Welcome! I am a contemplative thinker and photographer from Colorado. In this blog, you'll discover photographs that I've taken on my hiking and backpacking trips, mostly in the American West. I've paired these with my favorite inspirational and philosophical quotes - literary passages that emphasize the innate spirituality of the natural world. I hope you enjoy them!

If you'd like to purchase photo-quote greeting cards, please go to www.NaturePhoto-QuoteCards.com .


In the Spirit of Wildness,

Stephen Hatch
Fort Collins, Colorado

P.S. There's a label index at the bottom of the blog.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

The geological history of the Earth helps put our personal emotional drama into perspective!


Recently I've made a commitment to avoid giving more than momentary attention to my own emotional drama. This includes especially thoughts about this or that person not liking me, or about my own failings that I so often imagine might be the cause of that slight.

For me, time spent in the wilderness helps put things in perspective. This is especially true at Yellowstone. There, 640,000 years ago, a volcanic explosion formed a caldera nearly five eighths of a mile deep and 45 by 28 miles wide. It is inside the boundaries of this caldera that Yellowstone's many thermal features occur.

Of what significance are my petty emotional dramas compared to an explosion so strong, it didn't even have time to form the sloping sides of a classic volcano, but instead blew a hole clear out of the ground! Such is the power of wilderness and of an appreciation for the geological history of the world to put the puny ego-self into perspective!

Photo: A lone hiker walks at the West Thumb Geyser Basin (next to Yellowstone Lake); Yellowstone National Park, WY; August 31, 2013





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