Bryce Canyon National Park

Today brought us to the end of our National Park journey. We drove out of Park City, Utah (which is a beautiful destination in its own right), and headed south for Provo, then further on against the Western slopes of the Rocky Mountains and then back through the mountains on our journey to Bryce Canyon.

Your first glimpse of what you are about to see comes on highway 12 through southern Utah. There you meet two striated massive walls of burnt orange rock (the boundary of what is known as "Red Canyon"), and everything beyond it seems to be the surface of Mars. I can't decide which brings out the richness of the evergreen trees more by contrast, Crater Lake's brilliant blue or this prism of rust and orange and pink and white earth. 

It seems impossible to surpass the beauty of Red Canyon, but shortly thereafter you enter Bryce Canyon. I must confess I had the Grand Canyon in mind, and I was utterly blown away by how different, and how much more complex and brilliant Bryce Canyon is in comparison to The Grand Canyon. It is not a single canyon so much as it is a dazzling labyrinth of color and shadow and caverns and water and light. 

The almost instant reaction on reaching the rim, from all three of my little girls, was "Woooow!" I've never heard them react that way to a TV show or a movie. The shows God puts on are far more impacting. Then they turned their eyes to a trail and insisted that we go on a hike. I know they have been apprehensive about difficult hikes, so I pressed them a bit to be sure, and Charity led the charge down the side of the canyon. We had a couple of falls due to loose gravel, but all told they handled themselves admirably. They got dirty, cried a little after a fall, got up, dusted off and charged forward into the adventure of descending into that flowering garden of stone. 

First view of the canyon

Always ready for an adventure

Looking out to the east

We climbed into the opening mini canyon

My great hiking companions

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We descended deep into the canyon... awesome!

The open space between the walls at the bottom

They each fell at least once, but were ready to pose at the end

Thor's Hammer

The view looking up is amazing

Grand Teton National Park

First view when entering the park

This is my first time in this part of the world. Yesterday we got our first glimpses of The Grand Tetons, a range of mountains in the northwest corner of Wyoming, just to the south of Yellowstone Park. There is no other way of describing them except to say that they are utterly breathtaking. Here reside probably 12 or more jagged peaks rising 7000 feet above the Snake River valley, with views totally unobstructed by anything natural or man made. Each peak is ornamented by either snow or glacial deposits that clearly never melt fully. The only thing more beautiful than any one of them is the whole scene taken together; the difference between a single flawless melody and a flawless symphony.

Our day today took us into Grand Teton National Park in the morning. It turned out to be a morning of low clouds and late drizzle that turned to full rain as we left the park (great timing). We had a limited time in the park and so we spent our few hours in the Visitor's Center and then at Jenny Lake, which is a pristine body of water at the foot of Grand Teton, a peak which rises to a height of 13,770 feet. There was a lovely trail through the sage brush and pine trees to the shore of Jenny Lake. The girls insisted that they be allowed to dip their feet in the frigid water. It was a morning of children's joy, crystalline air, a kaleidoscope of wildflowers, jagged snow capped mountains and the fragrance of God's creative glory everywhere.

The highlight of the day was seeing a red fox dart across the road clinching his newly caught breakfast in his mouth. Unfortunately I missed the shot, but I didn't miss the moment.

The Grand Teton, rises to 13,770 feet above the valley floor at 6200ish feet

Spectacular trail along the shore of Jenny Lake

Beautiful kids in beautiful scenery

Jenny Lake

Jenny Lake with Grand Teton

Perfect slightly overcast day

She never fears cold water

This peak dominates the entire scenery here

They had so much fun today

My little adventurer

Aspen lined trail

Aestheticism in Yellowstone

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty. John Muir

Surely you have asked the same question I want to probe here for a moment: Why? Why does the universe appear to us to be an "infinite storm of beauty?" We are tempted to gloss over such questions, but I think it is of immense importance to answer such a question in a way that is compelling; in a way that gives meaning to our sense of beauty. 

It would be strange to see Elk stopping in transfixed wonder at the scenes all round them. But we don't see Elk, or Bison, or even chipmunks stopping to pen a poem in praise of the Yellowstone River. They in fact seem wholly unimpressed by the same scenes that send us into speechless reverie. We look for life in these places; they look only to survive in these places. They look for length of days alone; we seek depth in today.

Especially for the atheist, we must be totally incomprehensible beings. He also says we exist to survive, or at least that is all nature cares about, and nature is all there is. But if that is true, why do we possess so much superfluous baggage from the evolutionary process? We know about atoms and we weep when we see the things I have seen today. Why? It makes no sense that a universe that cares nothing for intelligence, symmetry, harmony or beauty would create it, and then would create beings capable of enjoying it for what it is, thus magnifying the symmetry exponentially. I suppose they could say that it isn't really beautiful, but only beautiful to us subjectively. But surely to believe that is to destroy all meaning in beauty anywhere.

The naturalist (atheist) must assume that a process that intends nothing and thinks about nothing produced beings who possess intentionality and who think about these things purposively. But then he can't tell us that this capacity is anything particularly important, because after all it was produced by a mindless, random process that merely scatters phenomena discursively through the universe. We may intend things, subjectively, but objectively the universe doesn't intend anything. Our intentions, including our intentions toward creativity and the enjoyment of creativity, are self-deceptions.

Now if that is true, what can be more pointless than my feelings in Yellowstone today?

I believe there is a great artist who made beings like us capable of wonder. I think He placed us in the optimal position in the universe, a place meticulously designed to inspire awe. Not only that, but He made us with the unique capacity of soul to be enlarged by art, and from our encounters with beauty to create it ourselves.

God did not do this merely for functionality either, though much of our creativity serves that end. God made this world for our enjoyment, at least partially. Today I stopped, observed, listened, inhaled the fragrant air, and did nothing else. I was useless today. I did not act. I did not make something of my time. I can add nothing to my resume of this day. And yet, I fulfilled part of the purpose for which I was created today!

Listen to this quote by the British author Rudyard Kipling, on seeing the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, a scene I beheld today:

All that I can say is that without warning or preparation I looked into a gulf seventeen hundred feet deep, with eagles and fish-hawks circling far below. And the sides of that gulf were one wild welter of color — crimson, emerald, cobalt, ochre, amber, honey splashed with port wine, snow white, vermilion, lemon, and silver gray in wide washes. The sides did not fall sheer, but were graven by time, and water, and air into monstrous heads of kings, dead chiefs — men and women of the old time. So far below that no sound of its strife could reach us, the Yellowstone River ran a finger-wide strip of jade green.

The sunlight took those wondrous walls and gave fresh hues to those that nature had already laid there.

Evening crept through the pines that shadowed us, but the full glory of the day flamed in that canyon as we went out very cautiously to a jutting piece of rock — blood-red or pink it was — that overhung the deepest deeps of all.

Now I know what it is to sit enthroned amid the clouds of sunset.

Kipling still didn't describe it all that well

Felicity saw an Eagles' nest

The great Yellowstone River

We came upon a herd of Bison

Bison love the warm earth by the thermal pools

The acidity of battery acid

Nancy captured this elk

And this one

A little bit like Disneyland here, but the show was worth it

Trinity is becoming a tree hugger

The hot springs pour into the river here

Bacteria cause the discoloration

The Grand Prismatic, second largest hot spring in the world