Call me a tree hugger or John Muir, but I really just love the outdoors. There’s something pure, something unadulterated and wild about the biggest mother of them all – Mother Nature. Perhaps this is why I firmly believe nothing created by human beings will ever match what natural processes have already created on this Earth.
I’ve never been to New York City, but somehow I doubt seeing larger-than-life skyscrapers that cover the sky and sun will impress me more than the Grand Canyon. The innovations and inventions of mankind seem pathetic in comparison.
I suppose that leads me to a little story of one of my summer adventures. As a Californian, I consider myself incredibly fortunate to be so close to what I think should be considered an official Wonder of the Natural World: Yosemite National Park.
This summer I camped in Yosemite Valley, the most popular of all the Yosemite destinations. I hadn’t been to Yosemite since being far too young to appreciate it, so I came at a ripe time with famous Ansel Adams Yosemite photographs in my head and a pair of legs that could still hike.
What I saw was mind-blowing, almost too surreal for reality. The granite walls of the Yosemite Valley were something else entirely in a league of their own. Photographs don’t even justify how immense they are or feel. You have to experience them for yourself.
These walls of granite are at most points about half a mile high on either side. That’s about 2,640 feet of solid rock on two ends. Anyone and anything feels so puny in comparison.
But while climbing to the top of Upper Yosemite Falls, about halfway up I turned around to see the progress of my ascent.
It’s hard to describe so many details in so many words, but I can say that creation of Mother Nature looked beyond the scope of reality. It looked like a painting, a figment of some brilliant imagination. It was hard to believe everything was actually real.
At that point I fully realized why my dad used to call Yosemite “God’s Country.” It truly must be where God chills.
Such moments are when everything comes into perspective to me and I reach the conclusion that, once again, nothing men or women can create or have created compares to the things already on this Earth before we all got here.
I think symphonies are beautiful. I think paintings are serene and I know beer tastes great, but how do those man-made things compare to the colors in the sky as the sun sets over the Pacific? How does our music compare to crashing waves from moonlit waters? How does the drunken feeling of pounding a few beers compare to feeling of the morning mist in your lungs and the smell of pine trees in your nose?
Maybe I’m just a tree hugger, but I think all those “nature-y” things are better – a lot better.
It’s hard to find such beauty in Long Beach where urbanization has effectively destroyed anything originally here. This why we all need to escape into the great outdoors every once in a while. This is why we all need to escape the hustle and bustle of mankind and all its problems and go somewhere where everything for once quite possibly makes sense.
In short, visit your national and state parks. They rock.
Bradley Zint is a senior journalism and political science major and the managing editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.