Contemplating the flow of life and change through living things, we make new discoveries about ourselves.

~Ansel Adams

I just returned from another wonderful trip to Yellowstone National Park. It is still beautiful, still magical, still a place you must reckon with and not take lightly. It is as it should be, wild.

At times, it may not seem that way, especially in the some of the more popular spots like Old Faithful and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Even my favorite part of the park that includes Little America and Lamar Valley, can be crowded with wildlife seekers, especially where there are wolves, as is the case this year at Slough Creek.

But, if you try, you can find a peaceful spot to just watch and listen as the natural world goes on about its business, seemingly uninterested by our comings and goings.

You can pause and look at the sky, listen to water flowing by, and think about your place in this world.

Or marvel at the life and beauty in extreme environments, and ponder whether these conditions may exist elsewhere in our universe.

You can spend time enjoying peaceful scenes like herds of bison with their newborn calves.

Or watch the family life of predators like these coyote pups tugging at their parent’s tail or a group of nine wolf pups tussling in a grassy meadow. Scenes of predator and prey, sky and water, life and death, scenes of beauty, moments of peace, time to reflect…that is some of what an experience in a place like Yellowstone provides. It is something we need in times like these, what we all need, to help us see the good in the world, and in ourselves.

More peaceful scenes from Yellowstone, June, 2016…

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

And I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be

I go and lie down where the wood drake

Rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

Who do not tax their lives with forethought

Of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

Waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

~Wendell Berry