road trip: the national parks

part 5: the Promised Land

Notes from a Road Trip. June, 2021: 10 days, 5 parks

Zion. Another stamp on the park passport. I’m nearly a third of the way through my national park tour.

Zion. In Hebrew, it means sanctuary. It’s the last park on my summer road trip, and the most crowded. Packed parking lots. Lines for trail shuttles snaking around the welcome center like a Disneyland attraction.

I settle for a short hike close to base. It’s quieter here. A deer, the creek, the cliffs. A picnic table for my writing desk, and I sit, breathing in the solitude.

Sandstone sanctuary: millions of years in the making, this desert beneath the sea.

This microburst is the final in the mashup’s national park series. Catch up with part one, part two, part three and part four.