I'll be away from the computer for a few days, heading back to Cape Cod for a memorial service for my father. For me, it'll definitely be a time for reflection. When I heard he was gravely ill in a hospital, I was in Glacier National Park, getting my first look at that incredible place for a project I was working on.
    It was hard not to be by his side, but at the same time, if I could have asked him what he wanted, he would have told me to stay in Glacier. He knew how I felt about our national parks, environmentally and spiritually. I've always joked, when asked my religion, that I was a Druid, for they were said to worship trees, and that seemed like a pretty good deal to me.
    Roaming Glacier's deep valleys and sculpted mountains filled me with awe and motivation -- awe for the open-air cathedral that the park is, and motivation to sling a pack on my back and head down a trail, or shove my canoe into one of the lakes for a much-needed escape from phones and cars and deadlines and computers.
     But it also filled me with a bit of trepidation. Trepidation that the folks in Washington don't truly appreciate what we've accomplished with the national parks movement and won't stop pushing until they've rewritten the National Park Service Organic Act, lifted the barriers to rampant snowmobile and ORV use in the parks, and outsourced a good chunk of the National Park Service.
     There's much work to be done to see that that doesn't happen. And I know my dad would be proud, knowing that I'm not willing to sit idly by and watch that happen.