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.

Anyone who has heard Terry Tempest Williams speak or who has read her writing knows how personal her approach is to her subject, thus the “personal topography” of the subtitle of this book. Visits to 12 units of the National Park System, including seven national parks, two national monuments, a national military park, national seashore, and national recreation area, provide grist for her exploration of this topography and a sampling of different elements of the system.