The catalogue below doesn’t just remind us of the landscapes we’ve had the privilege to explore — showcasing so much breathtaking beauty and diversity — but also of the ways we’ve changed, grown, and evolved throughout the years.

National Parks are one of those things we hold with a great deal of tension. While they have held some of our dearest memories and favorite adventures, they are simultaneously impossible to disentangle from the legacy of violence, colonization, broken treaties, and land theft that led to the establishment of the United States as it is now understood. They can be places where the story of this country is told with honesty or is erased, as we’ve seen with recent actions to remove NPS signs and educational features, many of which discuss the enslavement of Black people; Indigenous sovereignty; LGBTQ+ rights and history; climate change; and the long struggle for equality and justice in this country.

Visiting these places is a political act. We strive to overtly recognize the political aspect of each park and visit the land and the waters with a sense of reverence, awareness, respect, and learning. We use these trips to educate ourselves on the history of each place from perspectives outside those either promoted or removed by the National Park Service (although we’ve been witness to some pretty cool partnerships between NPS and Tribal Nations in several parks that made their mark on us).

This is not and never will be enough to make up for the destructive practices that led to the creation and maintenance of these parks in the first place. And yet still: Our hope is that experiential education via embodied interaction with these spaces is the first step toward reinventing the way we view them, telling more truthful (hi)stories, listening to and following Indigenous leadership and ways of knowing, and forging pathways toward restoring public lands into the stewardship of Indigenous peoples.