Parks
are public places, but the encounters people have in
them are private and very personal. I react to my visit
in special ways. I seek places and experiences that
foster my reconnection with nature. I search for fundamental
truths about natural process. Here, in the real world
of glaciers and grizzly bears, I find benchmarks against
which I can measure the accelerated pace of my life
and times. I savor moments that I can return to in my
memory.
Like
people, parks have personalities and moods. They vary
from hour to hour, with the weather, from day to night,
from winter to summer. The public character of Glacier
National Park is shaped by its features, the places
and things for which it is noted: the Garden Wall, Going-to-the-Sun
Mountain, Lake McDonald, Swiftcurrent Pass, Heaven’s
Peak; steep mountainsides covered with wintry sheets
of snow or beautiful summer floral quilts; wilderness
and the creatures associated with it...moose, bighorn
sheep, bears. Glacier is all of these things, yet I
prefer to think that at heart it is testimony to the
ubiquity of water.
Eastern
philosophers say that the laws of nature and its processes—the
machinery of the physical world—is Tao or The
Way. They believe that in all things that exist there
is form and essence. Form is outer: it can be seen,
felt, weighed, measured. Essence is contained: it cannot
be touched, counted, timed—and yet, it exists,
and is that which sustains and animates form...
...Too
often, in my haste to stay with an itinerary—with
my concentration on the past, or the future, rather
than with mindfulness of the present, the possibilities
of the moment—I see the form, but fail to experience
the essence...
—From
“Smooth Stones, Riple Marks and Water” by
George B. Robinson
Smooth
Stones, Ripple Marks and Water
George B. Robinson
32 pages with 30 color images. 9”x9”
ISBN 0-939365-64-2
$5.95 
- OTHER TITLES THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST
 Yellowstone: First
of The Last Wild Places by George B. Robinson
- Yellowstone: An Uncommon Gift by George B. Robinson
- Yellowstone: A Place of Many
Splendors by George B. Robinson and Lynn Wilson
- Yellowstone Postcard Book
 Yellowstone: The Fabric of A Dream
- Grand Teton: Grand Teton National Park by Jackie Gilmore
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