401 and Done

When I was a kid I was bowled over by the national parks my parents took my three sisters and me to.  We didn't go to that many, but they amazed me.  Redwoods, Grand Canyon and Carlsbad Caverns are three that come to mind.  We got a National Geographic book, America's Wonderlands, and I avidly pored through it.  I dreamed of one day going to every national park in America.  There were about 40 of them in those days.

Today's entry is about an interesting fellow who has accomplished something I admire very much.  By visiting the Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site in Washington, D.C. this year,     Chris Calvert has been not only to all 49 national parks, but to all 401 sites and units in the national park system!  To read a more complete story, National Parks, the quarterly magazine of the National Parks Conservation Association, has an article about him in ts Spring 2014 issue.  Appropriately, it's titled "401 and Done."

 

Carter's quest began 33 years ago,     when he was 17.  His parents took    him to Olympic National Park in     Washington state. He remembers  being overwhelmed by the majesty of snow-capped crags looming over old growth forest and flowered  meadows and saying, "If this is what the national parks

are about, I have   to see all of them."

       

Carter graduated from law school, but instead of becoming a "big-shot lawyer" remains a clerk in the office.  That's because he is "unwilling to sacrifice that much of his life to a job."  As his partner  Jeff Splitsoser says, Carter feels "The most precious thing we have is time.  All the money in the world     cannot buy you back another second of it.  His passion is seeing parks--not filing an application or a    brief." For living life as he wishes in pursuit of his passion and dream this entry salutes Chris Calvert.