Pacific Grove Library salutes a century of National Parks.

The Pacific Grove Public Library has committed to fomenting more culture and ideas by dedicating a room, the Nancy and Steve Hauk Gallery, to precisely that. Last year they did so by weaving events around the ecological writings of Rachel Carson. This year, they’ve continued that commitment with This Land is Our Land.

It’s a three-month series, now in month two, of lectures, music, nature walks, readings and children’s activities that survey the regional presence of the National Park Service, which turns 100 this year.

The title is an invocation of the Woody Guthrie song “This Land is Your Land,” and many of the activities are backdropped by an exhibit of paintings of national parks and monuments.

A library and the National Parks are a natural fit, says Steven Silveira, P.G.’s library director. “Public libraries are where our cultural and literary heritage is shared with everyone,” he writes by email. The National Parks, in turn, share our wilderness heritage. These two are further entwined by a focus on the writings of naturalist John Muir. (Nature walks followed by readings of Muir’s work come Saturday, Nov. 5, and Dec. 3.)

This Friday, Oct. 28 (5:30-7:30pm), Eric Morgan, BLM’s Fort Ord National Monument manager, gives a talk at the library titled “Fort Ord National Monument,” in which he will explain why he thinks it is the greatest national monument in the United States.

“Some of the greatest soldiers of the world passed through the gates of the former Fort Ord,” Morgan says.

One event, Dec. 18 at Grace Dodge Chapel at Asilomar, is titled “The Spirit of John Muir,” a dramatic talk by Lee Stetson recounting Muir’s wildlife adventures, including riding down a Yosemite Valley canyon wall on an avalanche.

Muir’s wilderness philosophy is an elemental one, which he shared in his address to the California Federation of Women’s Clubs at Hotel Del Monte in Monterey in 1909: “I am glad I got to California soon enough to see it in all its untrammeled beauty. I have walked 500 miles through the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys when they were one unbroken mass of golden bloom. I made my bed among the wildflowers, where the march of commerce has obliterated God’s handiwork. There is not much left to us of beauty because commerce seizes upon all that it can reach that is dollarable.”

THIS LAND IS OUR LAND continues through Jan. 6, 2017, at Pacific Grove Public Library, 550 Central Ave., Pacific Grove (and other locations). Most events are free; some suggest a $10 donation. 648-5767, www.OurLandPG.weebly.com, dgodwin@cityofpacificgrove.org.