Description: In Requiem for America's Best Idea, Michael J. Yochim explains how climate change is altering the face of America's national parks, focusing on current and projected changes to vegetation, wildlife, and the natural conditions in Olympic, Grand Canyon, Glacier, Yellowstone, and Yosemite National Parks--five of the "crown jewels" of our national park system. As Yochim guides the reader from park to park, he immerses us in each park's beauty and wonder, highlighting the resources now at risk of destruction or permanent alteration.
Yochim worked for the National Park Service for nearly thirty years before being diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). It was while fighting the disease that he wrote this last moving testament. Interwoven with descriptions of climate change's effects on our national parks is the heartbreaking story of how the author, a legendary hiker and backpacker, lost control of his body to the point where he was finally forced to rely on an eye-tracking machine to write. Climate change is indisputably happening around us, and our parks are changing, often irrevocably. If we don't act now, Yochim argues, future changes will be much more severe, threatening the very essence of these irreplaceable wonders. America's failure to meaningfully address the current climate crisis may well squander the vision that acclaimed western writer Wallace Stegner so memorably celebrated: "National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best, rather than our worst."Brief description: Michael J. Yochim (1966-2020) worked for twenty-two years at Yellowstone National Park as well as at Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and Sequoia. His books include Yellowstone and the Snowmobile: Locking Horns over National Park Use, A Week in Yellowstone's Thorofare: A Journey Through the Remotest Place, Essential Yellowstone: A Landscape of Memory and Wonder, and Protecting Yellowstone: Science and the Politics of National Park Management (UNM Press).
Review Quotes: "To see through these pages into Mike Yochm's life is to bear witness to the flowering of a man's mind and heart in the bright light of wild nature. His portraits of some of America's great wildland parks fairly shimmer with the kind of attention mustered only by the intensely curious and the humble--someone willing always to look and listen deeply. Notably, while Yochim is writing from the agonizing doorstep of his own death, this is less a book about dying than a tale about what it feels like to be truly alive. Would that the scent and color of his love affair with nature, along with his unshakeable advocacy on its behalf, inspire generations to come."--Gary Ferguson, author of The Eight Master Lessons of Nature: What Nature Teaches Us About Living Well in the World