one year ago… in Montana.

ROAD TRIP!!!

As some of my regular readers may know, I love road trips. Last year, shortly after my master adopted me, he and I took a 14,000 mile trip for the entire summer. It was the best summer of our lives, we agreed. This summer? Not so much. . .

 

 

White Sands National Monument, NM (it really looks like this-- photo not retouched)

You might wonder how the two of us could have driven 14,000 miles and never left the U.S.. We started on the East Coast, headed west, and spent about 10,000 miles west of The Continental Divide. We made so many new friends. We lost a couple old ones. We learned what it means to be spontaneous. We pursued curiosity without hesitation.

The trip peaked in Montana. Montana is where we became patriots. Montana is where we realized we’d been homesick for years for a place we’d never been… Yellowstone. You see, when you are in Yellowstone, you cannot deny that the earth is alive. The rocks shout. The waters roar. The very center of the world moves your feet.

And your heart.

Great Sand Dunes Nat'l Park and Preserve, CO (massive Arabian-like dunes in a cove in the Sange de Cristo Mtns)

It is the place that makes you realize that you are a part of the earth, not a detached bystander– and definitely not its master. This summer, I cannot help but think of the hubris of humans who believe they can tame the earth: that they can punch holes in it, pour poison into it, steal from it– and, all the while, arrogantly asserting statements of power and control over nature which they truly do not have.

The most telling evidence of this hubris is the earnest denial of consequences, even when they are readily apparent. I suppose that’s why humans say, “Pride cometh before a fall.”

I hope you enjoy these road trip photos. I can’t wait to see some of these places again. Incidently, the banner photo at the top of each of my blog posts was taken at Gold Bluffs Beach in Northern California. It was a magical place where elk come out from beneath redwoods and wander on the misty beach. You learn there what “surreal” means.

Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone, from above. The size of a football field... see the tiny ant-sized humans?

And here’s two more, for the road…

Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone, where the travertine steppes are created by mineral deposits from hot springs bursting through the earth wherever they feel like.

A closing thought…

The North Entrance to Yellowstone, Gardiner MT