Puzzles, Mysteries, and Reviews

What I liked about working on National Parks With Kids is that it allowed me to take a slightly different look at the parks. For sure, parks are family friendly. But when you're trying to guide families with young kids into the parks, well, you can't focus on 18-mile round-trip hikes and scaling the Grand Teton.

An important anniversary happens this year that actually predates the National Park Service. It has been 100 years that we have had Antiquities Act in this country. This single act is responsible for a lot of the places we treasure today around the Parks.

In 'Yellowstone to Yukon: Freedom to Roam', a collection of 200 pictures and essays from such notable nature writers as David Quammen, Rick Bass and Douglas Chadwick strives to lend context to the proposal to create a wildlife corridor from Yellowstone all the way north to the Yukon.

Taken as a whole, the book documents Abbey's love affair with the desert country near Moab, Utah. Through his words we see the whole landscape, from the very small (birds, snakes, rabbits and mice that live in and near his trailer), to the very large (mountain tops, mesas, and canyons). But, for as beautiful a picture as he paints, he cautions the reader in the book's introduction, this landscape is disappearing fast.

With a good sense of fire history stretching back over 100 years, and with a focus on the characters who have helped shaped wild land fire management over that same time, the book succeeds in creating a well rounded snapshot of the relationship fire has with forestlands in the West.