This spring, there will be more than just flowers blooming in Santa Cruz County. Throughout April, in celebration of National Poetry Month, poetry will be leaving the page and popping up in the parks! In a project sponsored by Santa Cruz County Parks and Santa Cruz County Poet Laureate Nancy Miller Gomez, poems by local and national poets will be installed in select parks across the County. Everyone is invited to join us in a county wide Poetry Scavenger Hunt. In this self-guided experience, we want you to enjoy the parks through your own poetic lens.

Are you up for the challenge? With the poem as your guide, explore each participating park to find elements that connect to the poem. The hunt is open-ended, so be creative and let your imagination run wild. Use your cell phone (or a sketch pad) to document your interpretive discoveries and upload the images to Instagram (handle link at scparks.com). Your scavenged responses can be literal, metaphorical, abstract, artistic, zany, beautiful or weird. A review panel will choose a winner for each location. The winners receive a gift certificate from a sponsoring business!

Invite your friends, bring a picnic, find a poem, snap some pics, win a prize! Participating parks will be listed on the Parks website at scparks.com.