A veteran outdoors writer embarks on a one-year journey to introduce his children to the grandeur of America's national parks--before they areradically altered by the effects of climate change
A longtime backpacker, climber, and skier, Michael Lanza knows our national parks like the back of his hand. As a father, he hopes to share these special places with his two young children. But he has seen firsthand the changes wrought by the warming climate and understands what lies ahead: Encroaching tides threaten the Everglades. Yosemite's world-famous waterfalls are disappearing. And it is predicted that Glacier National Park's seven-thousand-year-old glaciers will be gone in a decade.
Determined to show his children, Alex and Nate, these wonders before they've changed forever, Lanza takes his family on a quest to see as many climate-threatened wild places as they can fit into a year, including backpacking in the Grand Canyon and Glacier, sea kayaking in Alaska's Glacier Bay, hiking to Yosemite's waterfalls, cross-country skiing in Yellowstone, and canoeing the Everglades.
Through these poignant and humorous adventures, Lanza shares the beauty of each place and shows how his children connect with nature when given "unscripted" time. Ultimately, he writes, this is more their story than his, for whatever comes of our changing world, they are the ones who will live in it.