Michael Lanza
A longtime backpacker, climber, and skier, Michael Lanza knows our national parks like the back of his hand. As a father, he hopes to share these special places with his two young children. But he has seen firsthand the changes wrought by the warming climate and understands what lies ahead: Alaskaâ€™s tidewater glaciers are rapidly retreating, and the abundant sea life in their shadow departs with them. Encroaching tides threaten beloved wilderness coasts like Washingtonâ€™s Olympic and Floridaâ€™s Everglades. Less snowfall and hotter summers will diminish Yosemiteâ€™s world-famous waterfalls. And it is predicted that Glacier National Parkâ€™s 7,000-year-old glaciers will be gone in a decade., Â , To Lanza, it feels like the house he grew up in is being looted. Painfully aware of the ecologicalâ€”and spiritualâ€”calamity that global warming will bring to our nationâ€™s parks, Lanza sets out to show his children these wonders before they have changed forever., Â , He takes his nine-year-old son, Nate, and seven-year-old daughter, Alex, on an ambitious journey to see as many climate-threatened wild places as he can fit into a year: backpacking in the Grand Canyon, Glacier, the North Cascades, Mount Rainier, Rocky Mountain, and along the wild Olympic coast; sea kayaking in Alaskaâ€™s Glacier Bay; hiking to Yosemiteâ€™s waterfalls; rock climbing in Joshua Tree National Park; cross-country skiing in Yellowstone; and canoeing in the Everglades., Â , Through these poignant and humorous adventures, Lanza shares the beauty of each place and shows how his children connect with nature when given â€œunscriptedâ€ time. Ultimately, he writes, this is more their story than his, for whatever comes of our changing world, they are the ones who will live in it.
Travel,Nonfiction,Adventure,Environment,Autobiography,Memoir,Nature,Outdoors,Environment,Nature,Science,Parenting,Unfinished
Before They're Gone: A Family's Year-Long Quest to Explore America's Most Endangered National Parks