Focus on America’s National Parks: Images of Yellowstone

It has finally arrived. Yesterday, the first episode of The National Parks: America’s Best Idea provided the best excuse in recent memory to avoid all to-dos, to step away from the musts, to ignore text messages and e-mails.

The show began with a quote from John Muir: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul.”

I thought back on some of the beauty I’ve experienced in the National Parks. The day at Denali when, with just a few other people around, I watched a moose taking a midday bath with her newborns. The afternoon a foghorn broke through the quiet of a hike in Acadia National Park. And the hundreds of images I focused on during a three-day photography workshop in Yellowstone National Park. Here, some of the photos I settle into when I need to pull back from daily life. I hope you enjoy them.

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Who Says Texas Has No Seasons?

Trout lilies, photo by Sophia Dembling

In my previous, non-flyover life in New York City, the first signs of spring were when the forsythia bloomed in Central Park and a ripe and not-unpleasant scent started wafting through my neighborhood from off the Hudson River.

One complaint I’ve heard many times about my current home state, Texas, is that it has no change of seasons. Balderdash. Texas has all four seasons, but they are more subtle than in Northern states.

On my property, the first harbinger of spring is when the trout lilies (pictured) make an appearance. These are shy and short-lived blossoms that hold a tender place in my heart for their rarity. The nearby Cedar Ridge Preserve offers an annual free hike to see their trout lilies in bloom, but I can see them in my own backyard. (OK, the preserve has more. I hiked there last week and saw veritable fields of trout lilies. I had trout lily envy.)

Spring, too, is when the redbud and Bradford pear trees—common in my neighborhood—burst into blooms of pink and white, respectively. Other trees seem bathed in mists of gentle green, as leaf buds test the air, which has grown moist (even in our current drought) and has an earthy scent. All around my neighborhood, daffodils and tulips bloom.

One day, I’ll step into my yard to a riot of robins on every branch, taking a break from their migration north. Finches move back into our finch house, bustling importantly in preparation for their brood. The morning serenade of birds becomes robust as territory is staked out and mates are sought. At an otherwise undistinguished, even unattractive, intersection near my home, huge flocks of purple martins swoop and soar and gather on wires in a mesmerizing display.

And spring is storm season, much to the delight of TV newscasters, who now have important information to impart and do so with exuberant gravity. The storms of Texas are unmatched spectacles of wind, rain, thunder and lightning. They can be dangerous, of course, and Texans all have plans for when the tornado sirens wail. Our plan includes a closet that must be first emptied of vacuum cleaners and old pillows and such before we can take shelter.

Spring in Texas is tragically short. “The Beast is approaching,” my husband likes to say ominously. Too soon, summer will settle in, with its relentless heat and tedious sunshine.

But for now, today, we can revel in spring. Glorious spring.

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