Loving the National Parks - A Book Review

When I travel around the world, I’m often asked what should a first-time visitor to the United States not miss. And I give the same answer to everyone: the national parks. I believe it’s these varied lands -- in about seven weeks the National Park System turns 100 years old -- that is one of the very best treasures in the country. So it was with great delight that I read Lassoing the Sun by Mark Woods. It’s his year-long journey visiting 15 parks -- I’ve traveled to 13 of them -- that’s an ode to these great places of beauty as well as an inquiry into whether and how they can be preserved for future generations. But it’s also a tale about family, since he spent many summers as a boy in the national parks, and intended to take his mother to one park she had never visited. But, everything changed when his mother became gravely ill, succumbing to cancer. The book is a reflection on how visiting the national parks boils down to a life of utter simplicity, providing a sense of comfort and a healing energy. While in the Grand Canyon, Woods daydreamed, “...something that came naturally when we were children...I watched the clouds and listened to the vast stillness. The great loneliness.” In our everyday lives where we are uniformly tied to our devices, this is almost an alien experience. And, yet, the national parks wait patiently for us to experience them, embracing us once we do. Woods contemplates their future and the many challenges the parks face. In his last chapter on Haleakala National Park -- and the book's title derives from a lovely Native American legend centering on Haleakala's home, Maui -- Woods reflects how he hardly saw many sunsets in a given year. But, his year in the national parks was different. “In this year, even when I wasn’t watching one, I was aware of the light changing and another day turning to night.” This is a book both for those who, like me, adore the outdoors, especially the national parks, and for those who rarely take their eyes off their iPhone. I’m hoping reading this book (on a device) will seduce those latter people to set foot in a national park where they’ll find their senses tingling with simple delight, as if they were a child again.

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Montenegro In Pictures

With its hilltop fortresses, chapels snuggled in pine forests, network of hiking trails and family-owned vineyards, Montenegro appeals to oenophiles, those who embrace nature, history lovers or visitors who simply prefer hanging out on a thin crescent strip of sand. This short YouTube video slideshow is a mere slice of my adventures in Montenegro.

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Adventures in Costa Rica

Most visitors only see the dense foliage of Braulio Carrillo National Park from the window of a tour bus that zips by. Instead, I chose to hire a private guide and explore on foot. This is the closest national park to San Jose, Costa Rica's capital. But Braulio Carrillo has few maintained trails and those that are navigable are steep, often muddy, and require a guide who'll lead you to refreshing streams and tumbling waterfalls and, most importantly, keep you at a distance from one of the most venomous snakes in the world, the fer-de-lance. (Luckily, I didn't see the latter.) But this tropical expanse is also a birdwatchers paradise, considering over 500 bird species can be found here, including the magnificent quetzal that I did spot. 

You certainly can't hike down the active Poas Volcano crater filled with teal-hued waters. But on the periphery trails wind through an otherworldly landscape of miniature bonsai-type trees and sizzling steam vents. In this crater-hugging cloud forest, one path wanders through a forest of twisted dwarf trees and leads to Laguna Botos, a lake formed from an extinct volcano where you may even see the fiery-throated hummingbird.

Puffy white masses meet the trees and the world becomes enveloped in mist. Welcome to the world of Costa Rica's cloud forests, include the most notable: the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. Trails snake through a wilderness dominated by bromeliads, orchids and other epiphytes, 200 types of ferns and hundreds of butterfly species. Birdwatchers who get up very early can spy the resplendent quetzal, a bird that's noted for its iridescent green and ruby red coloration. Dozens of hummingbird species are also a major draw.

A visit to Manuel Antonio National Park offers a cross-training adventure, where you could choose a different activity every day for a week. Among the options:

 

• horseback ride through the rainforest-coated interior.

• white water raft on the Sevengre River with its Class II and III rapids

• scuba dive where you're likely to spot giant manta rays and white tip reef sharks.

• ocean kayak along the coastline rimmed with white sand beaches or through the nearby mangrove forests around Damas Island where sloths, howler monkeys and anteaters can be seen

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