With a trekking pole in one hand and an ice ax in the other, I am naked except for the rigid mountaineering boots on my feet. With all my clothes in my backpack, I cross three braids of the glacier-fed Chitina River in Alaska, stopping to partially recover from the cold on the gravel bars in between. But I know the last ford is going to be the trickiest.

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I learned about the Civil War through books, movies, and plastic action figures. There just weren’t any battlefields in Oregon for a ten-year-old to experience first-hand. So, when I started traveling east, I was drawn to iconic battlefields like Gettysburg and Antietam. Until I started my quest to visit all the national park units, I had no idea of the sheer number of battlefields or how integrated into local communities they were and still are.

When I told a friend in Taos, New Mexico, where I reside, that I was heading over to Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, his response was pointed. “We’d better get over there before the oil, gas, and uranium guys trash it!”

The rental car was taking a beating so we decided to turn around. Recent rains had eroded the road and created serious ruts in the shortcut we were taking from Mojave National Preserve into the new Castle Mountain National Monument. After the car went up on three wheels climbing out of the last arroyo, we slapped high fives for successfully retracing our track back to the main road.