There are well-known units of the National Park System, and then there are those that are publicity forsaken outposts. But that doesn't make them any lesser. Indeed, they are overlooked jewels. Barbara Jensen, a self-described wanderer, recently found her way to one of those jewels.

It started in mid-September; a few flakes began to flutter across the Crown of the Continent in Glacier National Park. The snow since then has slowly spread east and west, north and south. By January the white mantle likely will cover the whole northern tier of the National Park System, from Acadia west to Olympic, south through Rocky Mountain, into Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountain national parks.

New Mexico Highway 4 climbs steadily, sometimes steeply, west out of Los Alamos, through forests scorched by wildfire in recent decades, and over a pass at the top of Bandelier National Monument. The road drops slightly then bursts out of the trees. Spread suddenly before us is a vast grassland, the Valle Grande, in Valles Caldera National Preserve, a recent addition to the national park system. This huge meadow seems the bottom of a bowl and we are on its south rim. Eleven miles to the north is the north rim of the caldera, rising to 10,000 feet. The 87,000-acre National Preserve, established in 2000, was placed under the care of the National Park Service in 2015.

Boiling, acidic calling cards of Valles Caldera National Preserve's volcanic past, some bearing such whimsical names as Stomach Trouble Spring and Laxitive Spring, should be protected under the Geothermal Steam Act List of Significant Thermal Features, according to the National Park Service.