North America’s wilderness wealth springs from an incredibly vast, breathtakingly varied range of gorgeous destinations and encounters. Exciting. Calming. Challenging. Startling. Inspiring. Rejuvenating. Bold. Joyful. Sublime. For on-the-go vacationers as well as armchair travelers, the new oversized (10 1/2” x 13 1/2”) National Geographic: Atlas of Wild America, published this month, provides a picturesque super-dive into spectacular horizons. Written by Jon Waterman, a former park ranger and veteran guide, with a foreword by environmental historian Roderick F. Nash, this hefty tome, with 308 photos and 262 maps, applauds both well-known majestic favorites and off-the-beaten-path intimate finds, unveiling intricate details and data galore. Be awed by nature-loving secrets and surprises.
Atlas of Wild America “invites you to explore…ideas of what wilderness really means,” writes Nash. To best savor this book, “try projecting yourself into the maps, photographs and text that fill these pages: the fruitful bogs and roadless woodlands of West Virginia’s Cranberry Wilderness, the desert dunes and Joshua trees of California’s Mojave National Preserve, the glacial landscape of Alaska’s Noatak National Preserve. How wild is each particular place for you?”
“Look with gratitude,” Nash recommends, “…and with a sense of wonder.” Finger through Atlas of Wild America’s 432 colorful pages, curling up with chapters that can fuel and channel your wanderlust, even as you sit at home, pointing you toward uplifting directions. In addition to constructive facts and getaway tips, such as the Leave No Trace Seven Principles, Waterman shares “brief vignettes of my personal experiences from the last 54 years of travel…. Drawn at first to adventure and the need to test my limits — during climbs, traverses, river descents, circumnavigations or simple camping trips — I eventually stumbled upon or developed a sense of mastery for backcountry travel. And I quickly learned that time spent in the wilds proved essential to my well-being. But now, as much as anything, I return for the gifts of quiet freedom amid untrammeled landscapes. Like many others, I am compelled by the piquant delights of unvarnished nature, along with the deeper perception that the wilds are, as [William] Wordsworth wrote, ‘felt in the blood, and felt along the heart.’ Out there, amid the open spaces of our continent, we can all come to discover that the wilderness is embedded in our DNA.”
In its ambitious aim, Atlas of Wild America weaves together a tapestry of golden descriptive threads about the U.S.A., Canada and Mexico. Its first chapter, “Wild America at a Glance” delves into highlights of Native American lands; national parks and forests, national wildlife refuges, national scenic trails, state parks, protected rivers; Canadian parks; and Mexico’s protected areas. This is an easy-reading — dip into it here and there — key-turning book for those appreciative of wild yonder. But who could not be astonished when pausing to ponder the U.S.A.’s grandeur and profound natural marvels? Consider, for example, that the more than 190-million acres within the present total of 154 U.S.A. national forests alone make up an area bigger than the state of Texas.
Fascinating, too, are the multiple notable wildlife corridors — crucial exercise, feeding and migration routes — the largest and most well known of which is within 502,000 square miles from Yellowstone to Yukon, an expanse almost twice the size of Texas with 13 significant rivers, diverse ecosystems and a plethora of animal species present since Ice Age mammals disappeared.
Also spotlit are heroes of wilderness safekeeping, such as naturalist, author and political firebrand Henry David Thoreau; prolific writer John Muir, who transported transcendentalism into the wilds; 26th U.S.A. President Theodore Roosevelt, who, among other significant protective accomplishments, created the United States Forest Service and established 150 national forests, five national parks, four national game preserves and 51 federal bird preserves; Aldo Leopold, who was called the father of the American wilderness; Mardy Murie, who was known as the grandmother of American conservation; Idaho senator Frank Church, who ardently believed that democracy needed secured wild places; and Sierra Club director David Brower, among others.
Geography is the building block that organizes the book’s deft unfolding, featuring additional chapters that regale treasures and pleasures within “Eastern Shores, Forests and Wetlands,” “Central Lakes and Plains,” “Rocky Mountains,” “Desert and Arid Lands,” “Pacific Northwest” and “Northern Wilderness.”
Waterman’s singular “Wild Memories” stories are intriguing and graceful, strategically laced across chapters. His narratives add an extra lovely humanity to this in-depth atlas. For example: “We took turns trail-breaking for two hours up to our knees in snow, ascending slightly uphill until we turned up a creek and started the final bushwhack toward the North Face of Gothics Peak in the heart of the [New York] Adirondacks,” he writes about a trip. “I repeatedly broke through the ice, and twice splashed into running water, but gaiters kept my feet dry. By the time we reached the ice armoring the 1,000-foot-high rockslide like a shiny suit of mail, icicles hung like white fangs from my mustache…. We were alone and unheeded with the forest yawning below us, six miles from the nearest road. A raven wheeled in the wind above and, away from the city, I couldn’t have been happier. If I hadn’t been breathing so hard, I would’ve broken into song… We stayed warm as long as we kept in motion, in a march toward a mastery through controlled movement and self-sufficiency that is the foundation of wilderness travel. It took another hour to kick steps up onto summit ridge. When we broke out on top above scudding clouds, we pulled up our hoods against the wind to a 360-degree panorama that I would never forget.”