A beautiful day hiking in Teton Canyon up to Table mountain a few weeks ago. I found this poem in "Risking Everything" (Roger Housden) a few weeks later. It is exactly how I wanted to describe the experience at the time.





This Only...

A valley and above it forests in autumn colors.
A voyager arrives, a map led him here.
Or perhaps memory. Once, long ago, in the sun,
When the first snow fell, riding this way
He felt joy, strong, without reason,
Joy of the eyes. Everything was the rhythm
Of shifting trees, of a bird in flight,
Of a train on the viaduct, a feast of motion.
He returns years later, has no demands.
He wants only one, most precious thing:
To see, purely and simply, without name,
Without expectations, fears, or hopes,
At the edge where there is no I or not-I.
-Czeslaw Milosz