On September 27, 2009, Ken Burns’ “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” a six-part, 12-hour series, will begin airing on PBS. It will include the stories of more than four dozen people who dreamed about and fought to create our national parks. Now, with such a great public health need to encourage our children to get outside, this series couldn’t be more opportune. It has the potential to reinvigorate us — individuals as well as families — with the desire to conduct our own nature travels and experience their restorative power, something outdoor enthusiasts have known about for a long time.

As Ken Burns told Audubon Magazine in a recent interview, “This is an American invention. For the first time in human history, land was set aside not for kings or noblemen or the very rich, but for everybody and for all time.”

There are more than 60 places that come under the aegis of the National Park Foundation in the Midwest. Wisconsin alone has three entities classified as “national parks”: the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, the Ice Age National Scenic Trail, and the St. Croix National Scenic River. But rather than limit ourselves to a single list or classification, why not take advantage of the hundreds of public lands that are out there waiting for us to explore, including our state and county parks, state and county forests, state natural areas, and national forests, to name just a few?

And if motives such as improving our own physical health and that of our children aren’t enough to make us get outside, there are the immediate mental health benefits. As Ken Burns put it: “There were many times where each of us working on the film had the experience of being utterly alone, not necessarily being lonely in the kind of sentimental, contemporary sense, but experiencing a profound solitude that woke us up, made us more present.”

We are all co-owners of these places. ©John T. Andrews.

Still not swayed to leave the comfortable confines of your home on the weekends and holidays? Then consider this very tangible concrete reason to get outside: you need to check up on and protect your possessions, or you’ll lose them.

Says Ken Burns, “If it is a democratic idea and we are all co-owners of these places, all we have to do is go and visit our property every once in awhile and make sure it’s being taken care of. That will save it for posterity.”

The series will conclude on October 2, 2009. Be sure to stay home and watch — and then get up and go out, even if it’s just to your neighborhood playground.