Warren Angus Ferris, Yellowstone’s first tourist
Warren Angus Ferris visited Yellowstone in 1834 as the first tourist to experience the thermal features, and the first person known to use the Icelandic word “geyser” to describe them.
Why I Am Vegetarian
I last ate meat on Thanksgiving Day of 2014. Vegetarianism has made my life simpler. It also has made me healthier, and I feel less culpable in our culture of slaughter.
Happy birthday to a father who never gives up on life
Today my father turns 85, and he remains a living presence that continues to teach and inspire for those who pay attention.
The ambivalent legacy of Horace Albright
Horace Albright’s legacy enjoys high esteem, but many of the precedents he set for the National Park Service have contributed to problems that parks now face.
Kiki at Graceland: Elvis’s most devoted fan
Kiki may be Elvis Presley’s most devoted fan, having moved to Memphis in 1985 from Greece to care for The King’s grave.
The spiritual experience of nature in the national parks
The National Park Service’s management of nature offers America’s wild places as contrived experiences to meet the spiritual expectations of the consumer public.
A tree fell in the forest, and many were there to hear it
This week a rotten tree fell hard in the forest. Many thousands were there to witness its undoing, but no one heard the crash. Not even the tree realized it had fallen.
Romance in Yellowstone: remembering the best day of my life
Recalling a magical day in Yellowstone National Park that changed our lives and sent us on a journey that we are still traveling forty years later.
The many Yellowstones: a simultaneity of places
Even though it is a national park with complicated and historically shifting meanings, Yellowstone is many other places as well.
We found the Beatles in a remote Arkansas town
The Beatles in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas: murals, a yellow submarine, and an Abbey Road sculpture commemorate the tiny town’s surprise visit in 1964 from the immortal band.
The Calvinist roots of appreciating Acadia’s scenery
Visitors who delight in nature and stunning scenery at places like Acadia National Park often do not realize their aesthetic debt to Protestant reformer and theologian John Calvin.
Before: remembering the mother I barely knew, on the fifth anniversary of her passing
A poetic contemplation of a moment caught in a snapshot before a young woman’s life took a cruel turn.