This summer, my family and I set out on a grand, iconic adventure—the Great American Road Trip. We planned to drive coast to coast and border to border, visiting 14 national parks. I was on sabbatical from Grist, where I serve as editor-in-chief. After leading a newsroom through 18 months of environmental policy rollbacks and climate disasters, the trip seemed like the perfect way to unplug.
As it turns out, when you’re a climate journalist, there really is no escaping work.
There was beauty and awe in spades. But the 9,000 miles we traveled also provided a very stark look at how a warming planet is reshaping our nation and our public lands.
Dozens of wildfires in Utah, charring forests and towns and turning skies orange. Bathtub rings on drought-stricken reservoirs in Arizona. Stands of trees killed by bark beetles in the Sierra Nevadas. Toxic dust blowing off the Great Salt Lake. Emergency alerts for flooding and evacuations in Glacier National Park. Extreme heat warnings in Grand Teton.
It felt like a near-constant assault, one disaster stacked atop the next. Travel a few miles, a few hours, and we’d encounter yet another mark climate change had made—or was actively making—on the American landscape.
When we returned home and I returned to work, I knew I had to chronicle the journey. My family’s days whiplashed between grandeur and extreme weather crises. I knew we couldn’t be the only ones going through this. The family road trip is basically a rite of passage in our culture, and most of the travel takes place during summer months, when floods, fires, drought, and heat are at their peak.
And things are different now.
Last weekend, terrifying flash floods trapped dozens of hikers in the Grand Canyon—at least two were killed. They were people simply out enjoying America’s public lands as my family had, only to experience firsthand the brutal consequences of burning fossil fuels for two-plus centuries. I hugged my kids tight when I heard the news.
I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read my essay.
—Katherine Bagley
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