Last year a 400 acre meadow wetland was donated to Yosemite National Park: Ackerson Meadow. I visited the meadow this last October, but it was still fenced in. I did speak to a park ranger at the Hetch Hetchy entrance of Yosemite and he said it belonged to the public now and didn’t see why I couldn’t go over the fence and into the meadow.

While I appreciated the idea of going over the fence, I decided not to. The reason I didn’t go over the fence was because once one person goes over it, then a multitude of people would start going over it. One of the last things you want to have happen is a ton of people traipsing into a meadow and ruin the landscape. I see this happen all too often up at Tuolumne Meadows and the meadows along the Glacier Point Road. There are signs around those meadows that say something like “Restoration in progress; Do not enter the meadow.” However, time and time again I see vehicles pull over and people get out, disregard the signs, and enter the meadows. Such recklessness!

Below is a picture I took of Ackerson Meadow. If you look at the left side of the photo, you’ll see a number of the pine trees turning brown. This is once again the sign of the bark beetle infestation. Such a sad thing to see at such a beautiful location. Hopefully the really wet season we’ve had in California this winter will help slow the bark beetles. More rain and snow is on the way in the weeks to come, so that gives me a lot of hope and excitement about the possibilities to come in spring! 🙂

Have a great week everyone!