Trees can grow to gargantuan proportions, given the right conditions and enough time. Unfortunately, neither may be available in the Anthropocene. I am grateful, though, for having touched some of the oldest and largest living things on earth.
[Daily post 089 of 260 in my year-long challenge.] ♨
National parks reveal who we are as a people, what we value, how we envision the future. We learn something of ourselves by viewing our national parklands, monuments, historical sites, battlefields, and other units of the National Park Service through the critical lens of the curious student. ♨
The current issue of Chebacco focuses on the history of religion on Maine’s largest island and includes my essay on religion in Acadia National Park.
The difference between pilgrims and tourists is a perennial question. The best answer I have found came from a conversation with Peter Brown.
The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is unlike any other canyon in color, charm, in picturesque calendar-ready beauty, wild and frightening.
A black-billed magpie crosses the barbed boundaries of a wire fence to defend its winged playfulness in a big sky landscape. Perched upon a wooden post, it scouts its next move. More elegant than its cousin crow, the black-and-white formalwear of the magpie obscures its irreverent posturing above the sagebrush plain. ♨
Visitors who delight in nature and stunning scenery at places like Acadia National Park often do not realize their aesthetic debt to Protestant reformer and theologian John Calvin.
