In retrospect, three hours doesn’t seem like a particularly impressive amount of time to volunteer to help Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park and the 'āina (land). But as I tackled invasive Himalayan ginger with a lobber one February morning while other visitors made a beeline to the current eruption at Kīlauea volcano or hiked to lava tubes, the repetitive manual labor quickly became addictive and I was sorry when Paul Field insisted it was time to stop.

A proposal now open to public comment that could allow for up to 400 wind turbines to be erected between Minidoka National Historic Site and Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in Idaho raises a question of whether they would intrude on the somber setting at Minidoka, where more than 10,000 Japanese-Americans were incarcerated during World War II.

Six months after torrential rains spawned historic flash floods across parts of Death Valley National Park, the North Highway that leads to the Mesquite Springs Campground and the Ubehebe Crater in the park has reopened after some concerted reconstruction work.

Public access to the Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park is scheduled to reopen Saturday morning.