Picture this, the bluest sky, a redolent blue, a blue that's both calming and arousing to most any eye.

A swaying pendulous river, the Merced.

It gives tribute to Mother Earth through the chorus of its rapids, dramatically

arcing through the valley it helped create. The river, therefore, is a living

thing. It falls over staircases of stone, ripples through flowering

meadows, groves of trees hum along its side both with breeze and bird song.

The Mercede dances its side, both with breeze and bird song.

The Mercede dances to its own melodies.

Some places, it silences itself, giving it peace.

The river is like a liquid prayer. The surface of the water reflects all that's above it.

A prayer turned into a mirror, a mirror of that blue heaven.

Beneath that blue and above the river and its tapestries of grasses and flower-wets that hug its shores are

towering edifices of stone.

A collection of cliffs, buttresses, and pinnacles rise from the valley floor, taking hands and rigid gratitude

to the gods.

Made of granite, graniteorite, tonalite, quartz monzonite, the names of the rocks creating these towers aren't as important as what

they've created. A Granatic Glory. Picture that and now picture a lone man eager to photograph it

when there was no Yosemite National Park where he's now standing, much less any sort of road to get to it.

He's one of the first white men to ever see this particular splendor.

Picture a man with all the photographs. to ever see this particular splendor.

Picture a man with all the photographic equipment needed to capture it right then.

Taking note that photography itself was only 22 years old

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