Author Tyra A. Olstad spent fours summers as an Adirondack Mountain Club summit steward. Her second book, Canyon, Mountain, Cloud: Absence and Longing in American Parks, is a well-written and thought-provoking piece on what attracts us to places and what wilderness means.

From the publisher (Oregon State University Press):

“Part memoir and part scholarly analysis of the psychological and societal dimensions of place-creation, Canyon, Mountain, Cloud details the author’s experiences working and living in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Denali National Park and Preserve, Adirondack State Park, and arctic Alaska. Along the way, Olstad explores canyons, climbs mountains, watches clouds, rafts rivers, searches for fossils, and protects rare and fragile vegetation. She learns and shares local natural and cultural histories, questions perceptions of “wilderness,” deepens her appreciation for wildness, and reshapes her understanding of self and self-in-place.

Anyone who has ever felt appreciation for wild places and who wants to think more deeply about individual and societal relationships with American parks and protected areas will find humor, fear, provocation, wonder, awe, and, above all, inspiration in these pages”. Dimensions: 6″ x 9″, 276 pages. Includes notes, 45 black & white photographs, and 3 maps. Published in 2021.