Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park

by Conor Knighton

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A delightful sampler plate of our national parks, written with charisma and erudition.”—Nick Offerman, author of Paddle Your Own Canoe

From CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Conor Knighton, a behind-the-scenery look at his year traveling to each of America's National Parks, discovering the most beautiful places and most interesting people our country has to offer

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY OUTSIDE

When Conor Knighton set off to explore America's "best idea," he worried the whole thing could end up being his worst idea. A broken engagement and a broken heart had left him longing for a change of scenery, but the plan he'd cooked up in response had gone a bit overboard in that department: Over the course of a single year, Knighton would visit every national park in the country, from Acadia to Zion.
 
In Leave Only Footprints, Knighton shares informative and entertaining dispatches from what turned out to be the road trip of a lifetime. Whether he's waking up early for a naked scrub in a historic bathhouse in Arkansas or staying up late to stargaze along our loneliest highway in Nevada, Knighton weaves together the type of stories you're not likely to find in any guidebook. Through his unique lens, America the Beautiful becomes America the Captivating, the Hilarious, and the Inspiring. Along the way, he identifies the threads that tie these wildly different places together—and that tie us to nature—and reveals how his trip ended up changing his views on everything from God and love to politics and technology.
 
Filled with fascinating tidbits about our parks' past and reflections on their fragile future, this book is both a celebration of and a passionate case for the natural wonders that all Americans share.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781984823557
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/06/2021
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	50,611
Product dimensions:	7.80(w) x 5.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Conor Knighton is an Emmy-winning correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning, America's #1 Sunday morning news program. Depending on your cable package, you may have also seen him hosting shows on Current TV, AMC, and The Biography Channel or providing commentary for the likes of MTV, E!, and CNN. He has been to all of America's national parks and what feels like 40 percent of its Hampton Inns.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

Sunrise

(Acadia)

Yellowstone was the world’s first national park. The first sentence on the park’s website makes sure you are aware of that bit of trivia. To be first is to be remembered.

Every journalist wants to be the first to publish a story. Every company wants to be the first to market with their product. Every kid in my first-grade class in West Virginia knew local hero Chuck Yeager was the first pilot to break the sound barrier. Who was the second? They didn’t teach that in school.

But first does not always mean best (although in Yellowstone’s case, it just might). Still, a first kiss, a first love, a first date—these are the moments that we memorialize, even if they end up not being all that great. First equals special.

That may be why there are so many spots that claim to offer the first view of the sunrise in the United States. The sunrise marks the first light of a new day, and town tourism bureaus across the country claim that they alone are where you can see that light before anyone else. Of course, with the sunrise, being first is just a matter of seconds.

Guam bills itself as “Where America’s Day Begins.” Out in the middle of the Pacific, closer to Japan than to Hawaii, Guam is fourteen hours ahead of the East Coast, since it lies just west of the International Date Line. But to count Guam as the first sunrise almost seems like cheating, especially since, fifteen hundred miles farther east, there’s Wake Island, an air force base where the sign on the runway once read Where America’s Day Really Begins. Dang, Wake Island. Way to throw a little sunrise shade.

After passing over Asia and Europe, the sun eventually shines on Cadillac Mountain at Acadia National Park in Maine. From mid-September through mid-March, this is where the first rays of sun are said to hit the contiguous United States. Even that honor is true only during the winter months, since the tilt of the earth affects the sun’s position on the horizon. In the summer, Mars Hill, Maine, sees the first light. (And since both spots are pretty remote, Eastport, Maine, advertises itself as the first city to see the sun rise.) Perhaps there’s a reason an asterisk looks just like a sun.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, on January 1, the highest peak of Acadia National Park is the first place in the contiguous United States to see the sun rise. The first sunrise on the first day of the year. And so that’s where I decided to kick off my quest to see every national park in the country. I knew it was going to be a busy year—I wanted to get a head start.

In the summer, tour buses can drive to the top of Cadillac Mountain in a matter of minutes. But in the winter, the road shuts down. Everything shuts down. In the nearby town of Bar Harbor, even big chain hotels put up see you next spring signs. Only a few restaurants stay open, feeding the locals who have decided to brave the winter.

Those who stay have a national park to themselves. Acadia gets 80 percent of its visitors in just four months of the year, but it’s gorgeous in the winter—crystal blue lakes become bright-white ice-fishing destinations, hillsides become ski runs, and the road that leads to the top of Cadillac Mountain, covered in snow, becomes a dangerous, slippery hike.

. . .

My headlamp shone on the first part of the road, illuminating the snow in the distance and my breath in front of my face. I could see sets of fresh bootprints up ahead, both reassuring and unsettling. There were other people out here in the dark, other people who had gotten up even earlier than I had to climb this mountain. Wherever they were, I couldn’t hear them—the only sound came from my brand-new boots, crunching down into the snow.

On my drive to the park, I had passed people who were still coming home from their drunken celebrations. The night before was the first time since I was seven that I didn’t count down to the New Year. It was the first time—ever—that I spent New Year’s Eve by myself. The desk clerk at the Hampton Inn back in Ellsworth thought I was joking when I asked for a 3 a.m. wake-up call. I was in bed by ten. I slept with the lights on so that, when the early-morning call came, I’d be less tempted to go back to sleep.

I was wide awake now—the freezing air made sure of that. I took a swig from my thermos, full of mid-tier chain-hotel lobby coffee. I could feel it more than I could taste it, the hot liquid sliding down my throat and warming my entire body. It felt amazing. I wanted to keep drinking, but I was nervous: I know what happens if I drink too much coffee. I didn’t fly all the way to Maine to begin the year by taking a shit in the snow.

Acadia is on Mount Desert Island—pronounced by the locals more like de-ZERT. Which, sadly, makes it sound way more delicious than it really is. In the 1600s, French explorer Samuel de Champlain named the area l’Isle des Monts-déserts, because the mountain summits were so bare and rocky. “Deserted.”

Of course, Native Americans were here thousands of years before Champlain. This will be a common theme at almost every park I visit. A “discovery” of land that was already inhabited by someone else, a history written by white settlers. The Wabanaki, “the people of the Dawnland,” greeted the dawn on this island long before the first wave of French Jesuits arrived.

Maine seems so quintessentially New England that it’s hard to remember it was once New France. It might have stayed that way too had an English ship not attacked the Jesuits just as they were starting to do some baptizing. For the next 150 years, Mount Desert Island was plunged into a series of small skirmishes, but neither side really cared that much. Nobody saw much value in Acadia.

Nobody except for Antoine Laumet. Laumet immigrated to New France in 1683 and decided to reinvent himself, a process that began with making up a hilarious fake name and title: “Antoine Laumet de la Mothe, sieur de Cadillac.” He allegedly made up all sorts of stories about his nobility and military conquests and eventually talked his way into a land grant of one hundred thousand acres—all of Mount Desert Island.

While the “sieur de Cadillac” didn’t last long in Maine—the farming life wasn’t for him—the chilly mountain I was walking up still bears his invented name. As does an eighty-thousand-dollar Escalade, by the way. It’s the same damn Cadillac. This Talented Monsieur Ripley went on to found Detroit.

Plodding uphill in the snow was making me sweat, and I stripped off another layer. Most of what I was wearing was purchased two days earlier at Gander Mountain Sports in West Virginia, or “Redneck REI,” as my pal from high school lovingly described it. As a matter of policy, REI doesn’t sell guns, bows, or even fishing rods, but the entire back half of Gander Mountain is an arsenal. REI goes after hippie hikers; Gander Mountain is more for hardcore hunters. But there’s overlap in that Venn diagram—both groups need synthetic long underwear to stay warm. I had picked up a pair before I left my family’s weeklong Christmas celebration to head north by myself.

There was no camera crew coming today. Despite my best efforts, I still hadn’t totally convinced the bosses at CBS Sunday Morning that a series of stories on the national parks would be worth airing. There was some understandable concern back in New York that the whole thing “might just end up being a lot of trees.” I’m sure they were also worried that I might be the wrong guy for the job. I was just an occasional freelancer, a pinch hitter infrequently called upon when other, more established correspondents weren’t available.

But they had said they were intrigued, and that was all the encouragement I needed to book my ticket to Maine. I brought along a cheap video camera so I could capture some of my own footage. No trees, I reminded myself. Just people. A few shots of people who—like me—felt compelled to begin their year with an uphill climb in the dark.

Approaching the top, the pavement started to become visible again. I’d forgotten I’d been walking up a road this whole time, but, sure enough, there was a double yellow line, peeking out for the first time underneath the blanket of snow. It didn’t make sense at first; I was much higher up than when I’d started. Shouldn’t there be way more snow up here? But then I figured out what was happening. I felt what was happening.

Powerful gusts of wind whipped at the mountaintop, blowing the snow away and exposing patches of slick ice underneath. The black ice was almost impossible to see in the dark, leading to several stumbles but no outright falls. The traction on my new boots had passed its first test.

When I finally reached the summit, there was no triumphant view to take in. Not yet, anyway—I’d arrived too early. As I jumped up and down to stay warm, I could hear muffled voices coming from somewhere nearby, and I scanned for the source. Eventually, my headlamp reflected off a bright-green parka, and I walked toward a father and son huddling under some rocks to shield themselves from the wind. I asked if I could film them. I knew this was a moment I would want to include—proof that other people started their year this way. That I wasn’t the only crazy one.

Table of Contents

Prologue (Badlands) 3

1 Sunrise (Acadia) 15

2 Water (Hot Springs, Biscayne) 24

3 Animals (Everglades, Channel Islands, Pinnacles, Death Valley) 38

4 God (Yosemite, Capitol Reef, Lake Clark) 51

5 Sound (Great Sand Dunes, Katmai) 63

6 Trees (Joshua Tree, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Redwood) 77

7 Mystery (Crater Lake, Congaree) 86

8 Borders (Big Bend, American Samoa) 97

9 Volcanoes (Lassen Volcanic, Hawaii Volcanoes, Haleakala) 115

10 Ice (Glacier Bay, Glacier, Kenai Fjords, Wrangell-St. Elias) 128

11 People (Arches, Bryce Canyon, Zion) 137

12 Home (Mesa Verde, Great Smoky Mountains) 148

13 Canyons (Grand Canyon, Black Canyon of the Gunnison) 159

14 Forgiveness (Dry Tortugas, Petrified Forest) 168

15 Caves (Wind Cave, Carlsbad Caverns, Mammoth Cave) 180

16 Light (Great Basin, Saguaro) 189

17 Travelers (Theodore Roosevelt, Voyageurs, Denali) 198

18 Love (Canyonlands, North Cascades) 215

19 Food (Gates of the Arctic, Kobuk Valley, Cuyahoga Valley) 229

20 Mountains (Guadalupe Mountains, Rocky Mountain) 245

21 Diversity (Mount Rainier, Shenandoah) 257

22 Disconnecting (Isle Royale, Olympic, Virgin Islands) 272

23 Sunset (Grand Teton, Yellowstone) 286

Epilogue (Gateway Arch, Indiana Dunes, White Sands, New River Gorge) 307

Acknowledgments 311

Notes 315

Editorial Reviews

Conor Knighton is not only blessed with Charles Kuralt’s peripatetic curiosity and John Muir’s reverence for nature, he shares their all-too-rare gift—his writing makes you want to hit the road and see for yourself what truly makes America great.”—Mark Adams, New York Times bestselling author of Turn Right at Machu Picchu
 
“A touching, funny tour of the weird and wonderful in the American wild. If you love our national parks, you’ll love visiting them all with the thoughtful, always entertaining Conor Knighton as your witty, energetic guide. His enthusiasm is contagious and shines on every page.”—Steve Hely, author of The Wonder Trail

“I am crazy about this book. It’s a delightful sampler plate of our national parks, written with charisma and erudition and leavened by a healthy dollop of humor. When Conor Knighton tells you to take a hike, you’d do well to pay attention.”—Nick Offerman, author of Paddle Your Own Canoe
 
“You don’t have to be a national parks geek like me to love this book. However, in Conor Knighton’s capable hands, you will be a national parks geek as soon as you dip into this great narrative.”—Rinker Buck, author of The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey
 
“In Leave Only Footprints, Conor Knighton does what would require a lifetime for the rest of us. Over the course of a year, he goes on a mission of discovery, sharing something new and fresh about each of our national parks and encouraging us to also visit—and preserve—the places that reflect Americans at our best.”—Jonathan Jarvis, eighteenth director of the National Park Service
 
“Knighton is a companionable guide, light on his feet, with a steady store of . . . excellent descriptive passages, good background material, and a few sweeping insights into why national parks are so essential. . . . A fine tour d’horizon of our national grandeur.”—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

02/10/2020

In this lackluster memoir, Knighton, a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning’s “On the Trail” segment, tells of his mission to visit all 59 National Parks in the U.S. in 2016. Post-breakup with his fiancée, Knighton found solace in the writings of John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt and decided to experience firsthand the lands they helped protect and conserve. (The book is an offshoot from his CBS segment). Knighton began his travels in Acadia, where he watched the first sunrise over the U.S. on New Year’s Day, then drove across the country, talking to rangers and guides at each park—including Oregon’s Crater Lake, where an ecologist helped him locate the Old Man tree stump, which had been floating on the lake since the late 19th century. His descriptions of his adventures and the local practices—such as visiting the century-old bathhouse in Hot Springs, Ark., or sled dog races in Denali—are intriguing but get lost in digressions into reflections on his childhood and personal life. Nature lovers will find his story to be self-serving, and dedicated fans of his segment may find it lacking in new material. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"CBS Sunday Morning" contributor Knighton has a natural talent for narration. He presents this fascinating audiobook in a conversational manner that invites listeners to join him on his year-long exploration of America's national parks. Witty, knowledgeable, and self-effacing, he is an accomplished talker whose narrative technique is informed but informal. His extraordinary road trip, which took place during the national parks' 2016 centennial, includes the nation's more than 55 national parks. The treks begin in Maine's Acadia National Park, where the country's first sunrise occurs, and ends in Port Reyes, California, which has the latest sunset. Knighton treats the listener to engaging stories of John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt, and scores of lesser-known parks enthusiasts. But the real stars are the parks. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2020 - AudioFile

"CBS Sunday Morning" contributor Knighton has a natural talent for narration. He presents this fascinating audiobook in a conversational manner that invites listeners to join him on his year-long exploration of America's national parks. Witty, knowledgeable, and self-effacing, he is an accomplished talker whose narrative technique is informed but informal. His extraordinary road trip, which took place during the national parks' 2016 centennial, includes the nation's more than 55 national parks. The treks begin in Maine's Acadia National Park, where the country's first sunrise occurs, and ends in Port Reyes, California, which has the latest sunset. Knighton treats the listener to engaging stories of John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt, and scores of lesser-known parks enthusiasts. But the real stars are the parks. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2020 - AudioFile

2020-01-19
A chronicle of the author’s year exploring all 59 national parks located in the United States and its territories.

Nursing a recent breakup with his fiancee, Emmy-winning CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Knighton hit upon an adventurous plan to take his mind off his troubles. He decided to visit every one of the country’s national parks, occasionally producing segments for CBS. Noting that the National Park Service manages more than 400 “units,” the author “decided to focus on the ‘official’ national parks. I knew I’d be excluding some amazing places, but it seemed like a more manageable list.” Knighton is a companionable guide, light on his feet, with a steady store of hit-or-miss jokes—during a visit with ancient trees in California’s White Mountains, he remarks, “Age on the inside isn’t always apparent on the outside. Just ask Keanu Reeves”—some excellent descriptive passages, good background material, and a few sweeping insights as to why national parks are so essential. The author groups a few parks together for each chapter according to a defining feature, which may be literal—trees, water, ice, volcanoes, caves, mountains—or something more abstract, such as God, forgiveness, love, or disconnection. Too infrequently, he tackles wider subjects with particular zest, especially so in the case of the lack of diversity in both visitors to and employees of the national parks. Knighton examines climate change through the disintegration of glaciers and then ponders the immensity of time through the cutting of a deep canyon. Every park presents him with some unique feature for him to celebrate: a synchronous display of firefly blinking, the knees of cypress trees, the uncanny blueness of Crater Lake. Then there is the elemental brilliance of the national park system. “Each one,” writes the author “is an example of how we have fought against our selfish, destructive impulses.”

A fine tour d’horizon of our national grandeur.

Kirkus Reviews