Editor's Note

Reflections: On Iconic Wildscapes

It was as early as 1893 when the American Pulitzer Prize-winner Wallace Stenger claimed that our National Parks were “America’s best idea.” Indeed, in just twenty one years since the establishment of the first park, Yellowstone, the visionaries of the day knew that memorializing North America’s iconic landscapes was the right move to preserve the quickly disappearing riches of wilderness. One of my favorite pastimes is to visit the National Gallery of Art’s collections of Albert Bierstadt paintings of the same era, vast canvases where he captured the breathtaking scenes of the West in incredible detail, bringing them back east to mesmerize audiences. Artists and explorers such as Bierstadt helped bring preservation to the forefront of conversation.

Yosemite Valley by Albert Bierstadt, 1867 (Yosemite became the third National Park in 1890).

Summer is high time for visiting these national treasures, and with reservations at the famous park lodges having been available (and many long since sold-out) for the past 6 months – it is also prudent that you begin planning your own National Park adventure now. When the stressors of everyday life and tumultuous events clutter your outlook, it is imperative to know that America, the Beautiful is still very much something to be celebrated, regarded, and remembered. And perhaps it is at our National Parks that this can be done best: vast spaces of peace, of beauty, of wilds that remind us of what our continent used to be and how our adventurous and diverse spirit remains.

For those of us Americans who live on the urban coasts, the National Parks of the West largely remain out of reach–isolated by vast distances of sparsely inhabited lands. Unless we were lucky enough to have intrepid parents to take us on a cross-country adventure in our youth, relatively few of us are flying to Rapid City, Jackson, or Whitefish for a different reason than the parks and outdoors. Now, when you visit these parks, you’ll hear a surprising variety of languages spoken by the visiting masses – for international audiences revere the parks just as much as we Americans do.

The very moment I had a planned sabbatical in my career, I took the opportunity to drive across the entire United States, an epic adventure of many thousands of miles that specifically targeted the “fly over states” so that I could learn what America really encompasses. Of course, the privilege and luxury of time to do it (it took me 5 weeks) is something few of us can afford, but even with just two weeks, you can see an entire swath of cultures and wilds that have remained a fever dream.

In our exploration of the American West, we dissect the vast lands punctuated by the iconic national parks so that you can easily construct your own adventure there. But we aren’t just talking about parks. In this edition, we’re also sharing our favorite lodges and resorts, & the awing interstitial spaces in between, and provide you with our largest and most ambitious travel guide to-date: how to take an epic grand tour, a road trip, encircling the entire western half of America. This trip is broken into three manageable legs, from Denver to Las Vegas (where you’ll see Arches, Zion, Grand Canyon); from Las Vegas to Portland (for Joshua Tree, Yosemite, and Redwoods); and from Seattle to South Dakota (for the iconic parks of Glacier, Yellowstone, and Badlands). Out West, things are BIG. And so is the content in this edition. Westward, ho!