A mere thousand?

Looking at our Grand Canyon of Yellowstone pictures, there are two things I expected to feel. The first was confidence in an old axiom, that I could sit back and trust that if a picture could speak a thousand words, I already had three grand right here and could relax in the knowledge that they were conveying why I needed them to. Caity, in her comment, said it best in pointing out that the pictures are not representatives, but instead bookmarks of what they can never hope to express.

The second response I was expecting from myself was nostaligia, but this too I found strangely absent. I soon realized that nostalgia is a fondness for a series of emotions that have long since passed, but new memories sharing the same heart of wonder were still breathing life into mine.

Looking at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, I came to understand that seeing sights such as these are not so remarkable because of how unbelievable they are, but because of how very violently and vehemently your mind rushes to the truth in the nature of what you're seeing. It's that your eyes do not consider sights such as these a matter of belief, but as a matter of sustenance, in which seeing the unmanipulated freedom of the earth is a hunger that goes unsatiated willingly in too many for too long.

Two of the many overlook points in the area, Artist Point and Inspiration Point, both focus solely on all-encompassing views of the canyon. Once you are in either of these locations, it is apparent that generosity played no role in the naming process; both have been dubbed royally on merit alone. The walls of the canyon drop hundreds upon hundreds of feet down into the earth, the weight of the Yellowstone River carving into stone with the rushing intensity of flame to gasoline. At one vantage point, you stand on a small viewing platform as the waterfall drops into the canyon inches beneath your toes and the ground reverberates and quivers with an unceasing aquatic earthquake. It's the type of pure power that makes you wonder how something so fragile as a human being could ever escape from this, the only unswerving conception of law that has ever existed, and why they would ever want to.

{pri}