Yosemite

When I was in college studying photography, Ansel Adams gave us a talk. I took notes inside my photography textbook, and seemed, at the time, most impressed that Adams, called Edward Weston by his first name.

Adams, Weston, Lange and Cunningham were my gods at the time. Oh, it was some rare air I was breathing in the lecture hall that night.

I was 19.

When I married at 22, we honeymooned in Yosemite. My favorite honeymoon picture is one of me standing next to a framed, genuine Ansel Adams print. I've got a goofy grin and am pointing at the print like, can you believe this!

I searched in vain for that picture and found this one. I didn't have a very good camera back then, but I was filled with passion and possibilities.

What put Adams in mind this morning, is the fire burning toward Yosemite.

I can not bear to think Yosemite might be lost.



Living through the Meriwether Fire last year, I know, no amount of politically correct spin can change the fact that, sometimes, once something is gone, it's gone.

As in adios, bye-bye, ain't never gonna be the same again.

Yosemite has already taught us that lesson once. Hetch Hetchy, smaller mirror image of Yosemite, was destroyed when the powers that be, dammed the Tuolumne River to provide water for San Francisco. Rumor has it, losing that fight killed John Muir.

Here's what it used to look like.

Here's what it looks like now.

Done in by a dam.

All my thoughts today are with firefighters fighting to save a National Park.