Thou, Yosemite, Art His Goddess

Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 05.15.07 | 11:35 AM ET

Gary Kamiya recently returned from a visit to Yosemite, where he found spring turning in a typically brilliant performance. His eloquent essay in Salon today celebrates all places wild and California’s grandest national park, in particular. Kamiya draws heavily on the writings of John Muir. He also sprinkles in quotes from Melville, Camus, Shelley and even Edmund from “King Lear.” “The planet is putting on its most spectacular show right now in Yosemite,” he begins. “Over an ancient sun-soaked cliff, a river that moments ago was as staid and obedient as you and me is hurling itself over the edge like a runaway roller coaster, turning into a hundred-headed shower of white downward-streaking comets, twisting and turning and dissolving and embracing and vanishing and reappearing, falling 500, a thousand, 1,500 feet before it collides with the rocks and disappears into a maelstrom of foam and mist.” For the uninitiated, that’s Yosemite Falls.

Photo by i_r_e_n_e via Flickr, (Creative Commons).