How often do you hear Cumberland Island National Seashore mentioned?

Late one evening last summer, about the time that bats take to the air, I was stretched out on a patch of warm sand next to the Green River in Utah’s Desolation Canyon, waiting for stars to appear. Next to me were a couple my age from Baltimore and their two young grandsons, part of a group enjoying a six-day float trip with a Utah adventure outfitter. As darkness fell, the glittering band of the Milky Way spread above us from cliff to cliff. This was one of the reasons we had come to this place, for the “star river,” as the ancient Chinese poets called it, is no longer visible from our homes in the city.

While growing up, nerve-racking, spine-tingling, heart-pumping stories of hunting man-eating tigers and leopards in India by such legends as Jim Corbett and Kenneth Anderson ensured that my passion for the wild and the wilderness was set on a never-ending, all-consuming fire, while stories by forest guides and jungle guards about their encounters with tigers, leopards, elephants, sloth bears, wolves, jackals, and hyenas went a long way in painting a magical and mysterious picture of the jungle in my heart and mind. In August 2007, I made my way into the Jim Corbett National Park armed with a fine but borrowed point-and-shoot camera. Since then I have progressed to be a professional natural history photographer.

Barataria Preserve is one of six sites managed as part of Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, an umbrella park of natural and cultural sites named for the early 19th-century French pirate and smuggler who helped Andrew Jackson defend New Orleans during the War of 1812. Taken together, the sites paint a rich portrait of coastal Louisiana: The Barataria unit protects some 26,000 acres of wetlands, while the Chalmette National Battlefield unit honors the resounding American victory in January 1815.