Yellowstone: Man & Nature!

Beauty is a criteria in life that Ed and I seek out, as if our lives depended on it, and I believe they do. With each unspoiled river, snow capped mountain, or rocky outcrop we feel a deep peace and pleasure and connection to our earth...

Fine architecture can do the same or the hand-woven scarf I throw around my neck when it is cold out or the hand-turned mug from which I drink my morning coffee. Stunning natural scenes as well as masterful human craftsmanship please our beauty-seeking natures.

                       
                             

For 32 years the army managed Yellowstone Park prior to the formation of the National Park Service. The building below housed the bachelor officers at Fort Yellowstone. It is a majestic and beautiful building now serving as the Mammoth Hot Springs Visitors' Center.

And Officers' Row in it's military discipline and rigid design, is equally pleasing...

When humans build in natural surroundings, nestling the buildings into their site, they can be both modest yet enticing. The mysteries of human history as well as functional charm enhance their being and honor their setting.

Yellowstone Park Bookstore...

Yellowstone Park Museum...

At other times buildings on a grand scale, matching the grandeur of the setting, can excite and elevate one's experience. Often the success of these buildings includes the use of materials from the site so they both stand out and become one with their setting...

Humans can do magnificant things. Roads can be works of art or just a dull hunk of blacktop to move traffic. In Yellowstone Park there is a five mile stretch of road at Gibbon Falls, built in1928 by 110 men and 30 horse teams. The work they did is inspiring! The stone used in the rock walls was quarried on site.

Natural beauty is inspiring but so is human built beauty. I will rant against "development" but never human-built art.

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"Oriental thinking, and indeed all pre-industrial thinking, knows that nature may seem hard-hearted and her laws inexorable and often cruel, yet she herself is the very raw material you are working with, and of which you yourself are necessarily a part. You therefore always have to treat her as your friend, as someone with whom you must somehow keep on good terms, or else you and your works will be no good. She is after all your mother, not an enemy to be subdued, or a slave to be violated.

~Michael Cardew, A Pioneer Potter

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