Cornwall Creek Flooding is one of the most splendid places I have ever been, every time I leave I’m already thinking about, longing for, heading back...and I haven’t even made it to the truck. To me, my friends and my family it’s the birthplace of some of our longest held and most profound traditions. It’s a place of togetherness and camaraderie. It’s the only place in the world that time has stood still, unphased and everlasting, despite what’s happening in the “real” world it’s existed as a requiem of solitude and peace, the likes of which seem all together absent from the modern world. It is a place for your soul and mind to rest. This is a place worth saving; a place unlike any other in the world. This is a moment in both Michigan and human history that will help define the trajectory of how we handle our most prized natural resources for generations to come. If we choose to abandon a place so pristine and wonderful based on the cost of preserving it, the precedent being set will be irreversible. One day when places like this only exist in memory or in picture, each of us will have to suffer both the reality of having had the privilege of experiencing it ourselves and the burden of needing to describe to our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren what it was like to see, feel and experience in real life. If we don’t strive to protect our most valuable resources today, they will not be here tomorrow. The PRC is the lifeblood, financially speaking, of many of the projects and land acquisitions happening across our great State which I believe is extremely important work, however I find it abhorring that this country can be bled dry, left to ruin and utterly abandoned by the very agencies and state offices that ought to have prioritized its maintenance and upkeep in tandem with exploitation of this land for the acquisition and development of other parks and facilities across the State. This is a place worth saving. The real cost here isn’t financial. The real cost here isn’t the number of dollars it will take to preserve this place. The real cost is something we cannot quantify. Trying to save money today by choosing to let places like Cornwall fall to the wayside is robbing future generations the privilege of experiencing nature in its most pure, wonderful and beautiful form.
