St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley recently announced he was recommending the closure of many St. Louis County parks, possibly selling them, to make up a $10 million county budget shortfall for 2012. This is move is not in the public interest.

Our parks are not just a crown jewel of natural beauty for our residents — they also are part of what attracts newcomers here, including businesses, who want to be able to offer a high quality of life to their employees. My sister recently visited from northern New Jersey, where we grew up, and was astonished at the multiple options we have to "escape" to see rivers, forests and wildlife. She said, "there's so much more to do here" than where we grew up, even though mid-town Manhattan, teeming with "things to do," was just 15 minutes away. Our parks, freely accessible, were more impressive to her.

I'm a psychologist, not a policymaker or an economist, so I can't suggest where to cut the budget to get that $10 million. But as a psychologist, I do know that, especially in a struggling economy, maintaining free or very low-cost access to these kinds of natural oases in the urban metroplex helps to tamp down anxiety, tension and despair, all of which can lead to both individual health problems that cost us money to treat, and even public health problems such as increased road rage and violence.

A family that's struggling in this economy can, for a few dollars' worth of gas, spend hours on an outing in one of these unbelievable park spaces, an outing that buys a bit of normality, a bit of peace and quiet, a bit of protection from the otherwise crushing daily grind of being unemployed or underemployed or worrying about hanging on to one's employment, which so many live with these days.

Studies have found even having a view of some trees outside your office window is associated with having a better frame of mind and being more optimistic and more productive. If a few trees can do that, imagine what hundreds of acres of thick forest, winding rivers and roaming wildlife do to the collective frame of mind of our region? It's not a stretch to say that our collective mental and physical health is made better by our park system, so that makes the parks a crucial public investment.

The benefits to the county hanging on to these parks (including the 135 parks and recreation jobs that would be lost if this part of the 2012 budget is approved) are such that we should be jealously guarding them rather than thinking of giving them away. But there's also a magic in the parks that goes beyond quantifiable public policy — that more elusive quality of life.

This week, my wife and I made a "Save Lone Elk Park" sign and took our 2 1/2-year-old granddaughter on her first trip to that park; it also functioned as her first protest. Lone Elk is just one of the parks on the chopping block, but it's symbolic in many ways. We have made a commitment to get her to as many of our wonderful parks as we can, and she loves them.

Within minutes of driving into Lone Elk Park? We saw a lone elk, with magnificent antlers, standing in the lake, leisurely drinking, with the hills and forest of fall colors surrounding it all. I took a picture of my wife and granddaughter and the elk in the lake, my wife holding the "Save Lone Elk Park" sign, and I felt such sadness that my granddaughter soon might not be able to see this kind of breathtaking scene again, that we wouldn't hear her say "he's a big one!" in her toddler's marveling at the size of this wild animal she'd as yet only read about.

All the people we saw there, sharing the scene, were so respectful of the silence, honoring the knowledge that they were the visitors in this land, that the elk was the "owner," along with all the other deer, bison, ducks, frogs and other creatures. I once lived in Alaska, and this is as close as we can get in our area to that sense of the powerful greatness of nature producing in us a kind of humility that is good for the soul and good for people getting along with each other (another public policy objective).

The cars were slow and quiet, people of all sorts of backgrounds and means smiled at each other as we shared a precious moment of almost indescribable beauty. To say something is spiritual in this day and age can get you into all sorts of trouble, but when you have people from all walks of life mingling happily together to admire a mundane natural event — an elk drinking out of a lake — well, it might not be church, but it's still something sacred that deserves to be saved.

Parks help meet critical public policy goals. All of our parks are sacred, not just Lone Elk Park. The county must save the parks and find another way to address the very real budget issues we have. Our parks are some of our best "assets." Let's bestow their riches on generations to come.

Peter C. Scales of Manchester is a psychologist, researcher, author and tennis coach.