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Posts Tagged ‘trails’

Route 66: From Hot Reds to Cool Blues

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Art, Favorite Hikes, Journeys, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 29, 2012| 8 Comments »

 “People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child – our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” Thich Nhat Hanh

Blue Mesa Trail in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park. — Photo by Pat Bean

Blue Mesa

Big old petrified tree trunks like this is why it’s named Petrified Forest. — Photo by Pat Bean

I appreciate nature best when I can get up close and personal with it. I had that opportunity when I left Route 66 at the top of Windy Hill and hiked the Blue Mesa Trail.

The paved loop path, just a little over a mile long, drops about 100 feet down to the valley floor. It winds among the stratified rocks that tell 200-million-year-old stories, just as the petrified logs along the trail bear witness to an ancient forest.

Blue Mesa’s layered rocks contain 200-million years of the planet’s stories. — Photo by Pat Bean

A few people passed me on the hike, but mostly I had the trail to myself. It was an opportunity to drink in the peaceful stillness and ponder the creation of this landscape in which wind, water and the passing years were the artists.

My canine traveling companion, Pepper, greeted me as if I had been gone those 200 million years when I arrived back at our RV. I gave her treats and thought to myself that life couldn’t get any better.

Bean’s Pat: http://tinyurl.com/br2wub5 Take a walk with Mountain Mae.

*This recognition is merely this wandering/wondering old broad’s way of bringing attention to a blog I enjoyed – and thought perhaps my readers might, too. The Pat on the back is presented with no strings attached. May 29, patbean.wordpress.com

 

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A Landscape that Imprints One’s Soul

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 14, 2011| 4 Comments »

 

The path on the right leads to Taggart Lake at the foot of the Tetons. It’s one of my favorite hikes. — Photo by Pat Bean

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Do you have a favorite hike that you would like to share?

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“There is an eternal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives.” — Josephine Hart

Travels With Maggie

There is nothing that pleases me more on a hike than to be serenaded by the brisk giggles of a tumbling stream. If you add jagged mountains bearing glaciers on the horizon, you’ve taken my kind of walk from merely bliss to absolute glory.

While Mother Nature has recently been playing weather tricks on Texans, she was playing nice the summer day a couple of years ago when I hiked the Taggart Lake Trail in the Tetons, where glacial streams flow down from snow-covered peaks. Mother Nature’s mixture here of water, mountains, blue sky, wildflowers and twittering birds is a recipe of perfection.

Taggart Creek: A giggling beauty. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I had hiked this trail several times previously, each time finding new delights to awe me, like a red-tailed hawk circling low overhead, or Indian paintbrush coloring a patch of the meadow red with its blooms.

This day, I had brought along a couple of friends who were newcomers to the trail. I took great delight in their delight at almost every step as we hiked the mile and a half to the lake.

Sharing Mother Nature, however, is a conundrum for me. While I want everyone to have an opportunity to enjoy this country’s scenic magnificence, I prefer my hikes be taken on uncrowded trails.

I share the locations of my favorite paths, however, because I truly believe we would have fewer psychotic people who commit harm if they had more grand canyons, meadows of bluebonnets, red rock arches and peregrine falcons in their lives.

So, if you’re ever driving between Jackson, Wyoming, and Yellowstone National Park, take the Teton Park Road past Moose to the Taggart Lake trailhead. You’ll emerge from the trail more peaceful — even if you’re not psychotic at all.

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