Nature & Travel
Nature and travel based
photography, art and musings
by Maria Sprow
Big Bend - the first mountain I ever loved. I’ve been to Big Bend more times than any other national park, climbed Emory Peak more times than I’ve climbed any other mountain. Big Bend is just a seven-ish hour road trip outside of Austin - a pretty gorgeous seven hours, for the most part. There's a nostalgia to Big Bend. Perhaps it can't help itself, even if you've never been there: Everything about it references a time gone past, the Old, Wild West and back beyond. Big Bend is a place where time both stands still and happens on a larger scale. Unlike other national parks that seem overrun with tourism and traffic and modernity, Big Bend is a vastly remote space. Its roads are open and empty, it's scenery going on for miles and miles and miles. It's the first place I ever seriously hiked, the first national park I ever really visited and home to the first mountain I ever climbed. Years later, I still feel the painful numbness in my legs from my hike up Emory Peak, the real possibility of having to be carried back to the car a just-missed alternate history.
Arizona/Utah
People say "Arizona?" but in just one day, I saw a slot canyon, toad stools, snow, and rainbows. Of course, I’ve spent more than a day in Arizona and Utah. It’s one of those places that, once you’ve been there, your heart just kind of never fully leaves. I get butterflies in my stomach over it. Antelope Canyon, in particular, is a magical study in perspective: any slight shift in the tilt of the camera gave you a different view of the contours and valleys and shadows of the canyon walls. And those canyons? They weave and flow in this winding, cursive way. They are like God scrolling his signature across the desert.
White Sands National Park, New Mexico
A desert with a trillion grains of sand, each one unique, still lacks diversity (but is admittedly stunning in its minimalist complexity). That is how diverse the world is - and how similar we all are, in the grand scheme of things, if only we could see the beauty of our differences and the degree of our similarities. It is hard to see sometimes. That's why you go to the desert.
Michigan
It will always be home. And yet, it was never really home.
The Legend of Sleeping Bear
Do you see the bear? I didn't notice it while I was there because I was too busy with the sunset and recovering from hiking uphill in all that sand but it's there!
This isn't how Sleeping Bear got its name though. It's from a Native American legend. As written on the National Park Service website: "Long ago, along the Wisconsin shoreline, a mother bear and her two cubs were driven into Lake Michigan by a raging forest fire. The bears swam for many hours, but eventually the cubs tired and lagged behind. Mother bear reached the shore and climbed to the top of a high bluff to watch and wait for her cubs. Too tired to continue, the cubs drowned within sight of the shore. The Great Spirit Manitou created two islands to mark the spot where the cubs disappeared and then created a solitary dune to represent the faithful mother bear."
Galapagos
I hesitate to talk about the Galapagos because I want it to stay the same forever. I want to keep it safe. I want to etch it into time, across all time. It’s really that special. The most magical days of my life were swimming with the sea lions and sea turtles and golden rays and seahorses and penguins in Los Tunneles and walking along Tortuga Bay in Puerta Ayora on Isla Santa Cruz, Galapagos. Once you’ve been to the Galapagos, you will never look at the ocean in the same way again. You’ll realize all the incredible reasons why it needs protection.
More Nature & Travel
Bryce Canyon National Park Photography by Maria Sprow/ Artinistic
Quito, Equador Photography by Maria Sprow/ Artinistic
Glacier National Park Photography by Maria Sprow/ Artinistic
Maui, Hawaii Photography by Maria Sprow/ Artinistic
Canyonlands National Park Photography by Maria Sprow/ Artinistic
Arches National Park Photography by Maria Sprow/ Artinistic
Grand Canyon National Park Photography by Maria Sprow/ Artinistic
Mount Revelstoke National Park photography by Maria Sprow/ Artinistic
Yoho National Park Photography by Maria Sprow/ Artinistic