Lovely in its contours...

I’ve read many descriptions of this place. Before I came here, I combed the internet for writings on Montana and Glacier, for people who might be able to describe this place to me like Edward Abbey describes the desert… But how can one describe such beauty in words? Human language can only begin to describe these vistas, the sense of awe, the feeling that there is truly something greater than ourselves.
But I’ve been reading Doug Chadwick’s book on Wolverines here in Glacier, and his writings have certainly come the closest to describing my feelings about this place. Here is how he describes Glacier and why he works here:

“Lovely in its contours, breathtaking in scale, the reserve spans a nearly 60-mile length of the Montana Rockies just south of the Canadian border. It’s a million acres of Continental Divide topography, a superstructure of tilted rock layers, white, tan, gray, grayish green, wine red, and more than a billion years old. They have tales to tell of great forces at play on the planet, and their stories soar. They shine with alpenglow. They sing in your eyes. They make you want to stay strong for another century, because while you think you could maybe face dying, you can’t deal with the idea of one day becoming too old and weak to ramble among these summits any longer.”

I also can’t deal with the idea of one day being too old to ramble the lovely contours of the earth. Wherever I live in the future, it’s going to have be near mountains.