Looking down on the lower meadow below Lyell Glacier from the upper meadow. The glacier is behind us.

Looking down on the lower meadow below Lyell Glacier from the upper meadow.

This is the wilderness experience – alone in the majestic, reliant on one’s self and one’s companions.

The view from the meadow just below Lyell Glacier (behind us) looking down Lyell Canyon from whence we had come.

On our first backpacking trip into Yosemite, we came across this natural line of demarcation – more of a spiritual boundary, probably born of a simultaneous shift in both geography and botany. No matter the cause, as we approached this gentle barrier we felt as if we were crossing over into a new realm – an untamed land more apart from civilization than simply distant from it. I paused to take this photograph in a meager attempt to capture the mood.

Having reached the higher of the two alpine meadows below Lyell Canyon, we looked back toward the way we had come up through Lyell Canyon out of Tuolumne Meadows.

Sometimes, on the trail, one’s attention is drawn from the majestic vistas and craggy peaks to the smallest of things right in front of you. In this case, I noticed a single tiny flower blooming for all it was worth in the midst of a boulder field. I guess I found inspiration as an artist in a kindred soul struggling against immense obstacles in anonymity. So I took its picture and posted it here, and it and I shall bloom because it is what we know and it is who we are.

I have no idea who Vogelsang was, but he had a nice peak. You can see it for quite a distance on a side trail that winds from Nevada Falls down past Cathedral Peak, ending at Tuolumne Meadows.