Road Trip...

...with POM and three nieces.  Portland by way of Yosemite, the Gold Country, and Crater Lake.  It's the first time for these kids, and it is true pleasure to get to introduce them to these amazing locations.  I'll post photos later, once I've had the chance to upload and sort them.  For now, a first-draft reflection on a much-loved place. 
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7/27
I think almost everyone has this experience:  you visit a place from your childhood and it seems so much smaller than your memory tells you it was.  A childhood home.  A former church.  A favorite library or museum.  Grandma's kitchen.  Yeah, well, Half Dome isn't any smaller than it used to be when I grew up in Yosemite's back yard.  In fact, when seen from Washburn Point, it is every bit as stark and breathstopping as it has ever been.  Maybe even more so, because since I was twelve, I have amassed experiences and perspective that inform my apprehension and appreciation of its mass, its scope, its importance.  I have since been at the top of a tower and looked down through a lucite floor and seen humans who look like little plastic figures from the game of Life.  It impresses upon me the significance, then, of the ant- or pebble-sized humans I observe on the top of Half Dome's beak through my high-powered binoculars.  I have seen, repetitively and in full harrowing color, the collapse into dust and smoke of two enormous skyscrapers, man's achievements, sandcastles kicked over by disgruntled playmates.  All the more resonant, then, the 8000-foot pinnacle of granite, sheared smooth but still standing after millennia of erosive weather and a shifting base and millions upon millions of tourist feet.