The Awesome Power of Yosemite
Submitted by Keith Gall
I was a first-year teacher, new to California. I’d seen the Pacific a few times that Fall, but I’d been aching to encounter the other largeness of the state: its national parks. And there was no question which would be first; I’d longed to lay eyes on Yosemite since I didn’t know when.
Randomly determining Spring Break the best time to go, I drove my sporty Escort GT north and up into the Sierra Nevada. In my home state of Michigan, we have snow, but nowhere near the amounts the big mountains get. I climbed from my car and took a picture of a ten-foot pack, dwarfing my vehicle. I marveled at its layers, akin to rings in a tree.
Surprised, I found myself entering a tunnel called the Wawona. Darkness and darkness. Then, like peering into a microscope, images came into focus with the light. But what I was seeing couldn’t even be real. From my lips, escaped some sort of guttural “Oh..!
Exiting the passage, the full panorama enveloped me. Views of the massive monoliths El Capitan and Half Dome, the impossibly-tall ribbon of Bridalveil Falls, and the patchwork snow across Yosemite Valley passed into my mind, and my entire body struggled to process.
Something happens in a moment of awe. A biochemist could go into details about endorphins and adrenaline. A psychiatrist might posit theories on the evolution of charisma and the role of leaders in human society. And all of this could be relevant within those fields, but I’m unsure true answers will ever be known to science.
Awe is the realm of poets and musicians. It’s perhaps known better as something amorphous: a place where fear and wonder meld, where conscious and subconscious couple.
At once, I felt like I might fall from the Wawona Overlook and be swallowed by Yosemite; yet, simultaneously, I knew the thrill of unfettered bird-flight.
This wasn’t a black and white photo captured by Ansel Adams; its closest approximation came in a painting I’d once seen of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Elvish kingdom of Rivendell.
For a long, long time, a duality of micro and macro stayed with me: my insignificance and my importance existing as light in particle-wave theory.
But one thing was for sure, like my childhood comic book hero Daredevil, my senses were heightened: tastes tasted better. Sounds crisper. Smells richer. And, as a result the memories made at Yosemite routinely return, with a dimensionality far beyond any Kodak Moment.
Awe and Time Travel
Lately, I’ve been pondering awe and its power to mark events. In “The Dream of Scipio,” Cicero uses a wondrous and awesome tour of the cosmos to frighten and rouse the savior of Rome. Existing in a state of both sleep and wake, Scipio hears the Music of the Spheres and gains self-awareness of his momentum, his personal power. He rises to another plane.
Converse to our olfactory senses shutting down with the persistence of an awful smell, something awesome opens up our connectedness to both nature and our being. Despite the fear that exists in these moments, awe usually leaves us feeling better for having experienced it, and occasionally brings us, too, to another plane. For this reason, we often cite these moments as earth-shattering, life-altering, or unforgettable.
Cicero’s writing exists so intensely that it alone can bring the reader to this awe, much in the same way a recording of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” transports the listener to the moment. This isn’t time or space travel, and yet it is.
It’s a connection of the human condition, and an acknowledgment of its universality: a feeling so powerful that when put eloquently or sculpted masterfully or sung with such depth, we are united across millennia or miles.
Politicolor is a project to connect the world we know with the world we see. If you have enjoyed looking at Yosemite again from this perspective, please recommend this story or share it with a friend.
