Yosemite National Park And the Unexpected Visitor

[Kaleel Sakakeeny]

Yosemite And the Unexpected Visitor

Please listen to this Yosemite Audio PostCard, a story about this national treasure and an unexpected park visitor .

Yosemite itself is the iconic image of a national park made famous by Ansel Adams and his obsession to capture in dramatic photographs the magical play of light falling on cedars and shadows.

And winter’s off-season is a terrific time to visit.

Frost-glazed grasses catch the sunlight and fragment it into a thousand mirror images of the stone cathedrals that form the vaulting mountains and cliffs, pink-hued in the late afternoon sun.

The Ahwahneechee Indians were the first to give voice to the majesty of Yosemite.
They understood its power and majesty, and saw the faces of maidens and the long-lost souls of ancestors in the waterfalls, mountains and sculptured valleys of frost and light.

They’re gone of course, but the ground is still hallowed.

On the day we left, the sun was up, but the ghost of a moon clung stubbornly to the flawless blue sky.

Out of the stillness of the valley floor, suddenly rose a chorus of coyotes’ cries, their sounds echoing off the canyon walls rising and falling in complex layers, filling the space with a deep, uncertain feeling.

Yosemite had lost none of its appeal to the great spirit.

Yosemite Audio PostCard

 

voice and image by Wendie Hansen