Requiem for America's Best Idea - by Michael J Yochim

Book Synopsis

In Requiem for America's Best Idea, Michael J. Yochim explains how climate change is altering the face of America's national parks, focusing on current and projected changes to vegetation, wildlife, and the natural conditions in Olympic, Grand Canyon, Glacier, Yellowstone, and Yosemite National Parks--five of the "crown jewels" of our national park system. As Yochim guides the reader from park to park, he immerses us in each park's beauty and wonder, highlighting the resources now at risk of destruction or permanent alteration.

Yochim worked for the National Park Service for nearly thirty years before being diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). It was while fighting the disease that he wrote this last moving testament. Interwoven with descriptions of climate change's effects on our national parks is the heartbreaking story of how the author, a legendary hiker and backpacker, lost control of his body to the point where he was finally forced to rely on an eye-tracking machine to write.

Climate change is indisputably happening around us, and our parks are changing, often irrevocably. If we don't act now, Yochim argues, future changes will be much more severe, threatening the very essence of these irreplaceable wonders. America's failure to meaningfully address the current climate crisis may well squander the vision that acclaimed western writer Wallace Stegner so memorably celebrated: "National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best, rather than our worst."

Review Quotes

"Imagine, for a moment, that you knew you were not long for the world but wanted to offer a gift back to society, a message that could positively affect the lives of future generations. For Michael Yochim, that's precisely what this book represents: a heartfelt wake-up call for millions of people who love America's national parks and are concerned about the deepening impacts of climate change. This book, which Yochim literally wrote up to the point of his last breath, is his way of getting us to care more about the crown-jewel nature preserves that belong to all of us--and, indeed, it will require all of us to come to their rescue."--Todd Wilkinson, author of Last Stand: Ted Turner's Quest to Save a Troubled Planet

"One of the finest, most evocative books I have ever read. It provides a panoramic view into the present state of life on planet Earth that is both profoundly beautiful and particularly alarming. It provides the realization that we are all borne by the flow of Nature through Paradise in peril."--Jack Loeffler, author of Adventures with Ed: A Portrait of Abbey

"This is a crucial book. So many people have connected to the larger world through these five iconic landscapes that they are the perfect way to get them to care about the biggest crisis threatening our future. Climate change is so huge it's sometimes hard to see, but this fine book brings it very much down to earth--and some of the loveliest parts of that earth!"--Bill McKibben, author Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape

"To see through these pages into Mike Yochm's life is to bear witness to the flowering of a man's mind and heart in the bright light of wild nature. His portraits of some of America's great wildland parks fairly shimmer with the kind of attention mustered only by the intensely curious and the humble--someone willing always to look and listen deeply. Notably, while Yochim is writing from the agonizing doorstep of his own death, this is less a book about dying than a tale about what it feels like to be truly alive. Would that the scent and color of his love affair with nature, along with his unshakeable advocacy on its behalf, inspire generations to come."--Gary Ferguson, author of The Eight Master Lessons of Nature: What Nature Teaches Us About Living Well in the World

"What an amazing book. Yochim manages to parallel the long-term destruction of our National Parks and wild lands--due to rising temperatures, receding glaciers, fire, and climate change in general--with his own physical decline due to the curse of ALS. I have been to the places he remembers in this book, and I must say he reconstructs their beauty in ways few of us could. This is truly a tragic work: the story of a man in his last moments alive holding onto a world of beauty that we are destroying."--Kevin Mattson, Connor Study Professor of Contemporary History at Ohio University and author of We're Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America