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MARK WOODS is the author of LASSOING THE SUN: A YEAR IN AMERICA'S NATIONAL PARKS, awarded the gold medal for general non-fiction in the 2016 Florida Book Awards.
LASSOING THE SUN started out as a journalistic quest on the eve of the National Park Service centennial: spend one year exploring the future of our parks.
Five weeks into the year my mother was told she was dying, turning the quest into something much more personal.
Mom loved the national parks. She wanted me to stick to my plans. And for the most part, I did. This still is a story about the future of our parks. But it also is a story about losing parents, trying to hand down a love of nature to a daughter and realizing that, at 50, midlife and mortality aren't just abstract ideas.
It's a story about spending one year finding solace not only in the parks' serenity, but also in their constant reminders of death and life.
It evolved into a love story devoted to people who are gone and places that remain, and how the two are intertwined.
At its heart, it remains a road trip, complete with unplanned detours, interesting characters and memorable settings -- from the top of Yosemite's Half Dome to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, from the world's oldest national park (Yellowstone) to one of the newest (Flight 93 National Memorial), from a noisy campground in New York City to one of the quietest places on earth.
The year begins atop a mountain in Maine with the first sunrise in America and ends on the other side of the country, with a New Year's Eve sunset on the rim of a volcanic crater in Hawaii - a place where, according to local mythology, a son once lassoed the sun for his mother.
MARK WOODS is a columnist for The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, Fla. He was the recipient of the Eugene C. Pulliam Fellowship in 2011, an award that allowed him to take a yearlong sabbatical from his regular job. He lives in Jacksonville with his wife, Toni; daughter, Mia; and their dog, rescued in the centennial year and named Ranger.
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