Seattle’s newest incognito celebrity - @AltNatParkSer

Some folks have been busy at Mt. Rainier.

It started small, and has grown. Exploded, actually. The various science-oriented parts of the U.S. government have followed the lead of a few anonymous scientists who decided to tweet data because they were told not to. Those rebels. Someone is probably wagging an official finger at people behind accounts like @AltBadlandsNPS. That is if they can figure out who they are.

There are over 400 areas in the National Park System. It was inevitable that there’d be one account to rule them all, or at least be a more general site than any specific park or monument. The Twitter account, @AltNatParkSer, was begun.

“The Unofficial #Resistance team of U.S. National Park Service. Not taxpayer subsidised! Come for rugged scenery, facts & 89 million acres of landscape “

But where were they? It turns out they were from our neighborhood.

Nice idea. Evidently, it was such a great enough idea that they quickly built to over one million followers. This was risky, and they knew it.

These are smart enough people that they realized handling such an information service might require people who could speak more freely, and who also had experience in such endeavors.

Celebrity eventually fades and moves on. The account is already being managed from more than one location. But, it is interesting to see what wild things grow in our local wild places.

• @AltNatParkSer [Twitter]