What part of the Natural Earth puts you in Awe? Poll

In My Humble Opinion
21

Excellent thread, Phlosphr. Some “beauty-beholding” is definitely in order at the moment, I think.

No pics, but you all can come with me to a remote cottage in Northern Ontario. It’s a quiet, cool, mid-August evening, full dark has almost enfolded the lake. We walk down to the dock, drawn by the reflection of zillions of stars on the calm, mirror-like surface of the water.

The peaceful silence is punctuated by the intermittent splashes of fish breaking the surface, night-feeding. Small rustles, twigs popping, the whispers and mutters of trees blend with and become part of the quiet. A breeze slips by, lazily, bringing the clean, loamy smell of the nearby boreal forest.

We lay on our backs on the dock. It’s still sun-warm, comforting. The stars are jewels floating in the velvety depths of the sky. For long moments, we fill our eyes, other senses retreating. Helpless, seduced, we fall upwards into dark-blue infinity.

From the north, suddenly, comes the eerie cry of a loon, that harbinger of the north. Sky-spell broken, we glance in that direction. And are rewarded by the sight of a sheer, scintillating curtain of Aurora Borealis.

So brief, so achingly beautiful! Opaque hues of green, and blue, deepening to tinges of violet and shot through with gold, it dances on the horizon like a veil in the wind.

22

There are so many places in the American West that fit the bill. Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Inyo National Forest. I think that last one would have to be my favorite, especially Mammoth Mountain and Minaret Lake. When you get up at dawn after camping on the lakeshore and see the reflection of the mountains in the lake … well, I can’t describe it, you just have to go there.

23

While the Na Pali coast on Kauai is impressive the back of the Koolau Mountains always gives me a profound sense of awe. Just the sheerness of the cliffs blows me away. Especially when the sun sets behind them and there are all the golden stairways descending into Kailua. I’ve walked along the top of those and dangled my legs over. They are just as impressive from the top.

While not necessarily beautiful I am always amazed when I drive across the Great Plains. The landscape is basically flat but when you drive at 85mph for 10 hours and nothing has changed you realize you are in the middle of one very very big piece of flat land. You just have to stop, get out of the car and look around you.

A third would be sitting on top of a snow capped Mauna Kea looking over at a snow capped Mauna Loa and having all the rest of the earth covered under thick clouds. I’ve never felt so small, so isolated from humanity.

Now those are the permanent ones. A fleeting one would be watching two volcanoes erupt in the blackest night, one to your right and another to the left, is the most surreal I have ever seen the earth. With those orange rivulets of lava reaching towards you, slowly growing youcan only watch and laugh nervously.

24

The Grand Canyon, from both rims for just viewing, but from inside for genuine awe. The raft trip–oar powered, not motor, thank you very much–through the full length was life and mind changing. It ran the whole damn gamut, from the aching, delicate beauty of side canyons, with ferns growing on carved rocks walls to the raw, brutal, perfect power of the river itself. I’ve never seen anything more perfect than a towering, roiling storm breaking overhead, from a mile deep in the canyon, surrounded by timeless rock and river. And lazy, floating stunned-by-beauty days, watching or dozing or goofin’ around.

And running the rapids, oh my God, YES! Hearing the roar from miles away, then pulling aside above the lip to examine and prepare. Plot the course, tie everything down, pump as many PSI’s into the raft, and then…launch.

Pull hard against the current, perfect placement is everything, there are no second chances and then…DROP, falling floors; engulfed deafened and blinded by pouring water, then SLAM, into the hole, into the the very base of the falls, tossed and slammed and drowned. Hit a 50’ wall of cold green water, hold your breath and hang on, slowly bob back to the surface but here comes the next wave, no time…HANG ON! ROW! The eddies and rock walls are waiting and pitiless.

Several short minutes (hours) later, you’re through the chute and row to the bank, bailing water until you ache because the the current’s still a killer and you need all the mobility you can get. Finally hit sand and get out, knees shaking unexpectedly for the first time but more fiercely, gratefully alive than you’ve ever been. Take a sip from the flask being passed around, and be grateful for the warmth. But meantime finish bailing out the raft and look back, stupified, at the roaring cataract you just came through.

Because you were the first raft down, and, impossibly, any minute now your friends are gonna shoot right over the lip of a damned waterfall. They must be idiots.

Veb

25

Sadly, I’ve never been to any of the “big” national parks -yet.

So, my list is rather mundane.

I saw the northern lights once while snowmobiling in northern Minnesota. Even better, I was in the middle of one of those almost primeval forests with about 10 feet of snow. Unbelievable.

Scuba diving on a reef in Cozumel was amazing too, as Homebrew and others have said.

OTOH, using “awe” as in “shock and awe”, I have twice seen tornadoes at fairly close range. They were beautiful in a terrifying kind of way. It really puts you in your place when nature shows what “power” really is.

26

Big Bend National Park
White Sands National Monument
Monument Valley, Utah.

And some of the most beautiful sights are underground, such as the Caverns of Sonora in west Texas. Smaller than Carlsbad Caverns, but also more beautiful. (no links because pictures just don’t do it justice)

27

And others:

[ul]

  • the Northern Lights over the Canadian high plains. Just earth and sky, nothing more, horizon to horizon, with the night sky sheeting and boiling with color. I don’t have the words. It was somewhere between a thunder storm and billowing draperies of the visible spectrum. Pure awe, pure enchantment.

  • The pacific coast redwoods. Misty, ancient, unbelievably beautiful.

  • Carlsbad caverns. The Grand Canyon of caves. Huge, silent, glittering in alien light, as remote as the moon.

  • Full moon on the Atlantic: okay, it’s probably the same over any sea, but after a storm, it was all the more seductive. Just horizon to horizon, water and sky, with moonlight like poured silver.
    [/ul]

Rather a travel nut,
Veb

28

I guess underwater SCUBA diving at night was most awesome. The bioluminescent colors are so beautiful. The nocturnal life is fascinating down under. But everything described above (meaning other posts) is also very awesome to me.

29

Three things I’ve seen that were so awe-inspiring that my brain couldn’t quite cope:

The Grand Canyon
The Himalayas (Annapurna range)
Glaciers pouring into the sea from the mountains of Greenland

30

The desert of western New South Wales. This area around Broken Hill is just so flat and amazingly lifeless. I went there when I was around ten years old and I remeber it as being pretty amazing. It was especially distinct because it wasn’t a sand desert like, say, the Sahara. It was a flat expanse full of low-lying scrub. Pretty amazing.

Closer to home, I’m always amazed driving by Newcastle beach and the foreshore at night. Newcastle is a rare city whose CBD is almost right on the beach. Driving along the coastline at night gives an amazing view of blackness. There is nothing out there save for the lights of a few boats. It is truly humbling.

And finally, when I went on a cruise on the Pacific Ocean, it was truly amazing to be surrounded on all sides by nothing but water. Such a change from the earhted, city lifestyle that I was used to.

31

Phang-Na Bay, Phuket, Thailand

http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~stu/Thailand/phang1.jpg
Mammouth Cave

32

Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound (New Zealand)
Guilin (China)
Dolomites (Italy)

33

The bizarre, stark shapes of the mountains of Wester Ross and Sutherland in Scotland are quite impressive.
Suilven
Stac Pollaidh

I heartily second the recommendations of the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon.

34

I’m kind of partial to the Deltaworks myself :smiley:
But seriously, it would have to be the Foz do Iguacu. They make Niagara Falls look like a small babbling brook.

35

Ah, I see others have already mentioned Yosemite National Park. (That’s my page, by the way!)

It is one of the most beautiful places on Earth, as far as I am concerned.

However, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Zion National Park, Crater Lake, Ave. of the Giants (redwoods on Calif. Highway 101) and Sequoia National Park (and many more) are also sublime.

36

I was struck still the first time I saw the Oquirrh Mountains covered with snow, out the window of the stairwell at the Physics Building at the University of Utah. It was a picture-postcard moment. Growing up back East, I wasn’t used to being surrounded by mountains, and had never lived anywhere where you actually saw mountains with snow from the snowline on up.

There were a lot of places in Utah that get my “awe-inspiring” vote. ** Bryce Canyon** is one. A lot of the arches at Arches National Monument are others (they’re featured in the opening montage of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). Zion National Monument, with its massive stone forms, is another.

I don’t want to put the East down. There are plenty of impressive sights out here, too. But the scale of the stuff in the West is so much Greater. Letchworth State Park in upstrate New York can call itself “The Grand Canyon of the East”, and it is impressive, but once you see the real thing out West you realize how much more impressive the West can be.

37

Some Pix from Arches:

http://www.nps.gov/arch/gallery/index.htm

38

Cal - being an easternor like yourself, I must agree there is a certain srenity when venturing out west. I went to grad school in Arizona, ASU, and I remember quite vividly the scale of my thoughts as I drove up I-17 to Sedona and on to Flagstaff, then up 89A through southern Utah and into Zion national park then Bryce Canyon. I was and still am in complete Awe.

I am an easternor again, teaching at a small Liberal Arts College. Its a good job, but Mrs.Phlosphr and I have kicked around the possibility of moving back out there.

The more I think about it, the more enticing it sounds.

39

Phlosphr– I dragged Pepper Mill out to Utah early on in our relationship, before we were even married. She’d love to go visit again (especially now that we can take MilliCal out to Dinosaur National Monument), but I don’t think I could persuade her to move to Utah and live there.

40

Yes, it would be a tough move. The west has it’s perks, but I do miss the salt air sometimes, and the gorgeous New England autumns. And oddly enough, I’d miss the centuries old stone walls dotting the landscape around my home. To me it’s like trying to pick between a large MacIntosh apple, or a just picked McCown apple, both are awesome, but one is just a little bit better.