A life that ultimately led to a new career as a national park ranger.

Many national park enthusiasts can recite the history of the system or their favorite site by memory. They laud the conservationists and leaders who knew we must protect precious natural landscapes for future generations, they know the first national park (Yellowstone), and the year the National Park Service was founded (1916). But how many know of the contributions of people of color to our national parks?

This book is an atlas unlike any that I have seen. Its focus is not on a national park but on the state of Wyoming in which two national parks, Grand Teton and Yellowstone, are very much at the core of migrations of elk, bison, and mule deer. Many migrations in the state do not touch on these national parks, but the point of the book is that migratory ungulate populations, once nearly eradicated by overhunting and other factors, are mostly on the rebound.

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.

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.

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.

When did we start to hike, as a form of enjoyment as opposed to simply going from point "A" to point "B", and what is the future of the activity? Those are Jeffrey Doran's bookends to his book on the history of hiking.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.