Human Nature

Yosemite, like all national parks near enough to major population centers, has a high number of that population visiting it. We'd never been, but our research told us that the large crowds wouldn't start arriving until after our dates there yet wildflowers would be in abundance and snows likely wouldn't impede our explorations either. So that was the balance we sought.

What we found were larger crowds than we like, contrails scratching up an otherwise pristine blue sky above the fantastic granite mountains (along with sonorous passings), and a reminder that it's difficult to leave preconceptions behind. Ansel Adams' photos spoiled us. But Yosemite is, indeed, a photographer's dream, and people are "useful" for scale and may be Photoshopped out, otherwise.

These descriptions relate the irony of how I typically look at Nature (capital "N"), and having since read an article in ORION magazine ("False Idyll" by J.B. MacKinnon), I'm more aware than ever of the contrasts between our expectations of nature and its current reality. I want to be alone with Nature, but I also don't want to be eaten by wild animals.

Driving through the park, often in a line of steel-encased vehicles, we were reminded that "Speeding kills bears" by signs that were placed (we later read) where a bear had been hit by a car. At one point, a poor coyote stood beside the road and we simply stopped (on this mountainside, there was no shoulder to pull over onto), cameras clicking out the window, until the person in the car behind us began blowing the horn (important meeting to attend!), forcing us to move on, the coyote cringing and looking further confused by all the commotion, its one injured (or mange-stricken) ear crimped over.

And so after almost a week of attempting to avoid crowds and taking photographs of famously beautiful points (El Capitan and Half Dome), we returned home to our much less populated and equally beautiful wild place, happy that it's less convenient and farther away from any major population center. At least the photos look peaceful.