Views from airplanes–specifically the tops of clouds and the way that, as you land, your mind turns items on the ground from tiny models to suddenly normal sized items. A rainstorm really far away on the Great Plains. The Pacific Ocean. Florida beaches on the Gulf of Mexico. (My god, I’m going there to die.) From the ground–a mountain in the Rockies so huge and far away that I didn’t realize at first that the “black fuzz” I was seeing were 50 ft tall pine trees. (After I realized it, my Appalachian-raised brain just could not hold the scale.) Dinosaur fossils still embedded in rock. Blizzards. Puppies. ETA: Niagara Falls. How did I forget Niagara Falls?
The Leonid Meteor shower over Lake Michigan in November 2002. I stopped counting when I got to 100 searing streaks of green. I’ve seen snow on that beach, too, which was something I’d never realized would happen.
The lunar eclipse last month, and all the other ones. The total solar eclipse the day of my grandfather’s funeral.
A few particular sunrises and sunsets, especially one during a flight back to Chicago in my freshman year of college. I couldn’t believe how many layers of color I saw.
The stars over upstate New York. Where they’re visible.
The deer in Ottawa National Forest in Michigan.
The birds that come to my father’s feeders.
The state of Hawaii.
Dolphins.
A meteor shower while camping out on some sand dunes near Washoe Lake, Nevada.
Sastrugi that looked an “egg crate” foam mattress on a hike up Mount Rose on that same Nevada trip.
The view from the summit of Mount Megunticook in Maine.
Being at my friend Matt’s farm in early summer as night is falling and seeing wave upon wave of lighting bugs rise up from the fields
The heronry in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park
An annular solar eclipse
Hale-Bopp
The Grand Canyon. All your cynicism and coolness just drops away.
The day after Hurricane Andrew in 1993, driving back to my home in Key West from where we’d evacuated to in Palm Beach. Not a building left standing for miles - I got home and just stood in the shower and cried because I had a shower to stand in. Mother Nature , she does not fool around.
My garden, coming back to life every year. How does it know?
Sunrise from inside the Grand Canyon. Sunset at the rim was wasted since I didn’t have a sense of depth; I might have been looking at a canvas for all it mattered. It was still dark when I started down the South Kaibab Trail, and I saw the entire show as the colors of sunrise played on the rock strata.
Seeing the “green flash” one morning while riding through farmland. I ddn’t actually see the flash, but it lit up the morning fog so that the entire countryside glowed with a jade green.
Strangely, my most moving experience was an hour or so spent alone in a thick fog walking through a field in Houston. I’m not usually that sentimental about religion or spirituality, but I think that I understood the biblical message “I am” at some point during that hour.
Oh, and this: way up in northern Wisconsin one summer night, we took my friend’s pontoon into the middle of the lake he had a cabin on. The night was so clear, the night sky was a carpet of stars.
- Childbirth (my children)
- Snow (always tiresome by mid-February, but wonderful in December)
- Old Faithful
- Halley’s Comet
- Eclipses
- A hurricane, but I never want to see one up close again
- A whole gale at sea, but see hurricane
- Mt. Rainier
- Caves
- A few nights in my life I’ve seen what looked like a trillion stars
A herd of thirteen Big Horn Sheep in Anza-Borrego. One of my friends spent 25 years trying to see just one and never did. My wife & I saw it on our third trip.
The smallest cloud I’d ever seen which gave out rain in an otherwise clear blue New Mexican sky. I could hear the rain from a 1/4 mile away; it was peaceful. And then a literal bolt out of blue–a lighting strike came out of that dwarf cumulus cloud. Scared the absolute crap out of me. Never seen anything like it before or since. Ten minutes later the sky was clear again. I’ve never looked at cute, puffy cumulus clouds the same again.
Watching the green flash during sunsets across the Santa Barbara Channel.
Seeing Balitmore and Washington, DC at 6,000 feet in Maryland when taking glider lessons. I’ll never forget those thermals!
Climbing to the top of Mount Taylor, NM and looking back at the 100 miles I had walked in the past week.
Flying up to Nord, Greenland and the North Pole in a less-than-air-worthy aircraft and seeing Arctic Ice Sheet go on infinitely in all directions–knowing that there is no one for hundreds of miles.
Top of White Mountain Peak in California and seeing wild Mustangs on Boundary Peak, NV.
A meteor shower that was soon enveloped by fog–then it looked even more magical as the lights became diffused. It was like a fairy tale!
Crap, it’s been 10 years since I’ve done anything memorable.
Except for a tornado. But I really don’t want to ever see one of those again.
River otters gamboling in the Selway river, in a place that isn’t there any more (I am told) because of a landslide.
A snowy owl, flying through our woods at twilight, passing within 6 feet of my stunned, following eyes.
A reverse butterfly waterfall at Calico rocks in the Nevada desert, and the stream that made the (then dry) waterfall emerging from under a boulder 300 yards downstream.
The marijuana field behind the walls, a block from the Nusa-dua beach hotel where Reagan stayed in 1986. He gave a stirring anti-drug speech while in Bali, if I recall correctly.
The tarantualas dancing at Tenaja.
[ul][li]The utter blackness of the ocean at night, when you’re out at sea and miles from anywhere. Especially exciting is a thunderstorm in the distance. Watching the bolts shatter the blackness every few seconds is breathtaking.[/li][li]The full moon over the water, well after dark, on a clear night.[/li][li]The dark night sky, with the Milky Way in view, way out in the backwoods of Tennessee.[/li][li]The Everglades. Mile after mile of flat, nearly treeless plains of water and reeds. The occasional stand of trees is the only thing breaking up the horizon. The flocks of flamingos taking off, the alligators swimming through, everything is just beautiful and can’t be seen anywhere else.[/li][li]Tabyana Beach, in Honduras. Crystal clear water, sand like baby powder, and a coral reef 20 feet offshore. As soon as we got in the water, we were surrounded by tropical reef fish. Utterly gorgeous, and the 4 hours I was there passed like 15 minutes.[/li][li]Stingray City. A shallow spot out in the bay off of Grand Cayman, home to hundreds of docile stingrays. We held them, petted them, fed them, swam with them.[/li][li]The sun rising over St Thomas as my ship came into the harbor.[/li][li]El Yunque, the rainforest in Puerto Rico.[/li][li]Lake June-in-Winter Sand Scrub State Park, a park in extremely central Florida, with an ecosystem that is nowhere else. No facilities to speak of, just 845 acres of protected areas outside Lake Placid. It’s the only place I’ve ever seen a bobcat, and the only place to see a Florida scrub jay. I had an armadillo amble out of the scrub, walk across my foot, and stop and stare at me for a couple before scurrying back into the woods. Long ago, when sea levels were higher, it was along the seashore. It’s become basically an island ecosystem in the middle of the state.[/li][li]Cade’s Cove in the Smokies. A vast plain hemmed in by mountains on all sides. Breathtaking, especially for a boy who’s never lived more than 13 feet above sea level.[/li][li]The waters of my home. I live on a peninsula in Florida. You can see it here, from an airplane (not my photo, BTW). I live in the southern half of the peninsula in the background. I have grown up surrounded by and being in the sea. I’m terribly uncomfortable when I’m visiting somewhere and it’s far from a coast – I feel disoriented.[/li][li]The sunset I could go watch every day. An example. This isn’t my photo, but it’s what we see when the sun goes down.[/li][li]The various natural wonders of Florida. The gorgeous shallow waters off the Keys, the barrier islands that hold our beaches, the marshlands and swamplands of the Big Bend, the St John’s river, flowing from the middle of the state north to Jacksonville, the rolling hills of the Ridge, the Chassahowitzka wildlife area, the stretches of farmland in the Heartland, Lake Okechobee, Rainbow Springs, the Suwanee River, everything. We who live here are lucky, and I think many of us take it for granted.[/li][li]Dolphins swimming and playing out in Tampa Bay, which I used to see on my daily commute across the bay to school.[/ul][/li]
There are more, but that’ll do for now.
The lochs of Scotland.
Many good things listed, and I don’t have a whole lot of new stuff:
[ul]
[li]Hiking down into Grand Canyon – everyone must do this. You’re surrounded by infiinity and staring down into history and you’ll never forget it.[/li][li]Sleeping on the desert floor and seeing a red moonrise – very trippy.[/li][li]A pod of killer whales about 300 yards off-shore somewhere in Washington.[/li][li]Rock climing (okay; they were easy rocks) by moonlight in Joshua Tree.[/li][li]A dolphin (or porpoise – it was too far to tell) jumping out of the water and doing a somersault! Not at Marine World – this was a real dolphin just showing off!!! (I do a LOT of walking along the beach).[/li][li]Hiking into Haleakala crater, which looked like the surface of Mars.[/li][li]Seeing a huge thunderstorm at night from a hundred miles away in Kansas and eventually driving through it.[/li][li]The Columbia Ice Fields in Canada (Jasper Nat’l Park?) – actually, everything in the Jasper/Banff area.[/li][li]Bryce National Park – you have to see these colors to believe them.[/li][li]Many wonderful snowfalls in the boonies of Chicago, the mountains near Lake Tahoe and Mammoth Mountain.[/li][li]The killer surf (not really for surfing; more for killing people in small boats) at the far east tip of Long Island.[/li][li]The redwood forests north of San Francisco and the sequoias in, well, Sequoia National Park.[/li][li]Yosemite / Half Dome.[/li][li]Some amazing volcano tour that I took in the south east of California with a geology class.[/li][li]I think the best was a motorcycle trip I took in my early 20s: up the coast from LA to Seattle. Nothing particularly grand, but it was just three days of me, the road and my thoughts along the beautiful west coast. Like Grand Canyon, everyone should do this sometime in their lives.[/ul][/li]That’s about it. Thanks for this thread – sometimes I forget how much beauty I’ve seen and how much I still have yet to see.