Mount Rainier towers above its surroundings. The 360-degree view from its summit is stunning, encompassing Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains to the west, Mount Baker far to the north, the Columbia River country to the east, spreading south toward Mount Adams, Mount St. Helens, and Mount Hood down in Oregon. I saw all of this on a perfectly clear summit day and having done so makes me appreciate the approach Jeff Antonelis-Lapp takes in this book.

National park enthusiasts will likely be familiar with the writing of Terry Tempest Williams. Her previous book The Hour of Land told national park stories as only she, in her lyrical, insightful, and emotional way, can tell them. Erosion is not explicitly about national parks, though some of the essays lament what has happened to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monuments. She has already addressed the challenges of many other parks in that earlier work. The 32 pieces in this book, most of them essays, address a “world being torn to pieces,” being eroded, a condition that brings Williams, at times, to heartbreak.

The Southwest is riddled with public lands, and they are riddled with hiking opportunities. Where you go could be as simple as following your sightline into the landscape. But if you're not comfortable with that, it's nice to have a guidebook to help you find your way. This is one option.

There are many resources to help you get the most out of your national park adventures. And there are dozens of guidebooks, it seems, that profess to be the authority on visiting the parks. But there’s a book coming out later this spring that takes a new approach to visiting the parks, an approach built around a park’s residents – their plants, wildlife, and even geology.

With winter on its way, the high season at Joshua Tree National Park in California is on its way as well. And what better way to prepare for a Joshua Tree adventure than finding a guide to help you make the most of the park's hikes?