Stark Beauty

Looks like a winter scene, doesn't it? Nope. This is in an area of Yellowstone Park called the Travertine Steps. All the trees in this area are dead. The water is boiling hot and the ground it highly acidic. Step off the boardwalks here and you will be scalded before you know it.

But there is a beauty here all the same - in the graceful shapes of the bare trees, in the myriad colors of the algae that lives in the hot acidic water and the colors of the mineral deposited by the water as it runs across the landscape. It's a breathtaking landscape and a reminder that we exist on the surface of this spinning rock at the whim of nature. If we think we are in any way in control of it, we're only deluding ourselves.

What must our ancestors have thought as they traveled from east to west in search of new beginnings when they came upon places such as this? Scalding water and mud bubbling from pits and pools and shooting miles into the air? What an astounding sight this must have been for them. Is it much different now, from what they saw then - set aside and "preserved" as a national park, a place for city folk to come and "experience nature" that isn't created from steel, chicken wire and concrete in an amusement park?

I'm sure a lot of people will view this scene (either here or in the flesh) and think, 'how sad that it's all dead' and completely miss the beauty and life that is still there. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.