One reporter's journey through the American West puts her on the frontlines of climate change

Climate change is altering the great American landscape, with rural places often on the frontlines of disasters that are becoming more and more frequent. Grist Editor-in-Chief Katherine Bagley reflects in a new essay on her family's summer roadtrip -- an iconic American tradition that pushes people into this country's many varied rural places -- and the overwhelming scars left behind from the disasters climate change has wrought.

"I had expected to walk away with a better understanding of our public lands, a renewed sense of awe and adventure, and the opportunity to travel as a family in a way I never got to growing up — and the trip did give us those things in spades," Bagley writes. "What I hadn’t expected, however, was to also get a stark glimpse into how climate change is rapidly altering our nation."

She writes of her family's front-row view of the red rings left behind as lakes and reservoirs evaporate, wildfires that were burning acres of land as she and her family tried to leave Moab, Utah -- entry point to the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks -- flooding in Yellowstone, and extreme heat and loss of habitat for native species in Wyoming. 

"As a climate journalist, and scientist by training, I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised," Bagley writes. "For 20 years, I have documented the ever-growing impacts of a warming planet — and summer coincides with the annual period during which these impacts are on full display ... But even knowing that, the scale of devastation underway outside our car windows was alarming."

There are some places keen on educating and combating the effects of climate change across her family's journey -- wind turbines accompanied by wind turbine restaurants in Iowa; rows of EV charging stations at a truck stop; and interactive museum exhibits. But the devastation looms large, and with four in 10 American's saying they are directly impacted by the changes, but feel powerless to stop them, facts such as this are hard to ignore: 

[My children] hit a button [at the Glacier National Park visitors center] and watched as tiny bulbs lit up the mountaintops, signifying the location of the 150 glaciers that existed back in 1850. As the timeline moved from 1900 to 1950 to 1980 to 2000, the lights disappeared faster and faster. Today, the park is home to only 26 ice bodies.

Read Bagley's full essay here.