Brown Bear

Credits: Zahoor Salmi

The awe-inspiring brown bear lives in the forests and mountains of northern North America, Europe, and Asia. It is the most widely distributed bear in the world.

Turtles

Credits: Jose Manzanilla

Sand Dune, Fraser Island

Credits: Peter Essick

Pioneering plants get a toehold above the tide line on Australia’s Fraser Island.

West Texas Cowboy

Credits: William Albert Allard

Lake McKenzie

Credits: Peter Essick

One of dozens of lakes on the island, Lake McKenzie shimmers in the starlight. During the day the lake’s sugar white beach and windowpane water attract hundreds of visitors. Like the painters and poets who celebrated Fraser’s otherworldly allure, they return home with stories and images of soul-stirring beauty.

Wind River Roadless Area, Wyoming

Credits: Jack Dykinga

No signs point the way here, only the arthritic limbs of a pine gesturing to an endless sky. It is the wildest of the wild, a glacier-scoured terrain unmarred by roads, tugged at by wind, on the shoulder of the Continental Divide. This preserve of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho dates back to 1937, decades before the United States passed the Wilderness Act, in 1964.

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