October in Northern Arizona

Fountain of Life

These pictures are from Fossil Creek in Northern Arizona.  The waterfall and pool make me think of "Cauldron Pool" in The Last Battle, Book 7 of "The Chronicles of Narnia."

---

from Psalm 36

Your love, O Yahweh, reaches to the heavens,
Your faithfulness to the clouds.
Your righteousness is like the mountains of God,
Your judgements are like the great deep.
You, O Yahweh, preserve both people and animals.
How priceless is your unfailing love, O God!
Humanity's children take refuge in the shadow of Your wings...
You give them drink from Your river of delights.
For with You is the fountain of life;
    in Your light we see light.

Oh, continue Your love to those who know You,
Your righteousness to the upright in heart.

(BTW, here is a picture of an interesting rock type I've never seen before:  thin sheets of granite "frozen" in lava!  All over the place at Fossil Creek, but no one who'd visited ever told me about this.)

North Rim Grand Canyon

[July 2017 vacation]

Some things are poetry without words!

Angel's Window, on of the few places to see the Colorado River from the North Rim.  

(Look closely through the window on the close-up.)

There is also the escaped buffalo herd from a failed cattle-buffalo crossing experiment over 100 years ago.  (They have some cattle DNA.)

October 2010 South Rim Visit

"In His hand are the depths of the earth;

The peaks of the mountains are His also." (Psalm 95:4)

"...He who was seated on the throne said,

'See, I am making all things new...

  To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.'

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more,

neither shall there be mourning,

nor crying, nor pain anymore,

for the former things have passed away.”

(Revelation 21:5,6b,4)

Natural Wonders of America

The U.S. Flag featured at some of our public lands for the Fourth of July

(uncredited internet photos)

Flag Raising:  Old Faithful

Yellowstone National Park, WY

Ft. Union National Monument, NM

Southern Swamps

USS Arizona Memorial, HI

Grand Teton National Park, WY

Avenue of Flags

Mount Rushmore National Monument, SD

Storms moving in...

Bryce Canyon National Park, UT

Grand Canyon National Park, AZ

Zion National Park, UT

Washington Monument, Washington, D.C.

Niagara Falls, NY

Devil's Tower National Monument, WY

Sagamore Hill Nat'l Historic Site

Long Island, NY

Sierra Nevada Mountains, CA

Half Dome at Yosemite Nat'l Park. CA 

Folding the Flag

at Ft. McHenry National Monument, MD

(where "The Star-Spangled Banner" was written)

From Old Narnia to New Narnia

[technically prose;  a reflection on the passage of time and of all things as this year draws to a close]

     "So," said Peter, "Night falls on Narnia.  [Narnia is destroyed; comes to an end.]  What, Lucy!  You're not crying?  With Aslan ahead and all of us here?"
     "Don't try to stop me, Peter, " said Lucy.  "I am sure Aslan would not.  I am sure it is not wrong to mourn for Narnia.  Think of all that lies dead and frozen behind that door."
     "Yes, and I did hope,"  said Jill, "that it might go on forever.  I knew our world couldn't.  I did think Narnia might."...

     "Peter, " said Lucy, "where is this, do you suppose?"
     "I don't know," said the High King.  "It reminds me of somewhere, but I can't give it a name.  Could it be somewhere we once stayed for a holiday when we were very, very small?"
     "It would have to have been a jolly good holiday," said Eustace.  "I bet there isn't a country like this anywhere in our world.  Look at the colours.  You couldn't get a blue like the blue on those mountains in our world."...
    "If you ask me, " said Edmund, "It's like somewhere in the Narnian world.  Look  at those mountains ahead... Surely they're rather like the mountains we used to see from Narnia, the ones up Westward beyond the Waterfall?"
     "Yes, so they are, "  said Peter.  "Only these are bigger."
      [They compare some of the other Narnian mountains to what they are seeing.]
     "And yet they're not like," said Lucy.  "They're different.  They have more colours on them and they look further away than I remembered and they're more...more...oh, I don't know..."
     "More like the real thing," said the Lord Digory softly...
     "Kings and Queens, " [Farsight the Eagle] cried, "we have all been blind.  We are only beginning to see where we are.  from up there I have seen it all---Ettinsmuir, Beaversdam, the Great River, and Cair Paravel still shining on the edge of the Eastern Sea.  Narnia is not dead.  This is Narnia."....
     "The Eagle is right, " said the Lord Digory.  "Listen Peter.  When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of.  But that was not the real Narnia.  That had a beginning and an end.  It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia, which has always been here and always will be here...  You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy.  All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia..."

     It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia, as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste...The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more.  I can't describe it any better than that...
     It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling.... "I have come home at last!  This is my real country.  I belong here.  This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.  the reason why we loved the old Narnia is that is sometimes looked a little like this..."

     The light ahead was growing stronger.. And then she forgot everything else, because Aslan [the Great Lion] was coming, leaping down from cliff to cliff like a living cataract of power and beauty...Then Aslan turned to them [after talking to other creatures] and said:
     "You do not yet look so happy as I meant you to be."
     Lucy said, "We're so afraid of being sent away, Aslan.  And you have sent us back into our own world so often.
    "No fear of that," said Aslan.  "Have you not guessed?"
   Their hearts leaped, and a wild hope rose within them.
    [Aslan explains that they died in their own world.   That they and the  Pevensie parents have come out of the "Shadow-Lands" and will stay in the New Narnia forever.]
     And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them...now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which on one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

--C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle.  (c) 1956

Mountain Music

   [with photos from a recent western trip]

Grand Teton National Park*, Wyoming

I will lift up my eyes unto the hills
From whence comes my help.
My help comes from Yahweh
Who made heaven and earth. (Psalm 121: 1-2)

Chapel of the Transfiguration (Episcopal)

Grand Teton National Park*

Great is Yahweh
And greatly to be praised
In the city of our God,
The mountain of His holiness.  (Psalm 48:1)

In whose Hand are the depths of the earth;
And the heights of the hills are His, also. (Psalm 95:4)

Thermal Pool.

Yellowstone National Park*, Wyoming

Let the rivers clap their hands,
Let the hills shout together with joy.  (Psalm 98:8) 

Yellowstone River, Yellowstone N.P.*

[Jesus tells us]:
'"You are the light of the world.
A city which has been set upon a hill
cannot be hidden."  (Matthew 5:14)

Wasatch Mountains, as viewed from Bryce Canyon National Park*, Utah

All the things which happened upon mountains:  Moses was given the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai; Satan took Jesus to a really high mountain to show Him the kingdoms of the world and tempt Him with power;  being more isolated in Jesus's day, He often went there alone (or with a small group of three) to pray; He was "transfigured" (changed, shining bright with glory) on a mountain; the Sermon on the Mount was given in a natural mountain amphitheater; the night before His death, after celebrating Passover and the First Communion, Jesus and the disciples went out to the Mount of Olives; the place where Jesus died is called Mount Calvary; forty days after He rose from the dead, he ascended into heaven from a mountain.  Mountains join all creation (Revelation 5:13) in praising God.  Remembering Israel's flight from Egypt and entry into the Promise Land, the psalmist wrote:

The mountains skipped as rams,
The little hills as lambs.
What happened, O Sea, that you fled,
O Jordan, that you turned back?
You mountains skipped as rams,
You little hills as lambs. (Psalm 114: 4-6)

Wasatch Mountains, Utah,

with Grand Escalante National Monument* in front

I will lift up my eyes unto the hills
From whence comes my help.
My help comes from Yahweh
Who made heaven and earth. (Psalm 121: 1-2)

    ---translations by C. Marie Byars

*This is the 100th birthday of America's National Park Service!  (A few individual parks were established even before this.)

The Sierra Nevada Mountains

 

Welcome to 2016, with a look back at our trip in 2015!

 

 



General Sherman, giant sequoia, in Sequoia Nat'l Park
 



Yosemite National Park

 

Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite

Joy to the World

(A paraphrase of Psalm 98, with images from the Sierra Nevada Mountains)
Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing.



Yosemite Falls, Yosemite National Park

Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy.



Yosemite National Park

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love.

Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite

---Isaac Watts, 1719