"For years, America's national parks have provided public breathing spaces in a world in which such spaces are steadily disappearing, which is why close to 300 million people visit the parks each year. Now, to honor the centennial of the National Park Service, Terry Tempest Williams, the author of the beloved memoir When Women Were Birds, returns with The Hour of Land, a literary celebration of our national parks, what they mean to us, and what we mean to them.Through twelve carefully chosen parks, from Yellowstone in Wyoming to Acadia in Maine to Big Bend in Texas, Tempest Williams creates a series of lyrical portraits that illuminate the unique grandeur of each place while delving into what it means to shape a landscape with its own evolutionary history into something of our own making. Part memoir, part natural history, and part social critique, The Hour of Land is a meditation and manifesto on why wild lands matter to the soul of America. Our national parks stand at the intersection of humanity and wildness, and there's no one better than Tempest Williams to guide us there. Beautifully illustrated, with evocative black-and-white images by some of our finest photographers, from Lee Friedlander to Sally Mann to Sebastião Salgado, The Hour of Land will be a collector's item as well as a seminal work of environmental writing and criticism about some of America's most treasured landmarks"-- Provided by publisher.

America's national parks : by definition -- Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming : keep promise -- Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota : all this is what the wind knows -- Acadia National Park, Maine : the stones, the steel, the galaxies -- Gettysburg National Battlefield, Pennsylvania : there is no prevailing -- Effigy Mounds National Monument, Iowa : death yes but as a gathering -- Big Bend National Park, Texas : any wind will tell you -- Gates of the Arctic National Park, Alaska : there is no private space -- Gulf Islands National Seashore, Florida and Mississippi : what more shall we do to others, to otherness -- Canyonlands National Park, Utah : we are in some strange wind says the wind -- Alcatraz Island, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, California : the bodies are all gone from it, the purchases have been made -- Glacier National Park, Montana : it is so extreme this taking-the-place-of, this standing-in-for, this disappearing of all the witnesses -- César Chávez National Monument, California, and the future : I say to myself keep on, it will not be the end, not yet.