It was evidently a banner year last year for many, if not most, U.S. National Parks.

With COVID locking away a majority of Americans in 2020, many of the locked-aways pushed back in 2021, and with limitations and reticence about flying still holding down air travel, the locked-aways made road destinations their targets for adventure.

And what better places to visit in the U.S. than the magnificent U.S. National Parks.

Many U.S. Parks had their busiest year ever in 2021.

In 1968, Edward Abbey,in his book Desert Solitaire, decried what he anticipated would happen to natural treasures and wonders in America if a government arm was not set up to protect those places. And some of that foreseen destruction was visited upon the parks last year, in part because they were overran, less by naturalists and more by wonder wanters.

To me, the difference between the wonder wanters and the naturalists is a matter of awareness, and a sensitivity to preservation of these scenic and geologic marvels.

Last year, for many visitors of popular parks, what had been planned to be a nice walk in the wilderness became a day of lingering in lines, not unlike spending a day at a Disney park, waiting and waddling to get to an attraction (here’s looking at you, Angel’s Landing in Zion).

As a result of the excessive number of people hitting some parks, ticketing systems were installed to limit visitor access through time-released entries in some of the most popular parks. And while limiting access may provide a better visitor experience with less traffic to endure, the wonder wanters still fill the parks in droves, chiefly chasing the greatest prizes they have to offer: the epic.

Because the goal for the modern adventurer in the COVID 2020’s is experience (say, look at all those overlander vehicle build videos), photos have become the new trophy of our time that clarify and verify how incredible a certain trip, a certain location, a certain natural opportunity was, which then get distributed on social media, the global epic trophy case.

Consequently, for some, photography has become a sport in its own right, where the pursuit and capture of the epic image- that remarkable landscape taken from a unique perspective bathed in glorious mythic light- has become an end in itself. .

Epic is the goal for the wonder wanter, and the national parks are, naturally, the ideal place for them look for it.

I like epic images. And that is certainly why others singularly chase taking them. Those images are in jaw-dropping and in demand.

I just wonder at what cost the pursuit of the epic is having on the best of our beautiful public lands.

And what cost having to find and film the epic has on our valuation of the beautiful in simple daily life.

Well, maybe that last question is really just for me, being influenced by the photos I see shared on social media, where every photo seems to be of something grand and epic.

Certainly there are places and compositions around me, in my personal life, that warrant some epic attention.

Even if they aren’t that epic.

I reckon that’s the job for any good photographer.

To find and uncover the epic in the ordinary.