:22
Charlotte: I completely agree.
31:24
Charlotte: We all are interconnected.
31:26
Charlotte: lastly, real quick, do you have a.
31:28
Charlotte: National park on your next list your
31:32
Cameron: Ooh, I don't okay, so I don't have any Currently on the books.
31:37
Cameron: I don't have any trips planned for the rest of the year.
31:39
Cameron: I have a couple of places that are forward on the list, like places that I would like to get to pretty soon.
31:46
Cameron: Acadia, like you were talking about is one.
31:48
Cameron: I am fascinated by the Dakotas.
31:50
Cameron: I have never been to the Dakotas.
31:51
Cameron: I've never actually been to any Great Plains state.
31:54
Cameron: but I really want to go and explore the Black Hills and there's sort of a cluster of parks in the Dakotas that I would love to visit.
32:01
Cameron: Cuyahoga Valley is in Ohio.
32:03
Cameron: It has a very interesting story in terms of its cleanup and recovery efforts.
32:07
Cameron: It used to be a heavily polluted area and now it's a national park and that story really fascinates
32:13
Charlotte: heard of it.
32:13
Charlotte: We're we're about in Ohio.
32:15
Cameron: It's just outside Cleveland.
32:17
Charlotte: Oh,
32:17
Cameron: Yeah.
32:18
Cameron: Yeah.
32:18
Cameron: So if you, I don't know if you've ever heard of like the Cuyahoga River that caught on fire.
32:23
Charlotte: Oh, yeah,
32:23
Cameron: yeah, so that's this park, the National Park now, you know, flaming river to National Park.
32:28
Cameron: That's a really cool story.
32:29
Cameron: And that's been on the front of my mind.
32:31
Cameron: And those are all Eastern parks.
32:33
Cameron: Those are easier for me to get to.
32:34
Cameron: And so I think they filter towards the front.
32:37
Cameron: BUt then I've never been to the Pacific Northwest either.
32:40
Cameron: And so I have a feeling we were talking about favorite parks earlier.
32:44
Cameron: I have a feeling that if I get out to Olympic, that my favorite park might change because the scenery on Olympic, like from what I've seen in pictures and what I've heard, it's going to trigger something in my brain.
32:57
Cameron: It's like, Oh my God, this is incredible.
32:59
Cameron: So I have, I just have a feeling, I don't know.
33:01
Cameron: I can't say that for sure, but I feel like Olympic might.
33:05
Charlotte: might rock the
33:06
Cameron: I ever get out
33:07
Charlotte: mountains
33:08
Cameron: It might.
33:08
Cameron: I can't say for sure.
33:09
Cameron: Like I said, Smokey's has those like, it has deep roots, you know, it'd be hard to pull those up, but Olympic could, could knock
33:17
Charlotte: Give it a run for its money.
33:19
Cameron: Yeah.
33:20
Cameron: Yeah.
33:20
Cameron: We'll see.
33:21
Charlotte: that sounds exciting.
33:22
Charlotte: I can't wait to hear.
33:23
Charlotte: I really do appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today and learn a little bit more about the national parks and how important they are to us as individuals, but as a larger community.
33:35
Charlotte: I really do appreciate it.
33:37
Cameron: Absolutely.
33:38
Cameron: Yeah.
33:38
Cameron: Thank you again for having me.
33:39
Cameron: This was an awesome conversation.
33:40
Cameron: I love talking about parks with people and I'm happy I could, could be on here.
33:44
Cameron: So thank you.
33:45
Charlotte: Thanks.
33:46
Charlotte: Have a great day.
33:47
Cameron: Yeah.
33:47
Cameron: You too.
33:49
Charlotte: I appreciate you spending this time with me until next time, keep sowing the seeds of love in your life and those around you.