Earth Day

This year we spent Earth Day starting to plant our vegetable garden.

Last year, we were lucky enough to spend Earth Day in the splendour of some of the most dramatic natural scenery on earth... We finished up our California roadtrip in Yosemite National Park, a place of stunning granite cliffs, roaring waterfalls, and towering red pines.

No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its walls
seems to glow with life... as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had
gathered her choicest treasures...

—John Muir 

To escape the hoards we hiked up to the viewpoint for Nevada Falls and Half Dome, past the busy viewpoint a bit farther down at Vernal Falls. Part of the trail we took was buried under snow, which made for a rather heart-stopping ascent as we scrambled up the steep snow-face (actually, the descent was far worse) but, as always, it was well worth it. 

The exquisite sight, sound, and smell of wilderness is many times more powerful
if it is earned through physical achievement, if it comes at the end of a long and
fatiguing trip for which vigorous good health is necessary. Practically speaking,
this means that no one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.

—Garrett Hardin, The Ecologist, February 1974