"Our national parks are memory palaces where our personal histories reside," muses naturalist and activist Williams in her ode to the sacred spaces—millions of acres from Alaska to Maine—that are the legacy of Abraham Lincoln's 1864 Yosemite Grant Act. Whether contemplating the spiritual life she finds "inside the heart of the wild" or marveling at the peaks and monuments that comprise "our best idea"—the National Parks system—Williams movingly urges us to remember that "heaven is here."
