Two years ago today, I was celebrating the fact that I’d completed 35 chapters and an 11-page Notes section for Celebrating America’s National Parks, a book on which I was collaborating with photographer Clyde Butcher and designer David Griffin. I had just the last little bits to edit and all the pages to proof and then I would be on to trimming the tree. I’ve just learned that the book (released in 2016) has placed first in the category “Professional Book–Nature” in the 2017 International Photography Awards Competition.

Celebrating America’s National Parks is the second book I’ve written that has received an award. The first was one I co-authored: The Goddess Revival: A Biblical Response to God(dess) Spirituality (reprinted in 2010). That volume was honored as a Christianity Today Book of the Year.