So I don't know quite how to describe it, except that it was one of those, "I'm not worthy" moments. We were riding our bikes, from the Jenny Lake campground to the Visitor Center, inside Grand Tetons National Park. Over my shoulder flew a beautiful butterfly, a Western Tiger Swallowtail as it turns out. I was immediately struck by the layers of beauty in front of me - first the butterfly, then my 8-year old daughter Abbie, and beyond her, the grand vista of the Teton range beyond the crystal blue water of Jenny Lake. I wondered then, and many times during our three-week trip in the west, about the beauty evident in the world, and the many ways in which it is revealed to me.
From vast lunar landscapes in the Badlands, to boiling hot crystal clear geysers in Yellowstone, to the arid red-rock of Arches, the multi-hued hoodoos in Bryce Canyon, out-of-place orchards in the water-pocket fold that is Capitol Reef, towering cliffs named for the Biblical Patriarchs in Zion, the breadth and depth of the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley's strange collection of reddish stone monoliths, Mesa Verde's remnants of the Anasazi cultures in the clif
f dwellings, Ouray's natural hot springs, and Rocky Mountain National Park's 12,000+ foot highway in the clouds - our family saw, heard, smelled, tasted and touched the beauty of the American west this summer.
