Yosemite National Park--Landscape Photography & Literature

I'm back!  I have been ever so crazy busy at work the past few months that all of the fun things in life seem to have been set aside--and blogging about books here at ProSe has really suffered mightily.  Fortunately, I was able to get away for a nearly week-long camping trip with some friends during the first week in May.  The primary purpose for our trip was to endeavor to make some decent landscape photographs.  We stayed in Lower Pines Campground in Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park.  The weather was splendid, and with all of the snowpack in the High Sierra (almost 200% of normal), the waterfalls in the Valley were just booming.  Truly spectacular!

I took Thomas Hardy's novel, The Woodlanders along with me for a re-read.  As I wandered about the park, from beautiful location to beautiful location, I would sit below a waterfall, or out in an open meadow, or under a tree, or even in my camp-chair next to the campfire, I'd pull out my Hardy and read.  I have to say that this re-read of The Woodlanders was even more meaningful to me than when I first read it in 2010.  Hardy;s description of the dense Wessex forests around Little Hintock and the lives of his rustics just seemed to come alive for me in the grandeur of one of America's most beautiful national parks.

Anyway, I just wanted to leave a short note that I am back to my blog, and that I am continuing to read some really terrific books these days.  I am currently re-reading Hardy's The Return of the Native, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre for group discussions in a Goodreads.com group, and reading Charles Dickens's The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club for the first time for another group discussion.  I also have R.D. Blackmore's Lorna Doone in my immediate queue to-be-read.

The photograph I've posted here is a photograph that I made in Cook's Meadow on the floor of the Yosemite Valley.  The small pond is one of the ephemeral ponds that are created by the high-water conditions during the spring run-off.  Do 'click' on the photograph for a larger view too.  Stay tuned--more about my Yosemite photography trip and books I'm reading to come.  Cheers!

***