Ready to enjoy nature in 2026? Then love the one you’re with. | Opinion

“...If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with.”

As relationship advice, the 1970 Stephen Stills song “Love the One You’re With” is shaky at best. But as a guide for interacting with the natural world in this new year, it offers real wisdom.

With record-breaking national park visitation straining an underfunded system, maybe it’s time to renew our relationship with the “wild” that’s close to home.

You only have to spend time at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the nation’s most visited, to see the result of this equation: sublime nature, plus 12 million annual visitors, minus adequate financial support. It’s a tribute to the glory of our Appalachian Mountains – and the relentless good cheer of dedicated park rangers – that you can still come away refreshed despite the park’s deferred maintenance and peak-season traffic jams.

That’s why we should consider making 2026 the year we fall in love with the one we’re with – the parks, nature preserves and greenways of our local region.

To be sure, national parks are called “America’s best idea” for a reason. Nothing will substitute for a sequoia, glacier, great plain or canyon – or the grizzlies, wolves and other wild citizens of those places.

But there is beauty, even majesty, in our own backyard. The cathedral of beeches in Buckeye Cove Nature Preserve. Egrets poised above ponds in McAlpine Creek Park. A family of otters playing in Stevens Creek Nature Preserve.

And because we can visit often and linger, we can know the nuances and seasonal changes of our local, natural places in ways we’ll never experience somewhere afar. We’ll see the mayapples unfurl their green umbrellas in spring. We’ll catch the scent of ripening wild persimmons in fall. We’ll notice when the warblers arrive – and when they go. To return to Stills’ song, it’s the difference between a long-distance relationship and a long, slowly unfolding love for the girl or guy next door.

However divided we may be as a nation, we unite around our love for the outdoors. The Trust for Public Land surveyed Americans across the political spectrum and found that seven out of 10 said they support programs to improve existing park land, even if it meant a small increase in taxes. Even more telling: When pollsters asked, “In the past year, where do you wish you had gone the most often to find joy?” the top answer – by a big margin – was “anywhere outdoors.”

Here in Mecklenburg County, we do love our parks. In fiscal 2025, parks, nature preserves and greenways saw 22 million visits, a 25% increase from 2019. Some spaces – Freedom Park, Latta Nature Preserve and McDowell Nature Preserve – are so heavily visited they’re in danger of being “loved to death” – which is why Mecklenburg Park & Recreation is making a renewed push to add properties in areas that lack them, to increase access and spread usage around. Still, the experience of a local walk in nature is nothing like one in our most heavily trammeled national parks. And because this environment is nearby, we can visit year-round, at all times of day. It’s still easy to find solitude.

Many of us equally value the liminal spaces still left in Charlotte – the scraps of green that have so far escaped the bulldozer, the clusters of trees and shrubs that make habitat for our wild neighbors, and respite for our urbanized selves.

If we love what’s local, it starts with opening ourselves to enchantment. And it continues with responsibility. Love means working for the beloved’s best. It could be as simple as picking up trash as we walk. It could mean not simply accepting that urban creeks like McAlpine have to be choked with garbage after heavy rain. It might be volunteering with Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation. It could be investing in our green spaces through Partners for Parks or local land conservation trusts. It may be asking your local representatives to prioritize adding parks, nature preserves and greenways, and to provide sufficient “back of house” funding to maintain those spaces.

Loving the one we’re with means saving and celebrating nature nearby. It means giving ourselves to the wild world that is waiting, right outside our doors.

Amber Veverka lives in Charlotte.