STEPHANIE PEARSON writes about travel, culture, the environment, people, and cutting-edge gear. Her assignments have included reporting from Mount Everest, meditating with Tibetan Buddhist scholar Bob Thurman in Bhutan, and producing an online science curriculum while traveling through Australia and Latin America with National Geographic Fellow Dan Buettner and his team. After receiving her degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, Pearson began her career at Outside magazine, where she was editorial staff for more than a decade and is currently a contributing editor. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic Traveler, Bicycling, Wired, CNN, O, the Oprah Magazine, Men's Journal, Travel + Leisure, Lonely Planet, and others. She has also been anthologized in The Best American Travel Writing and Out There: The Wildest Stories from Outside Magazine.


GARTH BROOKS (foreword) first learned to play guitar and banjo while growing up in rural Oklahoma. He went on to become one of the world's best-selling artists of all time, second only to the Beatles in album sales in the U.S. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2012 and has made the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart every decade since the '80s. His music has been intertwined with the American landscape, with album titles such as "No Fences," "The River," and "The Thunder Rolls" that hint at Brooks's deep connection to America's wild and open spaces, which inspire his songwriting. Brooks narrates National Geographic's National Parks, premiering September 2022.