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Today on \\u201cPost Reports,\\u201d we join The Post\\u2019s Lillian Cunningham on her journey through the messy past and uncertain future of America\\u2019s most awe-inspiring places: the national parks. First stop? Yosemite.

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California\\u2019s Sierra Nevada is home to a very special kind of tree, found nowhere else on Earth: the giant sequoia. For thousands of years, these towering trees withstood the trials of the world around them, including wildfire. Low-intensity fires frequently swept through groves of sequoias, leaving their cinnamon-red bark scarred but strengthened, and opening their cones to allow new seeds to take root.

But in the era of catastrophic wildfires fueled by climate change, these ancient trees are in jeopardy. And Yosemite National Park is on the front lines of the fight to protect them.

In the first episode of \\u201cField Trip,\\u201d Washington Post reporter Lillian Cunningham takes listeners inside this fabled landscape \\u2014 from the hush of the Mariposa Grove to the rush of the Merced River \\u2014 to explore one of America\\u2019s oldest and most-visited national parks.

We\\u2019ll hear from Yosemite forest ecologist Garrett Dickman on the extreme measures he\\u2019s taken to protect iconic trees; from members of the Southern Sierra Miwuk working to restore Native American fire practices to the park; and from Yosemite Superintendent Cicely Muldoon about the tough choices it takes to manage a place like this.

We\\u2019ll also examine the complicated legacies that conservationist John Muir, President Abraham Lincoln and President Theodore Roosevelt left on this land.

The giant trees of Yosemite kick-started the whole idea of public land preservation in America. Join us as we visit the place where the idea of the national parks began \\u2014 and ask what the next chapter might look like. 

You can see incredible photos of Yosemite and find more on the national parks here. Subscribe to Field Trip here or wherever you\'re listening to this podcast.

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