Rona Marech

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Articles

Parks can help make sense of challenging and uncertain times

Oct 31, 2024 | npca.org | Rona Marech |Jennifer Errick |Nicolas Brulliard |Edward Stierli

Elections can be times of great change and great uncertainty. Election results – for the presidency, for Congress, for state and local offices – could mean monumental changes for us and for our national parks. Our nation’s history is full of such moments – times when we faced an unclear future. And many of those stories are told through national parks.
Weary Traveler

Mar 26, 2024 | npca.org | Rona Marech

The first week Kurt Repanshek posted stories about national parks on a makeshift blog, he attracted more than 400 readers. “With no marketing, no announcement, nothing,” he said. “It just really encouraged me that there was obviously a thirst for this type of content.” That was more than 18 years ago. A former Associated Press reporter, Repanshek was working as a freelance writer at the time, but the media industry was going through some seismic shifts, and magazine gigs were starting to dry up.
Chasing a Troubled River

Mar 26, 2024 | npca.org | Rona Marech

Spring 2024 By Rona Marech The mighty Colorado River and its tributaries run through seven states and 10 national park sites and provide water and electricity to millions of people. But as photographer Pete McBride documents in a new book, the river is drying up, and the need to correct course grows more urgent every day.
Breaking Ground

Mar 23, 2024 | npca.org | Rona Marech

Fall 2022 By Rona Marech A visitor center for Stonewall. Visitors to Stonewall National Monument can sit in the park across the street from the Stonewall Inn, the Greenwich Village bar that played an outsize role in LGBTQ history. They can also slip into the bar or snap pictures, but the site has never had a museum where the public can go to learn the story of the 1969 rebellion, when patrons fought back during a routine police raid.
Dreaming, Reflecting, Remembering

Feb 18, 2024 | npca.org | Rona Marech

Summer 2020 By Rona Marech A special issue for these challenging times. In March, as the coronavirus spread with frightening speed, the magazine staff realized we could not simply proceed with a regular summer issue. National park closures and stay-at-home orders made it very difficult to report and photograph stories. We also wanted to acknowledge that our world was transforming, and so many people were dealing with grief, shock and the challenges of more confined lives.
Wild Run

Feb 17, 2024 | npca.org | Rona Marech

Faith E. Briggs had been living in Portland, Oregon, for a year when the Trump administration announced that it was weighing whether to slash the size of some federally protected national monuments. The news made waves in her newfound community of environment-minded friends, and Briggs, a filmmaker and advocate, found herself trying to learn as much as she could about the controversy and wondering what she could do. At the time, she was also thinking a lot about her identity as a conservationist.
The Long and Winding Recovery

Dec 7, 2023 | npca.org | Rona Marech

Winter 2024 By Rona Marech The Anacostia River and the national park site that flanks it were long mistreated and neglected. Are the tides finally turning? Like many in his generation of Washington, D.C., natives, Alan Spears frequently sped over the Anacostia River in a car as a child, but that was about as close as he got to the waterway, even though it curled by his neighborhood on its way to the Potomac, the city’s more famous river.
A Greenway for the People

Jun 12, 2023 | npca.org | Rona Marech

In April, my 11-year-old daughter, Mae, and I spent a glorious week in New York City. We caught up with friends and family, saw two musicals, visited a couple of museums, had Chinese hot pot in Sunset Park and brought sketchbooks to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It was a delight — all of it — but the centerpiece and crowning achievement of the trip was a daylong bike ride through the Brooklyn and Queens section of Gateway National Recreation Area.
Reaching For The Sky

Mar 27, 2023 | npca.org | Rona Marech

In the winter of 2008, as Jacob W. Frank was getting ready to move from Florida to Wyoming for an internship at Grand Teton National Park, his mother handed him her old camera. “You’re going to be living in a park,” she said. “Just take pictures.”Frank, who was 23 at the time, sagely followed her advice. And then some. As expected, Frank was awed by the Tetons, but at first, he wasn’t trying to capture what he described as the “in your face” mountain majesty on film.