Rita Beamish somewhere on the John Muir Trail in the High Sierra.

Editor's note: National Parks Traveler has operated with only one full-time staffer since its inception, but has a core team of freelance writers, photographers, broadcasters, and sound recording engineers that are relied upon heavily to provide content. They're being introduced to you in a series of short profiles.

Rita Beamish

Contributing writer from San Mateo, California. She worked for The Associated Press in Los Angeles and in Washington, D.C., where she covered the White House during the George H.W. Bush administration, as well as politics and campaigns, foreign policy, and environmental policy. She is a former adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She launched her reporting career at California newspapers, the Ventura Star-Free Press and the Los Gatos Times-Observer.

Favorite park or “go to” park: This is a really tough, if not impossible, call. My go-to has to be the Sierra Nevada group -- Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon -- in no small part because they hold the stunning superlatives of my all-time favorite hike, the John Muir Trail. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and Glacier National Park are strong contenders, but once you start naming, it’s like being asked to rank your kids by favoritism – impossible.

Favorite outdoor activity in the parks: Backpacking.

What the Traveler means to you: The Traveler is unique among news publications, valuable for its journalistic standards and sole focus on every kind of news and features relating to America’s best-ever idea, the national parks. As a journalist, I am proud and grateful for the chance to write about the issues in these treasured places for this important publication.