“A man could be a lover and defender of wilderness without ever in his lifetime
leaving the boundaries of asphalt,
power lines, and right-angled surfaces.

We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it.
We need a refuge even though we may never need to go there.”

-John Muir

This entire trip I had been hoping to see a bear. As we were driving out of Grand Teton National Park we saw people pulling over along the road to snap some pictures. I got so excited and asked Ian to pull over too as I realized there was a smallish black bear slowly making his/her way across the valley floor. I grabbed my camera and hopped out of the van as it was still moving an an attempt to get “the shot”.

Looking up from the camera I realized we had become 70 or so humans crowding in on the bear with our zoom lenses and iPhones.

I took a moment to realize that this experience was about so much more than just this ‘shot’ and the photo actually took the beauty out of the moment. As a society we are all (myself included) so caught up in the ‘shot’ and the IG caption, we forget to really just experience life in real-time.

Edward Abbey would have a lot to say about this.  I’ll just say that these wild creatures perched around the Green Space were an interesting enough photo subject for me.