| Author | Mark Woods |
| Publisher | Macmillan, 2016 |
| ISBN | 1250105900, 9781250105905 |
| Length | 320 pages |
| Subjects |
› Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs Travel / Parks & Campgrounds |
Why did I buy the book after reading Prologue and the first chapter?
Midlife crisis at 50. Trip to take a break -- that sounds like the state I’m in right now. Many times I ask myself why I travel? Many reasons came up. Reading this and thinking about my experience again, I realize not all travels have the same reason, but most of them have the same effect: broadening the view, break from current life (crisis or not) and let us regain the energy to move on.
I’m also in the state of looking for a break, but can’t take a year off to travel around the world, maybe not having the guts to do so too. Many ideas came up: backpacking, triathlon, long-distance biking. Why does all those activities have to be so “anti-machinery” and requires a lot of physical energy from human body? I guess it’s the need to destroy the scar tissues and reconstruct new muscles.
Visiting all the national parks around the world have been in our family’s to-do list. I didn’t know why we chose national parks, but as the book pointed out from the beginning, it’s great way to bond, to experience wilderness, the understand the earth we live.
We human beings need to have some tension with ourselves. National parks gives us wilderness that humbles us, challenges us and creates that tension we need.
Page 8: She already had figured out one of the great truths about the national parks. The beauty wasn’t just the towering trees or rugged ocean. It was in being together, away from the concerns of work and school and daily life.
The places he mentioned in the prologue, redwood national park, state parks, revoke memories of the time we went there.
Chapter 1. Acadia National Park
Page 14. “My goal wasn’t to see the most beautiful parks or to visit as many as possible. My goal was to go to twelve parks -- one a month, each symbolizing a different issue facing the national parks in the next hundred years.”
Great goal! He then went on to discuss what had changed in the last 100 years and stated how hard it is to predict the future.
No cell service -- it’s nice in the national parks. How about danger? I somehow remembered those horrible stories that Chinese human trafficking. People who can’t connect to others and be saved wouldn’t like the idea of no cell service.
Night sky -- light population. How it is changed in the last 100 years. 1916 people start to use toggle light switches.
I took those scattered notes above and decided this book has at least the following issues I can relate to: losing mother from cancer, love of the national parks, the future of the national parks.
Notes #1
Notes #1
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