the range of light.

Last year sometime I ordered a book. I remember not knowing how I came across it. It was called Wild Cascades Forgotten Parkland. And in it were a few plates from some photographer named Philip Hyde, of whom I had never heard. All in black and white, and mostly from around the Cascade Pass region, second to me only to The Enchantments in wonder and amazement. But not by much. And so I Googled his name and something came up about a book of his photography called The Range of Light. And it happened to be available from some seller on Amazon for something like three bucks (if I recall, that's about what I paid for Wild Cascades). So I ordered it.

It is a book of his photography complimented by caption quotes and other writings of John Muir. The photography is of course from the Sierras (also known, thanks to Muir, as 'the Range of Light'). Yosemite. Kings Canyon. And they beckon me to return, which I will. Over and over. Julian and I will go down there again this summer deep into Kings Canyon National Park into the granite peaks basins filled with alpine lakes and strewn about with granite boulders made from glaciers and time. One of the most spectacular national parks, if not only for its wildness but for its roadlessness (much like North Cascades National Park, where to really enjoy any part of it one must get out of their vehicle and stomp on feet through forests and over glaciers and on granite wandering for days at a time to get any sense of the meaning of the place).

Published in 1992, the book is divided into three sections or portfolios and interspersed with a preface written by Hyde along with - at the end - his thoughts on a life devoted to photography. And all in between, the ramblings of a man that speaks to all of us who find in the outdoors – be it high above the clouds on serrated mountain ridges, in the glacier valleys of places like Yosemite, in the river-carved canyons of Zion and the desert Southwest, under a great oak tree rustling in a warm summer breeze, marveling at the smallest details on a fallen nurse log or lost in the most grandiose vistas from a summit buried deep in the North Cascades - a sense of space, of time, of strength, of peace. A man who claimed ~

"I am hopelessly and forever a mountaineer."

In this collection of his writings, it seems a more prevalent sense of Muir's deeply-held religion and revere and awe for all the beauty he witnessed during his lifetime and then struggled to paint with words. Quote after quote, Muir writes about his love of God and mountains and rivers and trees and art and in fact all things of this universe and how they are all delicately tied together in a web of wonder even he could not dare to fathom. Only appreciate. He writes ~

"I have crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built; and rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again."

He seems even more deep in thoughts of the land - the Range of Light - that, much like it did with Ansel Adams, always drew him back. Over and over. No matter how far he traveled, the Sierras were his home and the connection he had with them was as powerful as his connections with his family and, it may seem after reading this, even with God Himself.

His parting thoughts include such ideas as ~

"All the horizon is lettered and lifted. I want immortality to read this terrestrial language. This good and tough mountain-climbing flesh is not my final home, and I'll creep out of it, and fly free and grow!"

And then his final words ~

"The world, we are told, was made especially for man – a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God's universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves. They have precise dogmatic insight of the intentions of the Creator ... with such views of the Creator it is, of course, not surprising that erroneous views should be entertained of the creation. It never seems to occur to these far-seeing teachers, that Nature's object in making animals and plants might possibly be first of all the happiness of each one of them, not the creation of all for the happiness of one. Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit – the cosmos? The universe would be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge."

The photography is amazing, and Muir's words profound. Another good three dollars spent.