Let’s talk about the day after.

What happens on the day after Chattanooga becomes a National Park City?

We don’t fully know, yet. But knowing was never the point.

Here’s what we can confidently predict:

National Park City Chattanooga’s designation will alter our landscape for generations to come, providing a narrative and identity that catapults us forward in mighty and life-changing ways.

Specifically?

Charter groups will continue to meet and grow. Led by nonprofit leaders who are organizing from a base of 500 supporters and citizens, charter groups combine official leadership with grassroots leaders and civic influencers.

Based on each of our charter commitments, the groups will build on our NPC designation, strengthening and birthing more programs while envisioning more gutsy and thoughtful growth.

Chattanooga's government will introduce a new NPC committee that formalizes our policymaking influence while the city mayor will continue wide-reaching work that echoes the spirit of NPC, including plans to revert ownership of the riverfront land back to its original inhabitants, the Cherokee Nation.

Groups once siloed will now have a very clear umbrella under which to gather and combine forces. Media attention will intensify. The Parks Department, already emboldened by its strong budget and new Parks and Outdoors Plan, will become a household name.

Most of all

There will be an immeasurable boost of confidence, a little swagger in our step as we nod in agreement: yes, we knew all along, Chattanooga is a special National Park City.

We can’t name all the stories. Like leaves in the forests, there are too many to count.

But we can tell you some. In these pages and videos, we’re telling you some stunningly beautiful stories.

After all, storytelling is our love language … ya’ll.

Once, there was a time when there were no parks. Everything was a park: vibrant, alive, accessible, completely free.

Over time, we lost something precious.

Today, we’re trying to get it back. Yes, we face challenges. Some are so big, they seem unsurmountable.

But we wake up each day, under the presence of the mountain Tsatanugi and continue to work, dream and ask:

What if we became North America’s first National Park City?

So, on the day after, we’ll do what we’ve always done: Chattanoogans will wake up, pour some coffee and continue to do the work building the city we need and want. We’ll continue to host events, regularly update and highlight our amazing committed partners, and continue to share individual and collective stories.

From the grassroots to the grasstops, we are deep in a movement too large to be contained or neatly packaged.

It is both literal and spiritual, existing in everyday programs and organizations – the trails we hike, the blueways we paddle – and the hearts and minds of immeasurable Chattanoogans.

If you award us as a National Park City, you will empower an immeasurable number of people and programs, all of whom work in ways that improve, honor and appreciate this city we call home.

Yes, we are the most economically poor city you have considered. For too many of our unhoused citizens, parks have become their home, with makeshift tents hidden in the woods. We are not hiding our problems, pains or history.

But there is something here – in the land, in the hearts and minds of those walking on it – that seems to consistently rise above, to seek out the higher ground, to search for community, heal collective wounds, imagine tomorrow better than today.

If we truly believe that nature heals trauma, then becoming a National Park City is the appropriate and visionary response to Chattanooga heartache. This designation could help heal generations.

When Dr. Martin Luther King stood at the Lincoln Memorial for his historic “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, he spoke of Chattanooga.

“Freedom must ring from every mountainside. Let it ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let it ring from every mountain and hill of Alabama.”

Dr. King was calling forth a new vision of a new America and, by extension, Chattanooga. National Park City work is freedom work.

Lookout Mountain?

That's Tsatanugi.

This Journey Book brought to you in partnership with
‍The Little Things Lab.

How What If becomes What Next.