Unsung Wonders of the World

 Almost everyone has heard of the seven wonders of the world.  These are places considered awe inspiring by, well, I'm not sure exactly who gets to pick the seven supposedly most amazing places in the world, but I have seen a few and they are indeed amazing.  The Grand Canyon took my breath away when I gazed over the rim.  The Parthenon left me filled with awe by it's magnitude and age.  But I dare say I have seen wonders untold that parallel, if not exceed those known to most of the world. There are not words adequate to describe the beauty and grandeur of these sights, but I will attempt with my limited vocabulary to share them with others.  I have dozens of photographs as a witness to my claims.  I can't share them all here, but I will include some as a testament to my words.

I spent the weekend gold panning in Wyoming.  Did I come back rich?  If you define rich using dollar signs, then the answer is no.  But, since I define rich as the things that will follow me through this life and into the next, then I came back with wealth beyond my wildest imagination.

To all those people who spend their days rushing back and forth on crowded freeways from busy city to busy city, I invite you to venture off the interstate and explore the wide open spaces of the West.  How many times have you heard the words to the song, America the Beautiful, "oh beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain", without ever really knowing what those words looked like in reality? Picture yourself standing in a field of thigh high prairie grass, washing around you like an amber yellow ocean, grassy waves flowing one behind the other.  All around you there is nothing but open air, above you wide, endless skies deep and vibrant blue.  Travel a few miles across the rolling hills of prairie grass and scrubby, pungent sagebrush and there are forests of soaring pine trees with luscious green needles.  Mixed among the pines are clustered groves of shimmering Quaken Asps with their fluttering leaves and knotted white bark trunks.  As we bounce over the rocky roads my senses are flooded by the sights and  scenes around me.  The green of the trees as they touch the blue skies, gathering clouds move above the tree line turning the sky purple and grey.  A sleek, brown doe appears and bounces gracefully across the road in front of us.  We stop the truck and walk down a path to the ghostly buildings of a once bustling town.

All around us the ground is covered with wild flowers, each competing with the others proudly showing off their colors of violet, red, yellow, copper, and white.  The beaver's have reclaimed this abandoned place as their own and moss covered ponds creep up to the entrances to decaying log buildings.  We walk the paths where long forgotten people struggled against the elements for daily survival.  At the top of the hill, sitting inside a  pole fence, sits a lonely cemetery.  Three lone markers sit behind an ornate iron fence, now leaning from years of silently watching over the three young people who lived and played here over a hundred years ago.

Rising against the skyline are magnificent cliffs of massive stones.  An eagle soars across the blue sky.  The sun glints between the trees.  Quietly and almost in reverence I listen to the breeze dance through the branches.  The air smells of flowers, sagebrush and dust.  I am in awe of those who carved out the trails that we walk.

There is no doubt in my mind that if the deciders of what is a wonder of the world were to travel here and walk these paths, they would most certainly call this Wyoming wilderness one of the greatest, most magnificent wonders of the world, and I am wealthy beyond my wildest dreams for having the privilege of spending some of my time in this place.