Yosemite - A Place Apart

The wilderness is amazingly still at 8,000 feet. I’m alone, having hiked up the steep switchbacks for two hours from the valley floor to Glacier Point. A forest of sugar pine trees is behind me. In front, the view stretches a hundred miles over the gray peaks and mountains of the Sierra Nevada. No one else is here, but far below I see tiny people walking around on the valley floor. Except for a few squirrels and one Steller’s jay, no other creatures are letting their presence be known.

The breeze hums lightly as it twirls the needles on the pines, and there’s a hush as the wind flows over the mountains in the distance on its way east. Now and then, when the breeze shifts just right, the distant cascades of waterfalls reach me.

Where I sit feels like home. I couldn’t live here, of course. There’s no shelter, food, or water. And yet here I feel connected to something eternal. Is it awe of the landscape that pulls me away from my ordinary preoccupations? Is it reverence for a sacred place? Or is it respect for an ancient wilderness that has existed and looked like this for thousands of years?

Whatever it is, whenever I am here, I feel the burdens of life slide off and the surge of joy and contentment return.