It's a total no-duh that the Bay Area is filled with natural beauty. The hills and the bay and the bridges and the ocean - all of it stunning and fabulous. And plenty of our citizens take advantage of this natural goodness - hiking, biking, camping, sailing. The number of nature-lovers here is really outstanding.

The reason they can do this is because someone's gone to the trouble of protecting and conserving this land. You know if they didn't, it would be condos and The Gap from sea to bay and back again. The Trust for Public Land (TPL) is a national organization that works on land conservation - from large parks to community gardens. Locally, the TPL has worked their conservation magic on more than 125 places throughout our area, covering 24,000 acres. They identify and help purchase the land, and then turn it over to local groups to manage. They even do playgrounds!

We're not a bit paranoid but it sure seems like the earth is out to get us lately so conservation is something we really think about and feel we could do better to support. And we love that TPL has a very broad list of ways you can help, including using pictures of their parks on your desktop - sample on the right. Man, now we want to go fishing!