Last week on the National Parks Traveler’s podcast we talked with Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Cam Sholly about the state of his park. Part of that conversation touched on crowding and congestion, a problem a number of parks have been dealing with in recent years. It’s a good problem, in that more and more people want to visit these amazing places, but it’s not without its impacts on park resources.

It's easy to take the status of national parks for granted. We read wonderful, beckoning stories about them in magazines and newspapers. And we watch gorgeous travelogue pieces about them on television. But how much do we know about the operational status of the national parks? How much do we know about the health of the natural resources, the condition of historic structures, the state of the workforce that operates and manages the national parks?

Discovery of hydrothermal systems on the ocean floor in the late 1970s is regarded as one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century and has implications for the flux of chemicals and heat into the oceans, the formation of some mineral deposits, and the origin of life. Over the last 50 years, deep-ocean hydrothermal vents have been found along plate boundaries throughout the oceans of the world.

For 10,000 years, people from the Stoney Nakoda and other Indigenous nations climbed down rawhide ladders into a small mountain cave to drum, sing, pray and bathe. They believed the natural hot springs water was a gift from the Creator and Mother Earth and used it for blessings and healing.