Like millions of others, he and his two teenage sons make a summer pilgrimage each year to Yellowstone National Park to catch glimpses of these symbols of the U.S. West.

“We treasure seeing grizzlies, and often we speak of how bears make the places we visit so much more whole,” he says.

“I always tell my sons—and the Boy Scout troop I led for four years—to never take what we have here for granted.”