Sequoia/Kings Canyon, California

Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park is known for being home to the world’s largest trees, but before you can get to them, you climb up through the foothills of the impressive Sierra Nevada. In spring, the hillsides bloom with brilliant wildflowers, bees, deer and new life.

Orange poppies, purple redbuds, and turquoise streams transform the landscape into a verdant mosaic. Blooming spires of the yucca stand taller than a person, cascading with creamy white flowers. Red newts crawl among the wildflower meadows near streams searching for places to lay their eggs.

But beyond the foothills, lie the forests. As you drive higher, the trees become taller, filled with the moisture of the warm ocean air and fog. Soon, massive orange trunks begin to appear between the darker trunks of the pines.

Thick, with bark like a woolly mammoth, they grow, glowing among the other trees, like alien giants.

General Sherman is the largest known single-stem tree in the world (by volume). It is 275 feet tall, 102.6 feet circumference at the base, and weighs an estimated 2,105 tons. It’s largest branch is 6.8 feet in diameter. It is estimated to be between 2,300 and 2700 years old. That a tree of this immensity is not the tallest, the widest, or the oldest tree in the world is even more incredible.

Only the Giant Sequoia could make a mountain feel small, but the mountains of Kings Canyon certainly hold their own!

I spent many hours wandering through the forests, touching their fire-scarred trunks that had been hollowed out like caves at the base of the still-growing trees.

Drawing among the giants, you begin to feel the immensity of the time on which they’ve grown in this place (which I have handily shortened for you in the above video).

You also sometimes witness a squabble between a pair of very loud squirrels!

As the sun begins to set, the amber light filters through the gargantuan trunks casting light like cathedral glass across the hillsides.

Big Bend, Texas

We drove 8 hours from Austin across rolling different landscapes and arrived at our house rental outside Big Bend National Park at midnight. Big Bend has the least light pollution of any other National Park in the contiguous 48 states. We stepped out of the car to see the sky aglow with the millions of stars and galaxies of the Milky Way. Who knew the night was so bright. We thought of how much sense it made that early people were so fixated on the stars, if this is what they saw every night. And we thought of how few people in the world get to see this every night, and how most never see it at all. How many more poets, artists, and dreamers might there be if we were reminded every night about the vastness of the universe?

We awoke to the sprawling sunrise as layers of plateaus and canyons emerged through the haze of morning. An open valley of silence.

Colossal mountains and plateaus rise from the flat desert floor like the ruins of a much greater civilization than ours.

The parched but vibrant Chihuahuan Desert extends into infinity in all directions.

Prickly Pear Cactus dot the landscape like bouquets of spiny flowers, providing food for tenacious javelinas (wild pigs).

But the heartbeat of the park is the Rio Grande, the river that divides the United States from Mexico. Originally planned to be an international peace park, with nature preserves on both sides of the border, Big Bend stretches along 118 miles of the border, through soaring canyons.

That such a narrow strip of river divides two countries makes the arbitrary nature of political borders even more apparent.

Everglades, Florida

The Everglades at the quiet of dawn pulses with the wingbeats of birds. From the entrance, there are endless grasses, seemingly empty until a bird breaks free from beneath and into the sky.

The marshes overflow with the trilling symphony of birds, bugs, and frogs, and the rumbling thunder of hidden alligators, their black armored skin slithering between the lily pads.

Graceful anhinga dive beneath the placid water for fish, and stretch their wings to dry in the sun.

Turtles drift languidly, nibbling the stalks of the waterlilies.

The blazing Florida sun, even in winter, bakes the forests and grasses.

Farther into the park, closer to the sea, massive saltwater crocodiles float like toothed logs.

As the sun sets, egrets and herons lift off from the marsh into the pink skies to roost for the night.

The grasses darken and come alive with the cacophony of nighttime insects.

Acadia, Maine

Acadia seems to hold a special place in so many people’s hearts. One of the closest parks to many major cities on the East Coast, it seems a world away from the hectic energy of New York City and Boston.

It’s wave-battered, pink granite coastline, rugged forests, and crystalline blue waters feel like the perfect antidote to city life, and that was part of the park’s intended purpose when it was created.

Cadillac Mountain, the highest peak in the park, is the first place to view the sunrise in the United States for much of the year. For my trip, bad weather didn’t allow for much of a sunrise, but I was lucky enough to watch the sun set as it glittered across the soft hills and glowing inlets until it faded into the sea.

Zion, Utah

Entering Zion National Park feels like coming upon an alien paradise. Driving through the East Entrance, you are surrounded by swirling dunes of an ancient sand seabed frozen in time, scraped and combed into flowing patterns.

But through the tunnel, you are confronted by sheer mountain faces, glowing vermilion, amber, and chalky white, intricate and soaring.

Farther down, at the base of the valley winds the trickling, teal Virgin River, through meadows and scrub, a tiny footnote at the base of the patchwork cliffs.

As you continue through the canyon, peaks rise like ancient monuments, painted into the sky like crowns.

Visiting Zion was always one of my favorite memories from when I was a kid. Here, you can see me being tormented by my older brother. There’s a lot more photographic evidence of this.

And this is me being disappointed that we wouldn’t be able to finish the incredible Narrows hike which goes through a riverbed. (My brother and I blamed my mom for this, but in hindsight, I think the water would have been over my head for half the hike). I didn’t make it back to The Narrows this time either, but there’s always next time!

Great Sand Dunes, Colorado

The Great Sand Dunes in southern Colorado sit at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, an immense pile of sand that had been swept towards the mountains from across the San Luis Valley from an ancient enormous lake bed. Some of the dunes are over seven hundred feet tall and in total, the tallest in the country, and the dunes cover about 30 square miles.

Constantly shifting with the wind, the dunes are an alien landscape.

Going up the dunes can be an arduous process, because you slide down as often as you hike up. Even in the winter, it was a hot day, and we found ourselves shedding layers as we climbed.

But going down is where the real fun is. Since there’s nothing to fall on but soft mounds of sand, you can gallop down the slopes with abandon. It feels like jumping on the moon.

Beneath the dunes are dry grasslands, where we were lucky enough to spot a herd of grazing pronghorn. I have always been fascinated with pronghorn, because they seem like an animal that should exist in Africa, rather than the United States, and to some degree, that is sort of true! It is believed that the pronghorn evolved to be the fastest land animal in the United States to escape a prehistoric cheetah, that has since gone extinct. Their closest animal relatives are giraffe.

Glacier, Montana

I think the word that I could use to best describe Glacier National Park would be “impossible.” So much of what I saw felt as though it was too beautiful, or too extreme, or too surreal to be true, and although drawing is often the best way to convey sights like that, it still didn’t feel like enough. I arrived in the park just before sunrise, to be greeted by an expansive, mirror-like lake as deer grazed on the lakeside right beside me.

My first hike was to Avalanche Lake. At the end of the trail, the lake emerged from behind the trees, an even clearer mirror than the first.

Glaciers had carved an amphitheater of impossibly high peaks, with ribbons of rushing water tumbling hundreds of feet into the lake below.

As I hiked around the edge of the lake, through sun dappled forests, carpeted with lilies and hillsides trickling with snowmelt, I hopped over streams filled with with turquoise and maroon stones.

I emerged at the end of the trail, and walked onto a thin spit of land into the water, to be greeted by a deer, placidly wandering the shore. Lakes carved by glaciers, like many in the park, have an otherworldly blue-green color caused by the finely ground rock particles that result from the slow glacial erosion. What surprised me the most was actually the lushness of the vegetation. So far north, in such rugged mountains, the hills and forests felt so green as to almost be out of place.

Visiting in May, the middle section of the park was still closed because of the massive amount of snowfall, so I drove several hours around from one side of the park to the other. Along the way, I passed through clouds of cotton from the cottonwood trees, which reminded me of home in Colorado.

I hadn’t thought that anything could outdo the west side of the park, but upon entering the east side, the mountains were even steeper and more exaggerated, and the lakes an even more brilliant turquoise.

I took a short hike down to see a river and waterfall at the base of a valley.

Deer gracefully sauntered across the trails, almost oblivious to the people, seemingly marveling at their own kingdom.

On my way back, I spotted a grizzly bear foraging up a hillside just off the side of the road and hopped out of my car (because the bear was at a very safe distance away) to draw.

The bear’s movements were more adorable than I had expected, from such a formidable and enormous creature.

She (or he?) seemed to just be blissfully chomping away, happy to be out of hibernation.

As I kept driving, I saw a line of cars parked along the side of the road (usually a good sign that there’s wildlife around). I stopped, and was lucky enough to see an enormous male grizzly in the valley below. A friendly person let me view him through their high-powered scope as well, but I kind of like the picture above. See that tiny dot in the field near the single tree on the riverbank? It shows how something as monumental and incredible to see as a grizzly bear, is rendered insignificant in the expanses of the park.

My final hike was to an overlook for the Grinnell Glacier, one of the few remaining glaciers in the park. With climate change, it is expected that all of the Glaciers in the park may have melted by 2030. The hike began following the edge of a large lake. Along the way, I encountered an area covered in mountain goat fur. Mountain goats often shed their beautiful white coats as temperatures rise, so I assumed that this one had been trying to shuffle off some of that heavy fur.

I continued hiking, across snowy cliffs and rocky paths, until I met two women who had spotted a distant mountain goat. They let me use their binoculars, and I was able to see the fluffy fellow way out in the distance at the top of a mountain. I mentioned the pile of fluff I had seen earlier, and one of them informed me that the scene was likely not just a sloughing off of fur, but the site of a mountain lion attack. This added a bit more urgency to the rest of my hike. I kept hiking, up steeper and steeper paths, waiting to see the glacier emerge. The sun was getting lower, so I didn’t have much time, and wanted to make sure I was back to my car before sundown (a popular hunting time for mountain lions).

Finally, I crested a hill to see the most spectacular view I had seen in Glacier so far. Rich emerald forests parted to reveal a sparkling turquoise lake, streaming waterfalls, and the peaks cradling Grinnell Glacier in the golden fading light. I drew as quickly as I could, not wanting to forget this moment, but also not wanting to be eaten by a mountain lion (which would prove my husband right). So I finished the drawing, and began my hike down, going as quickly as I could.

But as soon as I turned the corner at the top of a switchback, there in the teal water below was a moose! I had to draw the moose, so I whipped out my supplies and drew frantically. I then noticed a bald eagle circling over head. It was all too much!

But I still needed to not be eaten, so I kept hiking.

As the sun set, and dusk began to set in, I decided I should probably have some way of defending myself (I did have bear spray in my bag). So I picked up my pace along with two very sharp heavy rocks. I kept thinking “If I’m not eaten by a mountain lion, then this was an amazing day!” Making the trip back in ⅓ the time it had taken me to get there, I passed through the piles of mountain goat fluff with a shudder, and only dropped the rocks once I got back into my car.

Since I didn’t get eaten, this did turn out to be one of my favorite days in all of my park experiences. Glacier is truly an impossibly amazing place.

Shenandoah, Virginia

One of only a few National Parks in the east, Shenandoah lies under two hours from Washington DC. The smooth, lush green hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains extend on either side of the Skyline Drive, falling in soft layers into the horizon.

The forests are full of life. Songbirds and mountain laurels brighten the hillsides, and abundant deer and black bears make the park feel like a secluded eden.

We even saw this adorable baby fawn crossing the road and disappearing into the trees!

Mesa Verde, Colorado

Mesa Verde National Park was the first National Park created to preserve a man-made site. The natural beauty of the park is as jaw-dropping as any other park, but what makes this one unique are the cliff dwellings the Ancestral Puebloan people who lived in the canyon for over 500 years between 550 and 1300 AD. Twenty-six pueblos and tribes across the Southwest descend from the people that lived here.

The land of the National Park was originally on Ute land, but through a series of dishonest treaties on the part of the US Government, the tribe was forced to give up their rights to the land.

Spruce Tree House cliff dwelling, built around 1211-1278 AD. About 130 rooms where 60-80 people lived.

The sandstone canyon walls are smooth, worn by water, wind, tools, and hands. The cliff dwellings feel as if they were carved right into the stone, lives lived between the rocks, holding up the world above. Some of the villages have between 50 and 200 rooms.

In winter, the park is quiet. But the stones speak. Stories and handprints are etched into the rock itself. You can hear the wind, the squawk of crows, twittering birds and squirrels, and what feels like valleys of resounding echoes all around you.

Redwood, California

I suppose that the tallest trees on earth require a lot of moisture would make the constant rain during my visit to Redwood National Park somewhat expected. The scale of the forests on the northern coast of California is unbelievable. So swollen with the fog and rain, the trees grow to absurd heights, with the tallest reaching over three hundred feet.

Cloaked in fog, the hillsides feel like mountains with their peaks made of trees instead of stone.

In the shadow of the primeval forests, Roosevelt Elk, soft with new growth antlers, graze in the soggy meadows.

They doze like boulders in the grass, rounded and weathered by the rain.

Beneath the emerald light of the soaring treetops, ferns of all sizes unfurl, carpeting the hillsides and rotting trunks of fallen giants. The only sound is the trickling of the streams and the dripping water from every leaf.

Arches, Utah

That the landscape of Arches exists for us to see is a stroke of luck. The eroded sandstone arches that give the park its name are made even more miraculous by their precarious existence. Hundreds of arches have crumbled since the park’s creation. Many are still being formed, and many more will collapse during our lifetimes. Each archway is a fleeting window into time, a petrified moment sculpted by precise geologic conditions.

The majestic Landscape Arch is over 290 feet long, the fifth longest natural arch in the world.

The arches are eroded by wind and water over millions of years from enormous “fins” of stone that were thrust up from the Earth’s crust. The forms take on the appearance of the weathered ruins of a civilization of giants.

The imposing forms of the Courthouse Towers stand like an immense monument near the entrance to the park.

Drawing within Double Arch feels like being inside of a cathedral.

I remember visiting Arches with my family when I was little, and the otherworldly magic of the landscape. Since that time, the 12th largest arch in the park, Wall Arch, collapsed (in 2008), and Landscape Arch suffered significant rockfalls in the 1990s. Arches exists as a miraculous monument to the intersection of time and place.

Grand Canyon, Arizona

As I drove closer to the Canyon, my heart began to sink as clouds of fog became thicker and thicker as I ascended. By the time I got to the entrance to the park, I could barely see ten feet in front of me. Even when I got to the edge of a lookout, I couldn’t see much of anything over the precipice.

I decided to keep on driving through the park in hopes that the clouds would clear. I pulled into one viewing area and parked, seeing just more fog over the cliff after I peeked over the edge. But as suddenly the clouds began to thin, I could see a brilliant turquoise ribbon so far in the distance and so far beneath me that it was hard to believe.

Unable to form any thoughts, I just decided to draw.

As I drew, more and more of the fog lifted, revealing farther and father, immense layers of geologic time, carved by the Colorado River, so frail a trickle to have scarred such an immense valley into mountains. Patterns of stone felt woven into the canyon walls, as if by centuries of awe and contemplation from a patchwork of people unable to comprehend its scale.

Farther along the Canyon rim, I found a spot to watch the sunset. I saw the last embers of the sun unite the millennia of stone with a single shadow, until the only light came from the millions of stars and the Milky Way above.

The next day, I went out to hike into the Canyon. The way down was easy.

I descended through millions of years of carved stone in a few miles of jaunty steps, finally reaching the point where I could see the Colorado River.

It sparkled like a jewel at the base of an immense quilt of sand, pattern, and color.

After drawing, I began to hike back up. Quite quickly I began to realize that those millions of years I traversed would become much heavier on the way up. I made my way slowly up, still buoyed by the incredible surroundings, and by having shed as many layers as was decent.

I stopped to take a rest, when I heard a chomping above me. There, perched on an outcropping, was a bighorn sheep with an imposing pair of swirling horns.

Somehow seeing this one lone inhabitant shrunken to an insignificant scale by its home, made the vastness of the Canyon all the more apparent.

I finally reached the top of the canyon wall, on wobbly legs, feeling like I had climbed every bit of millions of years.

Biscayne, Florida

Biscayne National Park is unique in that 95% of the park is underwater. Aside from the small, mangrove-forested islands, known as keys, most of the park is made up of seagrass beds and vast coral reefs.

I took a short stroll near a mangrove forest at the entrance to the park, and admired the tiny fish that lived beneath the mangrove roots that reach into the sea and seemingly hold the shoreline in their grasp.

But the only real way to experience the park is beneath the waves, so I hopped on one of the coral reef snorkeling tour bouts and headed off into the sparkling turquoise waters.

Armed with a bag filled with a grease pencil and oil pastels (because they are water-resistant) and a diver’s board made for writing notes to communicate underwater, I dove in.

The waves were rocky, and I found myself tossed and twirled around, trying to keep my snorkel from filling up. But beneath the surface was an incredible garden of waving purple sea fans, knobby lime green coral, and dozens of different kinds of fish, rising and falling with the waves just like me.

I drew while looking beneath me, watching the fish and coral move and sway, and seeing how the color changed as the water became shallower and deeper with each wave. The hardest part was only having 2 chances to make a drawing (each side of one board), so I often found myself drawing over what I had drawn before, so that I could put new ideas down.

After snorkeling and drifting for an hour or so, we climbed back into the boat. The captain had been very excited to hear I was drawing, although I think she was less than impressed with the results. The thing about drawing is that it’s an exercise in observation and memory, not necessarily an activity to produce a final result. It is the act of drawing that matters, not the final drawing itself. When I got home, the drawings I made underwater became the basis for my illustration of Biscayne in the book.

Rocky Mountain, Colorado

Rocky Mountain National Park feels like home to me. Growing up near Denver, Colorado, the park was close enough that I can’t remember how many times we went to visit as a family. With the mountains right on Denver’s doorstep, it always felt like one big backyard to the city. But going back working on this project, I saw it with new eyes. I was only able to spend one day in the park on this trip, before I had to move on to others, but I was able to take the trip with my dad.

Still in the thick of winter, we bundled up in as many layers as we could and set off on a short hike in the snow. The trails were still under several feet of snow in some places, worn slick and icy by other hikers. The lakes were still covered in ice and snow, just empty white fields. Soaring purple peaks, dusted with snow were framed by silver, knotted trunks of aspen, with branches grasping towards the sun.

I settled onto a rock on a snowy slope, as my dad sat below, chatting with the people that hiked and skied past, advertising my upcoming book to anyone who cared to listen (and some who didn’t). We were both chilled to the bone by the time I finished my drawing, and hiked back down to warmer elevations.

In the lower valleys, we found herds of elk and mule deer grazing in the frozen meadows.

A thawing stream, lined with red willow thickets, slowly shed its icy shell with spring on its doorstep.

It was very special for me to experience this park, so close to home, with my dad as a part of this project. Because my dad works for the National Park Service, my brother and I grew up visiting parks around the country, but Rocky Mountain always held a special place in our hearts. That such an incredible place could feel like home, was part of the reason that I made this book. Growing up with parks like this as part of my childhood left an enormous impact on my life, and I hoped that this book might inspire more families to make the parks a part of their home.

Haleakalā, Hawaii

I remember visiting Haleakalā National Park when I was in middle school. Over 10 years ago, it still feels so fresh in my mind, and I couldn’t wait to share it with my husband, Chris. From central Maui, we made the long, steep, winding drive to Hana where we would enter the Kipahulu area of the park, a dense, lush jungle on the slopes of the volcano.

Thick vines draped heavily overhead, and the walls next to the road burst with waterfalls and trickling streams from an unusually wet winter in an already wet place.

We began our hike on the Pipiwai Trail, passing through dense forests. The river and waterfalls surged with abundant rainfall, turning dainty streams into roaring brown cascades.

Deeper in, we came upon an enormous banyan tree. A forest in and of itself, with branches, roots, and trunks like fingers grasping towards ground and sky.

Even farther in was what I had been waiting to see: the bamboo forest. The path disappeared into darkness, shaded by the soft, swaying ceiling of bamboo leaves.

Inside, the darkness muffled everything but the quiet footsteps, twirling leaves, and the hollow clatter of bamboo stalks swaying like a giant wind chime. I remembered the quiet and feeling of solitude, and how I had embraced it as a teenager on that trip. There is so much that is possible in quiet, that is impossible anywhere else.

Through the forest, we emerged into a deep valley crowned by a spectacular waterfall, hundreds of feet tall, clinging like a thin wisp of cloud between the sky and the jungle below.

As soon as we started making our way back, it began to pour. Not having umbrellas or ponchos, we tried to run without slipping, trying to make sure that the pastels and drawings didn’t get wet (pastel drawings tend to melt in the rain).

The rain did not stop there, though! My next plan was for us to drive and see the sunrise on the top of the dormant volcano, Haleakalā. The summit is an important spiritual place for native Hawai’ians. It was from this summit that the demi-god Maui ensnared the sun to slow it’s path across the sky. Today, hundreds ascend to the summit each day to watch the sun ascend and descend above the clouds.

But the rain made this trip a bit unpredictable. The weather at the summit is unpredictable even in the best of conditions, because the steep slopes create their own clouds and weather, which results in a thick layer of fog and rain that often cloaks the peak and obscures the sunrise and sunset. It also makes the summit VERY cold, even when the surrounding island is a balmy 80 degrees.

For several days, there was heavy rain in Hana and the summit, so we didn’t attempt a trip. On a day with slightly better weather, we decided to give it a try in the middle of the day. The ascent was steep, and soon we were surrounded by fog. We could barely see 10 feet in front of the car, and it began raining intermittently. At the summit, beyond the martian red and black sands of the peak, there was only clouds. We waited, hoping the clouds would clear.

At one point, the clouds thinned enough to reveal more of the alien landscape, with red and black valleys and peaks. I managed to draw it quickly before it disappeared five minutes later.

While waiting to see if the weather would change, I went out to draw some of the wildlife on the summit. The incredible Haleakala silversword, or 'ahinahina, grow only on the slopes of the volcano, and used to exist in large numbers. Early tourists to the slopes misguidedly took them as souvenirs, and the grazing animals that had been introduced to the lower slopes often ate and destroyed them. They are now protected, and the populations is slowly rebuilding, despite the added hurdle of climate change.

Although not native, the adorable chukar partridge is an adorable resident of the volcano’s slopes. They were introduced in the 1940s as an army food source, but they are native to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nepal.

The clouds parted briefly again, and we were able to see the peaks of other islands peeking through the clouds, before they were quickly swallowed up again and we accepted defeat for the day.

Farther down the slope, beneath the cloud layer, we were able to see the native Nene goose, Hawai’i’s state bird. Also a species endangered by early tourists and hunting, the Nene population is slowly stabilizing from the lowest point where there was only 30 birds left. Today, there are approximately 250-300 within the park.

A week or so later, at the end of our trip, we decided to make one last attempt to see the sun set from the summit of Haleakalā. The weather had finally cleared, after a week of rain, and we made our way up. The air was cold and windy, and crowds were gathering in winter jackets to wait for the sunset. An ocean of clouds stretched out in every direction, with islands peaking through.

We all watched as the sun began to disappear, setting the sky ablaze.

On the other side of the summit, a full moon rose to greet the watchers.

In an annoying epilogue to this trip, all of my drawings from 10 days in Hawai’i were accidentally left on a connecting flight, and despite constant calling of the airlines for several months, never seen again. So if you happen to ever see one of these drawings, give me a call! :)

Volcanoes, Hawai'i

Many of the National Parks are preserved because they are intact pieces of history, records of thousands of years of geologic transformation, human settlement, and natural evolution. Volcanoes National Park is instead a constantly shifting reminder of the past, present, and future. In this park, new land is always being created. Surrounding the active volcano Kilaeua, the park contains active lava flows as well as preserved lava flows from previous recent eruptions. My husband and I visited in February of 2018, and in March of 2018, an enormous eruption destroyed much of the parts of the park that he and I visited, completely changing the landscape and shutting the park for several weeks. Many had to flee their homes.

The incredible ʻŌhiʻa lehua plant that is one of the first things to grow in the harsh and barren lava flows a few years after an eruption, glowing like little embers in the rocky oceans of frozen lava, giving life where there was once molten fire.

Rivers of cooled lava spread across the hillsides into a vast field of swirling black lava flows.

The cooled lava has an iridescent, crumbly crust, like oil on water, that cracks when you touch it.

At the coast, turquoise waves batter the hardened lava cliffs.

The nearest active lava flows were miles away, and it was dangerous to hike out to them in the rainy weather, because sometimes the lava releases toxic gases when it his hit with rain. But far in the distance we could see the steaming glow of thin trickles of lava.

At night, we went to Halemaʻumaʻu Crater where the glow of molten lava in clouds of steam billows like dragon’s breath from the crater below. In the recent eruption, this area of the crater collapsed and the lava lake drained. But the volcano is still active, and the landscape of the park could change at any time, creating new land and new life.

In an annoying epilogue to this trip, all of my drawings from 10 days in Hawai’i were accidentally left on a connecting flight, and despite constant calling of the airlines for several months, never seen again. So if you happen to ever see one of these drawings, give me a call! :)

Great Smoky Mountains, Tennessee/North Carolina

Great Smoky Mountains National Park lies nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, between Tennessee and North Carolina. Its expansive forested hillsides seem to roll off into infinity, wound through with crystal clear rivers and streams.

Black bear and deer emerge from the dense, shady forests and disappear just as quickly.

But the reason we drove 15 hours to Tennessee was for a much smaller creature: the firefly. Great Smoky Mountains National Park is home to at least nineteen different varieties of firefly, and one particular species, known as the synchronous fireflies, put on a magical mating display for about two weeks every summer in June. Tickets to view the fireflies are given away in a randomly selected lottery (we did not win the lottery, but were able to get a media pass for the book) so that the numbers of people don’t overwhelm the trails and the fireflies. We gathered at sunset, claiming our spots before it became dark, even though the synchronous firefly show did not begin until well after dark. Everyone covered their flashlights, camera, and smartphone screens with red cellophane to protect against light pollution, which can disturb the insects. The isolated darkness in the park is one of the reasons the fireflies gather in such great numbers. The early evening fireflies began their display, glowing like fairies all around us. As it grew darker, different species began to light up. Some would flash quickly and brightly, illuminating a sphere of leaves. Others would glow a pale blue for several seconds, winding through the seated visitors. When the last bits of sun faded from the sky, the synchronous fireflies began. They would flicker by the hundreds, like dim, sparkling fireworks, first one, then more and more, like a wave through the trees. They glittered like fallen constellations in the forest. The only sounds were the buzzing of insects and the gasps of the audience.

Yosemite, Californa

The panorama upon entering Yosemite Valley is likely one of the most incredible views in the country. You are greeted by towering shards of granite worn smooth by rivers of time and ice, polished and gleaming in the sun, with gushing torrents of water falling to the lush meadows at their feet.

Yosemite Falls, the tallest waterfall in North America, cascades for 2,425 feet. That’s more than 1,000 feet higher than the Empire State Building!

You can feel the power of the falls even from a great distance.

I took a hike up into the foothills of the canyon early in the morning, with the hopes of seeing some wildlife along the way (sunrise and sunset tend to be the times when animals are most active). I had heard that both mountain lions and bobcats were sometimes seen in the valley, and one of my long time dreams had always been to see one of either in the wild (although mountain lions especially are also terrifying, so it’s a bit of an ambivalent goal).

As the morning light broke across the gleaming cliffs, I decided to draw and then head back, not having seen any wildlife.

It was now almost noon on my hike back, and the trail had gotten much more crowded, so I assumed any chance of animals was long gone. But just up ahead of me, I saw a couple pointing excitedly into the rocks just off the trail. I scurried over and the slinking shape of a bobcat emerged from the shadows.

I frantically pulled out both my camera and drawing supplies.

The camera resulted in this Bigfoot-like image.

And the drawing supplies resulted in this. I feel like drawing is often a wonderful way to capture wildlife, because your memory can fill in even after the animal has disappeared from view. The bobcat walked leisurely past me and faded into the rocks, but I couldn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day.

I kept texting my husband, Chris, about how excited I was and how I felt like I deserved some kind of medal for seeing a bobcat. So when I got home from my trip, he had made me this:

He said he didn’t put “Best Bobcat Spotter” because technically, the couple that pointed it out first were better, which I think is fair.

Yellowstone, Wyoming/Montana/Idaho

Yellowstone in the winter is like nowhere I’ve ever seen before. The usual crowds of tourists that fill the park in the warmer months are gone, and in their place is a vast and powerful stillness.

I watched and drew as herds of bison trudged through the snow past my car,and as blizzards swept in and out across the monumental peaks and valleys.

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Often, the longer I stayed in one spot, the more I saw. A coyote scampered past me while I was drawing a distant herd of bison, as did a red fox who pranced through the snow, hunting small rodents.

Several bald eagles soared overhead, and one even posed for me next to a stream.

The sense of quiet on the snow-muffled landscapes heightened every crunch of snow and grass as I drew, watching elk, deer, bighorn sheep, and bison munch away. (Always from a safe distance, watching for signs of agitation in the animals!)

The thermal streams carved their way through the snow, like emerald ribbons across the white landscapes, and the brilliant hot springs, geysers and geothermal basins steamed even more profusely in the cool air.

I even hopped into the Boiling River for a quick dip, even as snow was falling. Nearly burned myself too!

Waking up each day before sunrise, I was able to follow the cars of wolf trackers who prowl the park every morning to follow and study the resident wolf packs, and I was lucky enough to see very distant wolves on one of the tracker’s very advanced scopes. Even though they were too far to see with the naked eye, it was incredible to know that they were out there and see them moving and interacting in real life.

Although much of the park is closed due to snow-covered roads (although there are snow shuttles to take you to more remote areas of the park), the remaining areas (which are incredibly expansive) are oases, full of life, peace, beauty, and silence.