Many times we find ourselves in a national park just to marvel at the beauty, explore the wondrous sights, or simply kick back and relax without the pressures the rest of the world weighs on us. But there are times when the parks help us in other ways, holding memories that comfort us.

“It did really help me deal with losing my mom,” Mark Woods, author of Lassoing the Sun: A Year in America’s National Parks, told me, “because I felt like I could go to these places and find comfort in the places I knew she loved and I knew she had been, and my dad had been. My dad was a Baptist minister, but I could find more comfort in these places than by going to any church. I guess I probably would have known that beforehand, but it was a pretty profound feeling during the year.”

A columnist for the Florida Times- Union, Mr. Woods landed a $75,000 Eugene C. Pulliam Fellowship and used the funding to underwrite a dozen trips into the National Park System. But just five weeks into that yearlong exploration he learned his mother had terminal cancer. Four months later she passed, a lifeshaking event that couldn’t help but color his approach to the book.

His journalistic approach that would document threats to our parks in their second century changed a bit. He started to think of how parks can impact us on a very personal level.

“It wasn’t really planned before the year, but I ended up spending time with these people who had ties to death and grieving; spending time in Saguaro (National Park) with a father whose son had been killed in the Gabby Giffords shooting,” recalled Mr. Woods. “He’s an ultra-runner, loves the parks and runs in the parks. I hiked with him several times and talked with him about his son. But that time, doing that hike, I thought losing my 70-something mom seems almost natural compared to a dad who shouldn’t have to lose his son and never get to say goodbye. What he had to deal with was very humbling; it made my experience natural and almost routine.

“And then going to Flight 93 (National Memorial), obviously, where the whole genesis and roots of the park itself are death, and how it’s coming back to be not just the memorial wall, but it’s a beautiful park with animals and birds and trees, they’re all coming back. Losing my mom pales to what everyone of those passengers went through.”

Lassoing the Sun is not all about grieving. Indeed, it’s a portal into both the parks and individuals, from National Park Service rangers and members of national park friends groups down to individuals Mr. Woods encountered in campgrounds. It’s a yearlong story about the role of the parks in preserving incredible vistas, and their role has a balm for our souls.