My Most Prized Possession

If asked “What’s your most prized possession?”, some people may say a piece of family jewelry that’s been passed down through the generations, or the first car they paid off. Many things can generate intense emotion and value for folks. My most prized possession is a small, blue pocket-sized booklet that has connected me to my national parks since I was a child.

For those who may not know, the Passport to Your National Parks® is a booklet in which you apply ink stamps from all of the National Park Service’s park units you visit. People across generations, geographies and backgrounds enjoy them. For me, my passport and collected stamps have been an integral part of my park travels since I visited my first national park in 2015.

I grew up in the great Pacific Northwest, home to some of the country’s premier national parks. Although I spent plenty of time outside, I rarely visited public lands or explored natural areas. However, when I was 14 years old, my family and I began planning a father-son bonding road trip that would take me and my dad around the country on a month-long loop that summer. To prepare, my family made a Memorial Day visit to Olympic National Park to build up our hiking endurance. That’s when I purchased my passport and inked my first stamps.

Not too long after our visit to Olympic, my father and I set off on our adventure. Whether it was Grand Teton, the Statue of Liberty or Congaree, I became mesmerized by the rich ecological, cultural and historical resources that these protected places offered. Through all my park visits, I permanently preserved the memories and experiences through the stamps I haphazardly placed in my national park passport.

Following this life-changing experience with my dad, our family invested in an RV and continued to make summer road trips to national parks all across the country, stamping that small blue booklet along the way. I was incredibly lucky to accomplish these trips throughout high school, and by the time I prepared to leave home for college, I was fortunate enough to have been to all 50 states and to have visited a majority of our country’s 63 national parks. Although I am privileged to say that I was able to visit all these amazing places with my family, I am most proud of the passport stamps I collected.

Since then, my passion for public lands has grown. Through a bed-conversion setup that I helped my dad build in my old SUV, I continue the tradition of car camping to enjoy the grandeur of our national parks while adding stamps to my passport. Through these adventures, I have grown a profound love for this well-worn little booklet.

There’s the common phrase, “You don’t know how much you love something until it’s gone.” Unfortunately for me, this became true a couple of years ago. During a visit to Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2023, I accidentally left my passport at the front desk of the visitor center. I didn’t realize I had lost my most prized possession until I got home a week later. I frantically searched through my bags, my car and every nook and cranny of my belongings. In a last-ditch effort, I called the park to see if they had possibly located the booklet. A couple of weeks later, I received a random call from a South Carolina phone number. Thankfully, it was a park ranger calling to tell me they had located my passport some time ago and would mail it back to me. After being reunited with my passport thanks to the park staff’s unparalleled kindness, I truly realized just how special the faded ink stamps and the memories they represented were to me.

I have progressively developed a strong drive to work toward expanding conservation and justice for communities, so that others may have the opportunity to gain the same love I did.

As someone raised by a diverse family, some of whom came to the U.S. as refugees and have experienced deep poverty and struggle, along with a community of peers who have experienced their own disadvantages and subsequently little time in the outdoors, I have come to appreciate the great privilege I’ve had to recreate in our national parks. I have progressively developed a strong drive to work toward expanding conservation and justice for communities, so that others may have the opportunity to gain the same love I did.

From studying environmental management and environmental justice, to working for various environmental advocacy and justice organizations, I’ve been fortunate to carry forward this dream of expanding justice-focused conservation. Over the last couple of years, I’ve had the privilege to support the National Parks Conservation Association as a volunteer, first with their Southeast Young Leaders Council and currently with their Next Generation Advisory Council.

With NPCA, I’ve been able to build my toolkit to be a better environmental advocate and carry forth the message of the importance of our national parks to decision-makers. This month, I will participate in NPCA’s National Park Advocacy Week in Washington, D.C., where I’ll meet with politicians to emphasize the importance of our national parks and public lands — particularly considering the threats facing parks due to historic staffing cuts and the impacts of climate change.

All the work and education I’ve pursued, along with the time I spend outdoors in my free time, started with a family trip and a small blue booklet now faded and worn. I plan to continue working as an environmental advocate in my profession and keep adding sloppy stamps to my Passport to Your National Parks in my free time. Thanks to the incredible network of park advocates I’ve met at NPCA, I know I’m not alone in saying that my most prized possession isn’t just an unassuming booklet, but the national parks that I and millions of other people across the world enjoy every year.