Power

force of nature

Backlit translucent green wave curling between dark rocks at sunset, spray blowing off its crest, a rocky headland behind

The wave

A wave rears up between the rocks and the low sun shines straight through it — for one second the whole swell is lit green glass.

Black-and-white waterfall crashing down a dark granite cliff into a boulder-strewn gorge, mist billowing upward

Noise

A waterfall hits the wall so hard it stops being water — just a roar of mist climbing back up the cliff it fell from.

Waves crashing against sea stacks on a rocky shore at sunset under pink clouds, a bird perched on the tall rock at right

Ocean

Sunset on a rocky shore, the surf throwing itself at the sea stacks again and again while a lone bird keeps watch from the rock.

Water

Long exposure at the foot of a waterfall — water combed to silk over the rock steps, and one fallen log wearing a coat of moss where the spray never stops.

Empty two-lane road curving toward snow-dusted Teton peaks under dramatic clouds, autumn-gold meadow grass on either side

Grand teton

An empty road bends toward the Tetons — fresh snow on the peaks, the meadow gone to autumn gold, and cloud pouring over the ridge like the range is breathing.

Geyser erupting from a white mineral-crusted basin, a tall column of water and steam against a blue sky with streaked clouds

Yellowstone

A geyser lets go — boiling water thrown into the wind and a wall of steam rolling across the basin, the ground around it crusted white with minerals.

Bryce canyon

Sunset takes the amphitheater like a slow fire — a thousand hoodoos burning orange while winter's snow holds out in the shadows between them.

Dirt path passing between two massive redwood trunks in a sunlit forest, ferns lining the trail and green canopy above

Redwoods

The trail slips between giants that were old before any of our names for them — bark like canyon walls, ferns at their feet, daylight arriving secondhand through the crowns.

Backlit steam rising from a hot spring, the low sun glowing through the vapor, terraced mineral pools reflecting the blue sky in the foreground

Grand prismatic

The earth runs hot under this water — steam torn from the spring catches the low sun and burns, while the terraces step the heat down pool by pool toward the cold morning.

Glacier surface with broken blue seracs and crevasses emerging from wind-sculpted snow, dark rock at the edges

Kenai ice

Ice is the whole country in Kenai Fjords National Park — seracs stacked like broken masonry, crevasses lit blue from within, a glacier moving too slowly to see and too surely to stop.

Aerial view of a banded sandstone butte rising above painted desert badlands, distant blue mountains on the horizon under a bright sky

Vermilion cliffs

The desert holds up one last fortress in Vermilion Cliffs National Monument — a butte ribbed and banded like old armor, shedding itself grain by grain into the badlands below.

Frost-whitened cliff and snow-dusted evergreens in fog above a band of bright orange and yellow aspens on an autumn hillside

The cold coming down

The cold doesn't ask — it comes down the wall in fog and frost, whitening every fir on its way, while the last aspens burn orange against a season that always wins.

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