Wild Cries

In time and with water, everything changes – Leonardo da Vinci Opening Note The above quote of Leonardo da Vinci perfectly matches with the experience gained by me from the tour to few of the fascinating canyons in the US, which are creation of water on rocks over time. Even before I began my US trip of March- April 2023, my nephew Ramesh chalked out a full loop travel in the first week of April to some of the exotic locations of North America. He has planned a week- long jaunt, combining both an air travel and an extensive road drive across four states, comprising California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona that would take us to three national parks and a number of other wilderness and nature recreation destinations. He booked for the night halts four months in advance, as hotel accommodation would be hard to come by at short notice or would be available at exorbitant price. All the three national parks and a couple of other nature preserves, we intended to travel through had one thing in c

  Prologue ‘Whose woods are these I think I know  ………………………………… The Woods are lovely, dark and deep But I have promises to keep, And Miles to go before I sleep And Miles to go before I sleep’ The last four are the end lines of the San Francisco born Robert Lee Frost, the much celebrated English poet’s 16 line sonnet titled ’Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening’, published in 1923. This poem by Frost is probably the most read and most loved. Written in quatrain rhymed iambic tetrameter (a poem written with four iambs per line), it begins with the willful entry of the narrator and his exit at the end of the poem. When he stops his sleigh in the midst of snowy woods he is in awe of the splendid vista the wooded place has to offer even on a dark evening. He wants to stay there longer and adore what he sees. He soon realizes he has unkept promises to fulfill and ‘miles to go before I sleep,’ echoing the departure to or rather a new pursuit of practical duties. The poem fits into many shapes

  "Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation ?" - John Muir, one of the  main inspirations for the U.S. N ational Park system Opening Note My short trip to California, USA was in the card for quite some time, as my visitor visa is to expire short while from now. The open invite from Ramesh, my brother’s son to visit his family at Scott’s Valley, Santa Cruz was long standing though. The last time I travelled to his home from Chicago for a very brief spell of 10 days was eight years ago in 2015 winter. Other than taking me on some trails in the nearby Henry Cowell state park to feel the mighty redwood trees and the Ano Nuevo state park in the Ano Nueva bay of the North Pacific coast to look at the ubiquitous elephant seals, my nephew drove me for a three day sojourn to Yosemite, one of the oldest national parks of the country, protected since 1964. The harsh November weather of Yosemite Valley didn’t permit us to take any long tre