YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARKPhotos by S. Henry

June, 2009

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and

reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.” John Muir

EL CAPITAN

“Society speaks and all men listen, mountains speak and wise men listen.”

YOSEMITE FALLS

“Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.”

“I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.”

MARIPOSA GROVE

“Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot defend themselves or run away. And few destroyers of trees ever plant any; nor can planting avail much toward restoring our grand aboriginal giants. It took more than three thousand years to make some of the oldest of the Sequoias, trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra.”

HALF DOME “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.”

HALF DOME SUMMIT

“The mountains are calling and I must go.”

DESCENDING HALF DOME

“…grandest special temple of nature I was ever permitted to enter….”

TUOLUMNE MEADOWS

“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”

TUOLUMNE MEADOWS “The grand show is eternal…eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”

THE PARK’S MANY FALLS

“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”

CATHEDRAL ROCKS AND SPIRES“The clearest way to the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”

CATHEDRAL MEADOWS

“To some, beauty seems but an accident of creation: to Muir it was the very smile of God.”

GLACIER POINT

“The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thought and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains.”

“Keep close to Nature's heart...and break clear away,

once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your

spirit clean.”

JOHN MUIR

All quotes are by John Muir, the father of the conservation movement who found his calling on a visit to the California wilderness.