Trail Creek, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve (NPS photo)
The introduction to Craters of the Moon NPS on the National Park Service web page calls its landscape “weird.” Is hundreds of square miles of barren lava fields weird enough for you? With a surface littered with rock and little else, it’s no wonder astronauts trained here for lunar excursions. Sure, weird might the word many choose, but many others express amazement when they find themselves on what may be the closest thing on Earth to walking on another planet.
Visitors to Crater Lake National Park may spot the 'Old Man of the Lake' bobbing around. Most likely a hemlock, the 30-foot-tall tree has been a resident of the lake since at least 1896. (NPS photo)
Project 2025, a conservative plan to radically reshape the federal government by strengthening and expanding the president’s power, poses a significant threat to current and prospective National Parks Service sites as well as other federally protected lands because it would "gut the Antiquities Act, which would allow the government to turn some of our most scenic and important public lands over to energy extraction interests.” This fantastic article from “Outside" details the threat.
The Insidious Plan to Destroy Our National Monuments
A Heritage Foundation and The Supreme Court could tear down the Antiquities Act, leaving our public lands at risk
Sitting barely beneath the shallow waters in Pearl Harbor sits a testimony to both strength and vulnerability. The USS Arizona was one of the Navy’s elite symbols of American power that, 15 minutes into the surprise attack by the Japanese on December 7th, 1941, was reduced to flaming wreckage and where 900 of her crew remain entombed to this day. A visit to Pearl Harbor National Memorial reminds us of the great cost of war and the sacred nature of human life.
Cactus wren, Joshua Tree National Park (NPS photo)
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Look for a new post almost every day. Regular features include:
- A new National Park photo each Monday;
- National Park birthdays;
- News stories from the communities that love and protect their neighborhood national parks;
- National news stories that affect our parks and the people who care for them;
- Tidbits about acquisitions or fun stories on National Park Service units that may not be national parks;
- Articles about environmental or ecological changes, both natural and humanmade, that are changing our parks;
- Stories of where people find inspiration in national parks, whether it’s personal revelations, career choices, or the idea to create a new National Parks font.
There are times when not everything is so rosy (see: federal shutdowns), but we work to keep it upbeat, because we know how incredibly awesome America’s national parks are!
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