Nature Photograph--BFD

Here's nature at ten thousand feet.  A creek.  The sky.  Some rocks and water.  There should be wild flowers everywhere, but not this year.  Nature has been confounded.  This is one of my favorite spots in Yosemite's Tuolomne Meadows.  And it looks like every other snapshot of somebody's favorite spot.  It is not worth doing.

I've had some time to think and wonder as I've walked alone this year.  There was a time I wanted to quit my job and come here to be an outdoor guide. I thought it would be everything.  I would walk the mountains and live forever.  But I am here with people who have done this for a living now.  And like most things, I think, it has not worked out as imagined.  So much changes.  As I limp along now on busted knees and broken back, I wonder what it would be like to watch the younger guides come into camp and not caring a whit for the old guide who is in the way.  It would be bad.  It would not have worked out so well.  I am lucky.

There is a grandeur to things that fades no matter what you do or try to do or think or try to think.  I cannot give you any answer to it nor any bromide.  Some people get lucky and others don't.

Rather, we all have luck in our own way, for luck is what we think of it.  It is best to be happy no matter what.  Things might have gone one way or another, but however they went, you had a ride.  You make the most of it that you can, and it is no good asking others what the ride was like for them.

I could be sad, or I could be happy.  I'll choose to be happy tonight among people who want to say that they are happy, too.

But I'm not thinking so well up here.  There will be time for articulating things later.

Well. . . that's what we all think.