Quiet spreads across Big Bend National Park during the winter months, both in the lack of visitors to this grand rumpled slice of parkland in southwestern Texas as well as audibly. Silence pervades the Chihuahuan Desert, both day and night. The wind blows, but it’s felt more than heard. The Chisos Mountains are quiet as well. The cactus and Ocotillo plants look drab and thornier than usual without their brilliant spring blooms to grace and hide the sharp spikes. Cooler temperatures prevail, and occasional snow- or hail-storms punctuate the season.

As I traveled this fall, people I met would ask where I was heading. Whenever I mentioned Lassen in my list, I heard the same refrain from people who had already been there: “You’ll absolutely love it. It’s such a neat and wonderful place.” They were right. I do and it is.

An oddly familiar music greeted me as we pulled up to our reserved site in Gallo Campground, located in a side wing of Chaco Canyon’s buff-colored sandstone cliffs. That sounds like a white-crowned sparrow, I thought as I carried our tent to the 12-foot-square sandbox that would be our sleeping spot for the next four nights. I got out binoculars and, sure enough, there were the telltale white-and-black head stripes that identified it as my favorite mountain songster. But here in the desert? In mid-October? Already this national historical park in New Mexico, which my wife and I and a friend from Albuquerque were visiting for the first time, was surprising me.

In Part 1 of this story, Tom Nichols presented a brief history of the National Park Service’s fire management program, with reference to an article by Kyle Dickman, Fighting Fire with Fire. Dickman stated that Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ wildland fire management program is: “America’s most progressive forest management program,” and then asked: “why isn’t it being replicated elsewhere?” Part 2 serves to answer Dickman’s question.

They are both breathtaking and fearful, an economic boon and an apex predator, and so it's not surprising that there's controversy around a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service effort to remove Endangered Species Act protections from grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

A recent article about fire management in the National Park System praised Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ wildland fire management program as “America’s most progressive forest management program.” While Kyle Dickman goes on to wonder “why isn’t it being replicated elsewhere?”, the answer isn’t as simple as you might think.

Crater Lake sneaks up on you. The mountain holding the lake is just one more of many rather nondescript mounds on the horizon.

There are plenty of options, all across the National Park System during the winter months. You can cross-country ski through Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, experience the wintry wonders of the brand-new Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine, soak up the sunshine on a beach at Virgin Islands National Park in the Caribbean, or simply watch it snow while planning next summer’s vacation.

Obama administration officials tout that the president has protected nearly 550 million acres of public lands during his tenure, but observers say those numbers tell an uneven story of how President Obama has stewarded the environment, and add that the Democrat can accomplish much more before he leaves the White House.

I came to Lava Beds expecting . . . . well . . . . lava. But what I found nearly blew what’s left of my little mind. Lava Beds National Monument in north central California near a tiny town called Tule Lake (or Tulelake, it seems to be spelled both ways interchangeably) contains lava all right, and a whole lot more.

Four weeks, three venerable national parks, three entirely different experiences. And time to mull the future of the National Park System and its caretaker, the National Park Service.

It is almost absolutely silent. I sit down on a fallen redwood log and listen. I hear my own breathing. And a woodpecker somewhere far off to my right and what may be some frogs from a direction I can’t pinpoint. A squirrel chitters and a small bird of some kind chips. And all around me are the Trees.

My parents and I entered Aruba’s Arikok National Park in the early morning, intent on finding birds and beating the heat. Temperatures were already running high, and would continue to rise into the 80s and 90s by the end of the afternoon. Still, I felt too excited to care. As we turned a trail corner in a brushy section near the visitor center, my parents and I heard a loud rustling in the undergrowth. I had been in Aruba for less than 48 hours, and I wracked my brain for what large animal could be shuffling within the borders of the park. Illogically, thoughts jumped to cougars, bears, wolves – obviously, none of these species exist on Aruba.

Staying hydrated and reducing waste. Those are two keys to a vacation in the National Park System, particularly during the months when you’re more active in the outdoors.

One of my most favorite places on the face of the Earth is Great Basin National Park. It’s one of those Get Out and Do parks, although it certainly has a bunch of stuff for you if you prefer Look and See.

If the mention of Judge Isaac Parker doesn’t ring a bell, perhaps you will remember Hang ‘em High, a popular Western from 1968 starring Clint Eastwood. The movie was loosely based on He Hanged Them High, a book by Homer Croy that was, in turn, loosely based on the life and times of Judge Parker. In the movie, Eastwood portrayed a U.S. marshal who brought wrongdoers in to face the judge.

The world’s third-oldest national park (established as Rocky Mountains Park in 1887), Banff is a wonderland of hiking, mountain biking, golfing, climbing, horseback riding, fishing, rafting, kayaking, skiing … you name it.

Garden Key is surrounded by the lapping ocean and, after the sun goes down, the nightly entertainment arrives. At first there are just a few pinpoints of light, then Venus is seen on the horizon. By the time you lie down to sleep, the stars fill the skies over Dry Tortugas National Park. The real show, though, is hours away.

There’s a park in the Canadian Rockies that features one of the country’s tallest waterfalls, one of the world’s most treasured collections of fossils, “spiral tunnels” designed to help trains chug literally through mountains, and a stunning alpine area so pristine that the number of visitors are limited to keep it that way.

National parks are far from one-dimensional. They hold history, beauty, and the natural world in all the nooks and crannies of their landscapes. Old-growth forests, canyons that streams and rivers have gnawed into the earth, colorful coral reefs, expansive lakes, and some of the first vestiges of human encounters with nature all are contained within the parks. This great diversity and intersections of nature are what draws QT Luong again and again into the National Park System with his cameras.