Keep Lincoln Park’s beauty and power

I was deeply troubled to learn in the July 4 newspaper about the proposed zip line in Lincoln Park [“Looking askance at zip-line plans,” NWWednesday, July 4].

Most people in cities spend their lives completely removed from the stillness of nature. I spent the first part of my life in Chicago, and I moved to the Pacific Northwest specifically to be able to get into nature more frequently.

When I moved from Oregon to Seattle almost nine years ago, I learned very quickly that while we are surrounded here by beautiful wild places, it takes both time and money to access them. And even though Seattle boasts of a lot of parks, very few of them are large enough to provide the stillness and peace of natural places.

In Lincoln Park it’s possible to walk a short distance and feel almost completely removed from the noise and pressure of the developed environment. A casual visitor can spend a half-hour there and visit a world of quiet and birds’ song. I travel a fairly long distance through the city on a regular basis to enjoy that quiet and deep peace.

The beauty and power of Lincoln Park is that it is largely undeveloped — please keep it that way.

— Sherry Narens, Seattle