timeless wonder of walking through time
Posted by madameblogalot at 9:40 am in life

Yesterday on PBS I watched a few minutes of a show that was all about several of our National Parks. It spoke about the treasure these are for each one of us and how we need to care for them and protect them. Within the space of just a few minutes, I had virtually visited Olympia National Park in Washington, Glacier National Park in Montana, Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming and the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. I would love to see these (I’ve seen a couple of these) and many others in real life.

As I thought about the title of the show, Timeless, I recalled a book I have only half read. The book, The Man Who Walked Through Time, is about one man’s journey on foot through the Grand Canyon. He talked about being absorbed by thoughts of time. How “timeless” things can seem when you are alone in a canyon. How the way we use our time when in the “outside” world differs from the way he used and noted time while in the canyon. He also was drawn by thoughts of his own place in time. His own twenty or thirty years were minuscule in light of the ages that were drawn on the face of the cliffs of the canyon.

The dual ideas of timelessness and walking through time were fascinating to me as I ruminated over the weaving of these two thoughts. I guess time has always been a fascinating idea to me and many other people over the course of history. We love to dream about traveling through time. I think Colin Fletcher may have had the idea that he indeed was traveling through time while walking the timeless wonder of the canyon.

timeless wonder of walking through time has 5 Comments

  1. I’ve not read that book, but I have hiked in the bottom of the Canyon a little, and the time link to the distant past is remarkable there, perhaps more than anywhere else I’ve ever been.

  2. that is so awesome, in the true sense of the word. I have not finished the book but Fletcher seemed so drawn my the idea of time, even using the idea in his title. It must make an awesome impression indeed.

  3. one thing that he notes is how he has to try to wrap his mind around the idea of what kind of span millions of years is….

  4. Colin Fletcher had some interesting things to say about time as he saw it recorded in the Grand Canyon. By the way, Ken Burns is was in Glacier Park this summer filming for his next PBS series which is to be about National Parks. When one looks closely at them—the ripple marks and shells in the rock, the strata and when they were created, the work of glaciers–one can easily feel what Fletcher felt when he hiked through the canyon.

    Malcolm

  5. very cool Malcolm! I’ll have to be on the watch for Burns’ new film, thanks!

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