Impression Evergreen

Mission Beach, San Diego I love exploring the Rocky Mountains of Colorado but it was nice to encounter the Pacific Ocean during our recent trip to southern California. We managed to hit a few beaches and it was surprising to discover how different they were from each other. Each beach seemed to have its own, unique personality based on the type of people, waves and scenery that distinguished it from the others. There were also similarities between them that went far beyond the obvious basics of salt, sea and sand. A common theme running through each visit was the sublime sunsets, persistent seagulls and tight parking. I’m not sure I could survive for very long in the Golden State as the behavior there is unbelievably intense but maybe you just get used to it. Fast-paced traffic is a fitting symbol for the frenetic, California lifestyle but the beach is someplace where everybody slows down. The hypnotic nature of the crashing waves seems to chill all of those restless natives...

San Rafael Swell Positioned just above the sacred Goblin Valley, the San Rafael Swell is a dramatic gateway to some of the best scenery the state of Utah has to offer. Desolate and devoid of life, this lonely stretch of land is more lively than you’d expect. Traveling west through Colorado, the big, blue and green mountains give way to brown mesas until you reach Grand Junction. From there into eastern Utah, the landscape becomes distinctly barren and beige book cliffs rise out of the sandy soil. Down around the town of Green River, things really start to look deserted as the terrain becomes flat and featureless with not even a single tree in sight. The desert becomes difficult to understand and you begin to feel like all is lost. Just when things look bleak, a narrow pass winds its way through a spiny ridge of jagged spires where the earth is uplifted and sculpted by a spectacular canyon. Placed above it all, a gigantic, pale sky overwhelms the pastel-colored plateau. We’...

I'm drawn to water - lakes, ponds, waterfalls and especially rivers. Being near a still lake or reservoir has a peaceful, calming effect. I prefer rivers because they have an essence of ebb and flow. A wild river sculpts the land and is always changing. It's dynamic, constantly seeking a new course to carve its bed and flooding its banks to deposit fresh silt. A riverine landscape improves the scenery and offers the chance to study a wide variety of plants and wildlife. Throughout human history rivers have been the scene of important milestones. They have been crucial in determining political boundaries and defending countries. Most major cities of the world are situated on the banks of rivers. A river can be a great source of abundance or catastrophic destruction. As a result, people have developed ways to manage and control rivers to make them more useful and less disruptive to human activity. This summer we visited three rivers. The Rio Grande near Alamosa, Colorado, the...

The Great Sand Dunes Earlier this summer, curiosity propelled us to go investigate The Great Sand Dunes National Park. On the way there, I was struck by the desolation of the high desert region known as the San Luis Valley. The dunes first appear as a small, pink band sprawling out humbly beneath the jagged, blue peaks of the impressive Crestone Needles. Not until you arrive at Medano Creek do the tallest sand dunes in North America begin to flex their muscle. It's a surreal landscape and the sheer scale of the dunes is breathtaking. It took more than 400,000 years for nature to sculpt this masterpiece. Water, wind and sand are the ingredients of a process that continues to this day. Sand from the river flood plain are picked up by strong, westerly winds. The tiny particles are deposited in a pile against the foothills. Zebulon Pike is credited with the first written account of the dunes. In 1807 he wrote, "Their appearance was exactly that of the sea in a storm, except...