Early morning is the time to be in the park. All the senses are heightened in the quiet, delicate light; you hear birds singing from every direction, animals rustling in the woods, streams running. It’s a completely different experience than during the rest of the day, as though the woods were your own enormous backyard. But please ignore these words — I’d like to have the place to myself that time of day.
— Christian Barter, National Park Service trail crew supervisor and the park’s current (and first) poet laureate
Photograph: A Morning View of Otter Cliff, by Mark Fleming
