2018 Year In Review: Fireside Reads
Quite a few books crossed Traveler's threshold, this year, and there were quite a few we liked. And some we didn't. Here's a look back.
This Land Is Our Land: How We Lost The Right To Roam And How To Take It Back
Ken Ilgunas knows about trespassing as he traveled thousands of miles across private land in the United States and is proud of it. He is a brave man, for not only might he get shot by someone protecting his private property right, but in this book, he challenges the very idea that private property owners should have the right to exclude everyone else from their land.
Ramble On: A History Of Hiking
When did we start to hike, as a form of enjoyment as opposed to simply going from point a to point be, and what is the future of the activity? Those are Jeffrey Doran's bookends to his book on the history of hiking.
Read the review by Kurt Repanshek
The Future Of Conservation In America: A Chart for Rough Waters
The subtitle of this book was carefully chosen. “A Chart for Rough Waters” was the title of a 1940 book in which Waldo Frank argued that Western democracies must meet immediate challenges, such as the assaults on them by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, but at the same time “address underlying causes that will require progress that ‘fills the lives of even our youngest children.’” Machlis and Jarvis offer a similar message for conservation – battle the assault on conservation by the Trump administration in the courts and the fields of public opinion, but at the same time work with “strategic intention” for a conservation agenda that will serve the long term.
The War On Science: Who’s Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It
This is a big book on a big subject, written prior to the election of Donald Trump and the intensified war on science that has resulted. The author does not concern himself specifically with national parks but with the overriding effects of the rejection of science on politics, policy, and democracy.
Yellowstone Migrations
Among the wildlife that roam the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, there are clear-cut headliners. The restoration of wolves, the endangered status of grizzlies, and the culling of bison never fail to grasp the attention of readers worldwide. Yet so many more species share this vast landscape, and despite calling it home for 7,000 years, where and how they’ve survived has been uncovered only in the past two decades.
Read the review by Scott Johnson
Land On Fire
Charred landscapes, smoke-filled skies and, in some cases, shuttered national park lodges are becoming the new norm in the western United States. Why is this happening? In Land On Fire, Gary Ferguson provides a course on wildfire in a West made drier, hotter, and more combustible by climate change.
Read the review by Kurt Repanshek
The Nature Instinct: Relearning Our Sixth Sense For The Inner Workings Of The Natural World
Most of us have lost our way in nature at one time or another. Tristan Gooley has been trying to lead us back into nature with a series of books on how to “read water,” how to “taste direction,” and even how to “use spiders’ webs as a compass.”
Read the review by Kurt Repanshek
Hiking Washington’s Fire Lookouts
In my 20s and blinded by love, with a copy of Jack Kerouac’s memoir Desolation Angels in my pack, I hiked into a fire lookout in Washington’s North Cascades to meet my, hopefully, soon-to-be-girlfriend. The memories still persist, though she didn’t. But it was a unique experience unlike anything else.
Read the review by Patrick Cone
Grandma Gatewood Hikes The Appalachian Trail
Grandma Gatewood’s story, of how she just “kept putting one foot in front of the other” and wound up hiking the entire Appalachian Trail at age 67 back in 1955, is well-known among long-distance hikers. But… it’s probably not so well-known among children. Jennifer Thermes aims to change that.
Read the review by Kurt Repanshek
Aztec, Salmon, And The Puebloan Heartland
Five years ago I visited for the first time the “Puebloan Heartland,” defined in this book as the area between Mesa Verde to the north and Chaco Canyon to the south. I knew of Mesa Verde National Park and Chaco Canyon National Historical Park but was unaware that these famous Ancestral Puebloan places bounded other sites of archaeological significance. My wife suggested we visit Aztec National Monument, which puzzled me. What were the Aztecs doing way up here in northern New Mexico? Aztec turned out to be a remarkable site, and I knew I had a lot to learn.
The ONCE and FUTURE FOREST California’s Iconic Redwoods
This book, in honor of the centennial of the Save the Redwoods League, is a love story regaling the country’s tallest trees, the coastal redwoods and the giant sequoias farther inland.
Read the review by Kurt Repanshek
The Geysers Of Yellowstone
This is a book I wish I had encountered, quite literally, decades ago. Now in its fifth edition, The Geysers of Yellowstone by T. Scott Bryan is an encyclopedia of the park's roughly 1,000 geysers.
First Impressions, A Reader’s Journey To Iconic Places Of The American Southwest
This is not a book for light reading. It is, though, one that takes a historical approach to examining the hallmarks of the Southwestern landscape. Canyon de Chelly, El Morro, Rainbow Bridge, Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, and the Grand Canyon are among the destinations to which we are reintroduced through the writings of the first non-natives who encountered.
Read the review by Kurt Repanshek
Deep Into Yellowstone: A Year’s Immersion In Grandeur & Controversy
In these dark times (and I don’t mean short winter solstice days), the holidays upon us, I thought some light reading would be good since practically all my reading these days is about our national decline on one front or another. A book about Yellowstone would be the ticket, and recently one had arrived by an author I didn’t know named Rick Lamplugh. I picked it up on Christmas Eve and dove in, looking forward to a respite and to some degree I got it, though I should have read the subtitle more carefully – “A Year’s Immersion in Grandeur and Controversy. This little book is a primer in both qualities of this iconic park.
Adventuring With Kids
Youngsters are essential to the future of national parks, for they will be tomorrow’s advocates and possibly even stewards. But taking children who can barely ride a bike or aren’t old enough for their learner’s permit for driving into a national park can seem daunting. Hiking in Yellowstone’s backcountry with grizzly bears? Exploring the somewhat technical route to Angels Landing in Zion?
Read the review by Kurt Repanshek
Path Of The Puma: The Remarkable Resilience Of The Mountain Lion
Bison, wolves, grizzly bears, and elk are all categorized as “charismatic megafauna.” These are animals that have popular appeal to many and are often used as symbols of wildness. Not so often mentioned under this category is the mountain lion, also known as the puma, the panther, and the cougar. And while these big cats often fly under the proverbial radar of wildlife advocates, not only are they out there, but their range is expanding and they’re showing up in some previously unlikely places.
A Mountaineer's Life
I first heard Allen Steck’s name when I was flying and climbing in the Owen’s Valley of California in the early 1980s. His exploits, along with Norman Clyde, Doug Robinson, Galen Rowell and John Salathe, were legendary. Known by the moniker, the Slim Fox, the mountains have been his home.
Read the review by Patrick Cone
The Pipestone Wolves: The Rise And Fall Of A Wolf Family
Günther Bloch set out to study the Pipestone wolves “to outline the difference between a wolf ‘pack’ and a wolf family, and we wanted to describe the wolves’ different personality types and how this impacted their survival rates in the Bow Valley." This book is not, however, a dry scientific report. It is a large format (9”x11”) description, complemented by Marriott’s terrific photographs, of the fate of one wolf family in Canada’s flagship national park.
Colors Of The West, An Artist’s Guide To Nature’s Palette
America’s grand introduction to the West came through the paintings of Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt, William Henry Jackson, and others. They captured the landscapes with big, moving imagery that drew the world’s attention to canyon country, the Great Plains, towering, snowcapped mountains, and deep chasms.
Read the review by Kurt Repanshek
100 Classic Hikes: Montana
There are multiple wonderful things that Douglas Lorain brings to 100 Classic Hikes: Montana. Good descriptions and beautiful photography are crucial to any guidebook, and they’re plentiful here. Toss in a little attitude, and you have a guidebook that strives to give you the lowdown truthfully, not simply to fill pages.
Read the review by Kurt Repanshek
Gates Of The Arctic National Park: Twelve Years Of Wilderness Exploration
Retired from college teaching, still healing from combat in Vietnam, Joe Wilkins found peace and solace in some of the most remote wilderness in the United States – Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. For a dozen years he volunteered for the National Park Service, accompanying rangers on patrols into remote corners of this 8,472,566-acre preserve in northern Alaska. He took many photos and kept careful notes of the places and people he encountered in his travels there, and in this photo-memoir he shares his experience of this remote and remarkable landscape.
The Sequoia Lives On
“These largest trees on earth begin life as seeds about the size of an oatmeal flake yet can grow as tall as three blue whales stacked chin to tail.”
Read the review by Kurt Repanshek
Tales From America’s National Parks: Campfire Stories
This is a lovely, well put-together gem of a book. It is not just another collection of ghost stories or tales of killer bears, meant to terrorize youngsters around the campfire, but a mature, reflective look at six of our national parks: Acadia, Great Smoky Mountains, Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Yosemite and Zion.
Read the review by Patrick Cone
Waterfalls Of Virginia And West Virginia
In this, his second edition, Randall Sanger points out 174 waterfalls in Virginia and West Virginia. And many, of course, can be found in places such as Shenandoah National Park, along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and within the landscapes cut by New River Gorge National River and Bluestone National Scenic River.
Read the review by Kurt Repanshek
Before Yellowstone: Native American Archaeology In The National Park
Most of us go to Yellowstone National Park for the wildlife, the scenery, the amazing geothermal features, or simply for outdoor adventure. Early Euro-Americans visiting the area were amazed by natural features like geyser basins and hot springs on a scale encountered nowhere else in their travels. Ultimately this place became the world’s first national park, but for millennia it had been a place of human spiritual and subsistence importance.
