Recreation & Rivers 101: The Transformative Power of Recreation & Rivers

From its roots the word recreation means to “create again,” to “renew,” or “an activity for mental and spiritual consolation.” It’s all in the word. Recreation takes us into nature to play, explore, and experience adventure. In turn we create our emotional and spiritual selves anew. Parks in the United States are important public spaces; they invite recreation and renewal in our everyday lives. 

Early in recreational history John Muir, who is responsible for so much of the writing, activism, and preservation of the Yosemite, said this: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.” His words acknowledged the human need for nature-connection during a time of industrialization and continued colonization.

Contemporary author and environmental justice activist Carolyn Finney writes: “What I discovered/uncovered/recovered is the many ways in which—be it physical, artistic, or spiritual—black people have laid it all down in order to feed their children, plant their dreams, and share their history and experience with the environment ... people like Eddy Harris who at the age of thirty during the 1980s, canoed the length of the Mississippi River to understand both the material and spiritual meaning of the river in American life. Or Shelton Jackson, a Black park ranger in Yosemite National Park who revived the story of the Buffalo Soldiers and their role in protecting the park.”

Recreating with land and water creates personal bonds with ecosystems, hidden histories, and our personal places within them.

The parks of today were once homelands and waters stewarded by their original Indigenous inhabitants before being seized through systematic colonization. As citizens in a present shaped by this history, many organizations and park stewardship agencies are working towards a future where caring for public lands and waters prioritizes accessibility alongside ecological repair—both as strategies for invitation and reconciliation. How can recreating in parks be an act of renewal and consolation for the spirit—for individuals and larger communities?

The ongoing movement for shared access with the land continues ever onward.

Recreation as Health

In 1906, Jane Addams and Luther Halsey Gulick co-founded the Playground Association of America to give young people spaces in which to play, be creative, and to overcome barriers of prejudice and class judgment. Their work recognized the importance of play, exercise, and access to greenspaces in a young person's development. 

Linking social equity, health, and outdoor education has long been a hallmark of environmental recreation programs. Today, we take that one step further, noticing how human mental and physical health directly mirror environmental health. Disconnected habitats, polluted watersheds, and unhealthy wildfire-prone forests coincide with economic disenfranchisement and the array of emotional and physical stressors experienced by those on the frontlines of environmental change and economic disparity. This affects communities along the whole watershed, from the Sierra Nevada to Central Valley and into the San Francisco Bay Area. 

TRT’s own Park Youth Committee found interconnected data showing that 69% of 5th graders at a Modesto area school do not meet basic physical fitness standards, that 53% of Modesto residents surveyed do not feel safe visiting a park in their area, and that by 9th grade 50% of students feel chronic sadness or hopelessness.

Often this disconnection is driven by barriers to easy and safe access which may include lack of physical infrastructures, systemic economic disenfranchisement, and a lack of safety within public parks. Lack of geographic proximity is another challenge: A recent report from the Trust for Public Land showed that communities of color have 43% less park space than white neighborhoods. Sometimes connecting people to the river starts with building the sidewalk, trail, or boat launch to get there.

People are part of whole ecosystems and the positive effects of recreation and time spent in nature are well documented. Studies from the past several years increasingly show that green spaces near children’s homes and schools promote cognitive development and healthy self-control. Exposure to natural environments improves working memory, cognitive flexibility, and reduces the risk of psychiatric disorders later in life.

Water-based recreation comes with its own cascade of positive health benefits as shared by Wallace Nichols, marine biologist and writer of Blue Mind. He writes that water covers over 70% of the earth’s surface while also making up 70% of our bodies. Our heart and brain are primarily water; we’re biologically connected, and in turn, the simple sights and sounds of water can unleash a flow of neurochemicals that provide a sense of relaxation while increasing blood flow to the brain and heart. 

Recreating with the flowing current of rivers like the Tuolumne is good for human bodies and minds.

Recreation and Advocacy

Just as Muir transitioned from a passionate nature-lover and mountaineer in his youth to a staunch environmental conservationist in his later years, recreational activities and public parklands have been gateways for generations of environmental activists and advocates. A passion for whitewater or catching fresh fish for dinner often transforms into social and environmental responsibility. 

When recreation groups connect to social and environmental justice movement, rich alliances and coalitions form, from kayakers protesting oil drilling to fly fishers advocating for river health and salmon resiliency to TRT’s own Park Youth Committee and Tuolumne River Adventure Club—each with the fight for community leadership and sovereignty as a significant cornerstone of these movements. 

Connecting advocacy to recreation empowers the next generation of civic and environmental leaders, creates a web of local advocates, and protects river health locally as well as downstream. Pollution-free waterways in Modesto lead to local community health, as well as flourishing wetlands and estuaries downstream all the way to the Bay-Delta. It’s all connected: accessible parks, mental and physical health, clean water, and healthy rivers and estuaries that provide habitat for young salmon and overwintering birds.

In unlikely ways the story of recreation is the story of creating access that invites relationships. Ensuring equitable access to greenspaces is a first step in creating an environmentally engaged culture. Access and invitation comes in many forms: a newly installed neighborhood sidewalk connects a young person in Modesto with an avid whitewater kayaker accessing the river through Meral’s Pool in the Upper Tuolumne, and one day, both might partner with land use planners and Indigenous leaders to advocate for river flows and thriving salmon populations. 

As Muir iconically shared 113 years ago in My First Summer in the Sierra: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” The connections between accessible parks; inclusive recreation; thriving riparian ecosystems, and ecological, personal, and community health are plentiful and endlessly interwoven.