By Jeremy Varner
The author and a great blue heron start a friendship on a Florida beach
I made friends with a great blue heron while fishing on a Florida beach during Spring Break. It wasn’t the most meaningful of relationships because the heron was just using me for food, and I was maybe partially using it for aura farming. By the end of the week, we both moved on, but next Spring Break maybe we’ll reconnect.
The setting is the real star of the story. Florida Panhandle beaches are some of the best in the world and not just because the water is gorgeous, the sand is soft and white-ish, the fishing is good, or the weather is lovely, but also because they are accessible to the public. Whether you have a family estate along the shore or are just staying in a hotel in town for a few nights, everyone has equal rights to the beach, and that’s marvelous.
Most of us don’t have a family country estate that allows us to roam around in nature making animal friends and recharging our spirits, but we all have access to public lands in the form of city, county, state, and national parks as well as national forests, national recreation areas, wildlife management areas, and a variety of other public lands.
Here’s the special secret that seems to have been lost, miscommunicated, or misunderstood: YOU own public lands. They are managed by – but not owned by – the government. They aren’t the government’s property. They are your property. They are your children’s, your friends’, your relatives’, and your neighbors’ property. The annoying person from work you don’t like owns them too. Even folks who hate public lands own them. They are all of ours. But more importantly they are yours. You, the person reading this sentence right now, own a massive amount of public land. Isn’t that awesome?!?
This summer and into the fall many of us will be taking some sort of vacation and I hope you spend some of that time on your other property. It might include having a picnic at Grant Park, playing on the playground at Ormond-Grant Park, walking the Doll’s Head Trail, taking a hike at Fort Mountain State Park, fishing along the Chattahoochee River, mountain biking in the Chattahoochee National Forest, foraging for chanterelle mushrooms in the pocket of woods you don’t tell anyone about, hunting in the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge, or birding along the Beltline.
Woody Guthrie spoke truth to power when he sang “This land is your land. This land is my land. This land was made for you and me.” The outdoor writer Steve Rinella frequently says the only reason we have wild, public places is because we have decided to not develop them. Put another way, having green spaces for all of us to share is an act of collective will. Of course, ownership comes with responsibility. Farmer and writer Doug Duren says, “It’s not ours, it’s just our turn.”
In The Porch Press’ March 2026 edition, Dr. Jacqueline Echols of the South River Watershed Alliance wrote about some of the work that goes into protecting public land, specifically, the potential development of a data center in Intrenchment Creek Park.
With the strongest possible enthusiasm, I encourage you to appreciate, cherish, share, enjoy, conserve, and protect your public land. Let’s have some fun out in the woods this summer.
