It's not unusual for find piles of stones marking the way for trails across open terrain in mountains, deserts and terrain otherwise devoid of easily recognizable landmarks, but these "cairns" can evoke a surprising amount of controversy both in an out of national parks. Sometimes, however, what appears to be a cairn is actually instead an item of historic interest.

Seventy-five years ago, in June, 1938, Congress passed and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the bill creating Olympic National Park. With this act Americans embarked on something new in land conservation: creating a wilderness preserve large enough to protect intact old-growth forest communities and the hosts of forest-dependent wildlife they contained.

The following ode making the rounds has its origin in canyon country, which makes sense, for that was Ed Abbey's favorite country. Hopefully, in the very, very near future, it will just be a literary part of the government shutdown's history.

Google Maps has become a useful electronic option to paper maps for many people, and one feature of that site—"Street View"—allows users to see a ground-level, 360 degree photographic view of many locations around the world. Now that service is adding parts of some national parks, including the Grand Canyon and even one rather surprising location that lies beneath the ground.