They look pretty good for 100 years old, don’t they? Happy Birthday to our National Parks! Well, this doesn’t date the ageless glory contained within the parks, but rather the National Park Service, established on August 25, 1916.

Even now, there are parks that have not had their stories fully told; how did I not know about a parade of massive earthen bears lining a section of the Mississippi River? Hundreds of these centuries-old earthworks quietly reside at Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa, one of the 412 units of the Park Service, and I have writer Terry Tempest Williams to thank for introducing me to them.

Good nature writers will introduce us to the unknown; better nature writers at the same time re-imagine the known. Terry Tempest Williams excels at such re-imagining, whether it be of landscapes, myths, politics, or, often, the intersection of the three.

Her new book, “The Hour of Land,” takes us on a tour of 12 pieces of the U.S. National Park System, from the Gates of the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico, from Acadia to Alcatraz, all just in time for the Park Service’s centennial. The Hour of Land isn’t what I expected, but I should have known. Author of 15 books and innumerable essays and articles, Williams has written such different yet compelling works as “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place,” “Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert,” “When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice,” and “Leap,” a meditation on Hieronymus Bosch and Mormonism. Note the subtitles- she may be labeled an environmentalist, but she’s always unpredictable.

The subtitle of her new book is “A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks.” The parks, monuments, and recreation areas she visits are not so much described; instead, they are used as campfires around which we sit while Williams tells stories. The “open air of democracy” is where she does her best reimagining, getting personal while at the same time discussing often-hidden histories. Some parks exist because their previous inhabitants were removed, she reminds us, as at Yosemite. People with deep pockets and agendas have funded parkland acquisition, as at Grand Teton and Acadia. And park stories have changed for the better, too, as at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, originally called Custer Battlefield National Monument.

Reimagining the present and future is where it gets really interesting. I particularly enjoyed Williams’ visit to Alcatraz National Recreation Area, where she and activist Tim DeChristopher viewed dissident artist Ai Weiwei’s installation, as well as her trip with her father to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, an intact island of grass in a stormy sea of fracking. She also describes wildfires in Glacier National Park that trapped her and her family even while the park’s namesake glaciers recede — a metaphor for our time.

To further inspire the reader, “The Hour of Land” is literally bookended by photos — Carleton Watkins’ 1870s image of El Capitan in Yosemite and Ansley West Rivers’ 2011 “Lunar Trace” from the Grand Canyon — and each chapter is accompanied by a gorgeous black and white image by a different photographer. The collection is then nicely gathered and annotated in the back.

Williams, usually with her husband or family, traversed many miles in the course of “The Hour of Land,” revealing both the sheer diversity and beauty of our parks, and of her writing. Along the way she tips her hat to friends and influences, many of whom will be familiar to readers. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Wallace Stegner was one, who said:

“If we preserved as parks only those
places that have no economic
possibilities, we would have no parks.
And in the decades to come, it will be
not only the buffalo and the trumpeter
swan who need sanctuaries. Our own
species is going to need them too. It
needs them now.”

Now is the time to visit a National Park or two. From Aug. 25 to 28, in celebration of their 100th birthday, your National Parks are free! Get out there!

• Jake Vail is an Information Services Assistant at Lawrence Public Library.