Some of my first memories involve riding on my Dad’s shoulders as we hiked past stinky geysers that shot mist and clouds high above our heads. I also remember staring into the abyss of a yellow-walled canyon, while water foamed and gurgled nearby, then raced over the rim. At night we had the thrill of sleeping in a log cabin with bunk beds – but Mom said I was too small to sleep in the top bunk. I was almost three years old the first time I visited Yellowstone National Park, on a road trip with my parents from California to visit my grandmother in Ohio.

We also took a helicopter ride over the Badlands (which were several years away from becoming a national park at that point). I remember wearing headphones that pinched my head as we swooped over a landscape that, to me, looked like a layered ice cream sundae.

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