Very good but not magical. Except sometimes.

 Lassoing the Sun
A Year in America's National Parks
by Mark Woods

So many quotable passages I wish I'd written down!  Yet I felt a little let down by the narrative toward the end and don't understand why.

I shouldn't be comparing it to Leave Only Footprints, but that wonderful book is still in my mind and I just have to.  That book was really "into" the parks in a way that this one could not achieve, possibly because the author is too much buried in his own loss and grieving for his dying mother. And I was grieving right along with him--and at the same time celebrating her life. It's like a book-long memorial service, and it's beautiful.

But it's not "into" the parks. I didn't come away seeing and hearing and smelling the parks in a way I'd wanted to. Although his essay about one of the last ones he stayed at, the one in an urban area in the eastern U.S., came close.