This month marks 105 years since the National Park Service was established - the organization dedicated to serving in America’s national parks, “...to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as we will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

You might have noticed that the national parks are a big theme here at Dear Summit (like this blog post, this hiking journal, or these wooden stickers). You might also know that I donate a percentage of my profits to the National Park Foundation.

But why?

Why are National Parks so important to me? And why give up part of my profit for them?

Probably like most Americans, I had only a nominal awareness of America’s national parks until I was a young adult. I visited a handful of the well known parks with my family growing up. I remember being surprised by a late-spring snow while staying in a tent-cabin in Yosemite, hiking a tiny bit of the Bright Angel trail at the Grand Canyon (a miserable mile at most, carrying no water), and marveling at the ruins of Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde, and my parents even gave me a national parks passport to fill with official park stamps.

I dutifully stamped the official cancellations into my national parks passport book, taking photos of overly friendly squirrels and distant vistas with a disposable camera, but I never stopped to consider the bigger picture of the national parks as a whole. I honestly don’t remember thinking about why those places were chosen as national parks and not others, what a “national park” even is, or how many others marked the map - which I might want to explore someday.

Somewhere around the time I visited four of Utah’s ‘Big 5’ national parks (Capitol Reef, I’m still coming for you - someday!), the summer before my senior year in college, my appreciation for these places changed. It was around that time when my interest in hiking and spending time outdoors began, and all of it meshed together into a growing love of wild places - and an understanding of our deep responsibility to to care for them.

This love of all things nature slowly permeated Dear Summit, too. It became clear to me that I could not only use my art, my business, to encourage others to seek time outdoors, but that I could also use it to directly support and protect the wild places I - and my customers - love.

The national parks are like the pinnacles of America’s landscape; many of the finest, most unique, and most breathtaking examples of nature are preserved in our national parks. The ‘national park’ designation brings with it more funding, staff, and care - which in turn makes these places easier to visit and enjoy, easier to learn about and appreciate, and keeps them better cared for and preserved.

Are America’s national parks perfect? Certainly not. The stories of our national parks are layered with many problems, such as the forced removal of countless indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands, and at times, questionable management of natural resources and animal populations. But even with these problems, the national parks still represent an ideal and still preserve some of the world’s most amazing landscapes; they’re still something to be appreciated, explored, and preserved.

But how can you and I be a part of helping to care for our national parks, when we don’t work for the National Park Service, and probably can’t volunteer to serve in them, ourselves?

Enter, the National Park Foundation.

This is the official charitable partner of the National Park Service, using donated funds - like those from your purchases here at Dear Summit - to support maintenance projects, outreach programs, and loads of other aspects of the vital work of preserving each unit in America’s National Parks System.

You get sustainably made, durable goods for your adventures, you’re supporting a small, woman-owned business, and you’re also supporting the national parks system. It’s the perfect win-win-win. You get to share your love of parks and wild places with your Dear Summit gear, and support those places in a real, tangible way at the same time.

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