Matriotism

I just love the beautiful places of America, a love I acquired from my mother. On family vacations in the iconic three seater station wagon of the fifties and sixties we must have seen half of the national parks. My parents covered most of the rest during thirty years of active Elderhosteling. As I turn the pages of Dayton Duncan's new coffee table companion book to the Ken Burns PBS series "Our National Parks, America's Best Idea" I'm taken back over and over again to my childhood. Photo after photo...I know that place! I've been there.

I bought the book as a birthday gift for Mom, her 83rd coming up this month, but I now want one for myself to savor at leisure. The contemporary photography is just as beautiful as expected -- though I wish they'd printed foldouts instead of losing the center of the most spectacular views in the binding -- but I did not expect the delightful discovery that most of the photography here is historic. There's conversation with travelers from now and from ago, lots of discussion with the people who have given their lives to the preservation of the parks, plenty of food for meditation and action alike.

What's moved me most are the glacier photos. It's impossible to see the snowfields now and not see them melting away. A chapter called "The Morning of Creation" features a lone crystalline iceberg floating in the blue-cold water of Glacier Bay. By now it will be gone, as are some of the arches of Utah shown here still brilliantly parabolic against the pastel western sky.