yosemite june 2006

My friend Janine is visiting from Amsterdam so we got on the highways and carefully wound through the wooded roads into the wilderness. We made it over and down the ridges and emerged into Yosemite, into the secret garden, as if we were just born. It feels like home, it feels strange, it feels like God, it feels secret, it feels like love, it feels hidden, it feels like the middle of the earth. I just still want to be there now.

Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit - the cosmos? The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge. - John Muir.
I'm grateful to this great preservationist for saving Yosemite Valley, the first national park.