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The Most Beautiful Place in the World
I was born in the most beautiful place in all the world! Seriously…according to my mom. Actually, she wasn’t wrong. Our isolated valley high in the Rocky Mountains of western Wyoming is pretty stunning to see. My great-grandparents on both sides of my family were among the original settlers. It has long winters, but even then the scenery doesn’t fail to meet the standard of spectacular. There are towering mountains, with red cliff faces, and other peaks that are blanketed with pine trees. The aspens form a fluttering skirt of pale green leaves at the base of these mountains all summer. Then those leaves turn a brilliant yellow in the autumn. A couple of rivers meander down the middle, and supported the beaver that enticed my trapper/mountain man ancestor to move there. Those same rivers also created succulent meadows that the farmer ancestor realized would feed dairy cows that could sustain his family when they arrived in wagons. It remains a place of beauty today.
But, when I left the Most Beautiful Place in the World, with my newly-wed Navy husband, we got to live in….the most beautiful place in the world: Southern California! The ocean! The mountains! The sunsets! The endless fields of strawberries, tomatoes, and flowers!! Look at the black, rich soil! Why, all you have to do is drop seeds in the ground and they just grow like crazy. Seriously, I had gigantic geranium plants tumbling down the slopes of my yard. Before that, a geranium had been an exotic houseplant that my mother nurtured carefully in the south-facing windows of our farmhouse living room. Their brilliant red blooms were a vivid contrast to vast, white world that stretched beyond the glass for so many months of the year there. And, I could never get enough of the ocean when I lived near it. The sound of the waves varied from the gentle lapping in the channel of Dog Beach, to the ferocious explosions when a storm smashed the roiling green water onto the rocks at Sunset Cliffs. I tried to be near it as often as possible–early in the morning, on a lazy summer afternoon with the kids, or at the end of one of those drenching rainy days, when the clouds broke up just before the sun went down, filling the sky with a whole palette of purple, blue, and gold.
After years of West Coast life, we got a job transfer. We moved 3000 miles east to the shore of the Chesapeake Bay. It was quite a shock. There were more trees in the Maryland county where we lived than I’d seen in my entire life, altogether. Each road was simply a tunnel of trees. Big, gorgeous, magnificent trees! Surely this had to be the most beautiful place in the world! Fall came, those trees turned red and gold and you almost had to wear sunglasses on a cloudy day just to deflect the flaming glow as you drove through those autumn tree tunnels. All the leaves fell off, eventually, leaving the tunnels just dark, damp trunks that glistened in the wintry rain. But one February morning, I glimpsed glowing, white bits of brightness peeking out from the forests of wet, leafless oak trunks. I pulled off the road to see what was catching the morning sun and gleaming out from the dull grayness. Dogwood trees! Their symmetrical white flowers bloomed on the branches, scattered through-out the whole county. Shortly after that, we were treated to azaleas, lilacs, then more and more flowers popped up, and tiny green buds formed on the dark limbs of the maples and oaks. One afternoon, I came up over the top of a small hill, and spread before me was spring!! The stunning spread of that special greenness blanketed the whole world. Everything that grew had a blossom, then new leaves, and as the weeks moved on to the summer solstice, the green deepened and spread, and more plants contributed their blossoms to the whole effect, until it looked like what the Garden of Eden must have been. The flowering continued all summer and into the fall, as the leaves again began their changes. Even then, more plants found their time to bloom, until the bright green holly leaves, punctuated with red berries, were alone to herald the season of the herald angels.
About a decade ago, we returned to the West. This time—the Mojave Desert. It is close enough to visit the grandchildren, but we’ll never experience 20 below zero. Have you ever been here? Did you know that it is the most beautiful place in the world? Dawn is spectacular…the sky gradually grows lighter, then the sun peeps up over the mountain obliterating all the long shadows that preceded its appearance. But sunset and twilight are even more captivating. There are limitless shades of orange and purple in the desert sky that slowly fade from one to another. The palm trees are silhouetted against the last bit of the deep indigo as tiny bats swoop up and down and around, snatching their supper from the air. Desert mountains are mostly devoid of trees. Some have small, tough plants that find a way to pierce their roots through the sandstone, and grab a hold to sustain life. The tiny leaves absorb every drop of moisture that can be extracted from the meager rainfalls. But the mountains themselves are a wonder. Without the covering of plant life, their geologic story is laid bare. There are layers of colors, and patterns of swoops and swirls that reveal the upheavals of tectonic action eons ago. The colors change tones throughout the day as the sun’s rays travel across the surface of their jagged slopes.
How lucky can I be, huh? I’ve lived my whole life in The Most Beautiful Place in the World.
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Wyoming truly is the prettiest State I have been to. My family took a vacation there just a couple of weeks ago and I fell in love with it.
It really is a beautiful country isn’t it? Those are my favorite places as well and dogwoods are one of the highlights of the east. The desert? well tastes differ. I drive through your star valley on my way to Jackson every year or so. The rest of the world is pretty spectacular as well, but there is something special about one’s own places.
Thank you for this! What a way to start my day! Even without the pictures, I saw all the places through your words! What a beautiful writer you are! Thank you!!
In 2000 my wife and I set a goal of playing a round of golf in all 50 states. We accomplished our goal in 2006. We found first hand what a truly beautiful country we live in. We loved the coast of Maine, the Grand Tetons near Jackson Hole, WY. , Yellowstone Park, the Grand Canyon and the Island of Kauai in Hawaii. Many times I thought how great it must be to wake up each morning with this view but each time I happily returned home to my Tennessee Valley. Louis Armstrong said it best, “What a Wonderful World”.
Awesome post, @cowgirl! Thank you :)
The most beautiful place in the world is wherever we find joy with the ones we love. Such an uplifting post – just when we need it. Thank you!
Great post, @cowgirl! This is indeed a country blessed with beautiful places.
I’m a boring creature of habit. There are countless places I would like to see. And I’ve done enough traveling to know what you mean about so many variations of beauty. But there’s only one place I ever want to wake up to.
Dog Beach! Love it. Right by Ocean Beach. My now wife and I spent nights in a camper on side streets there when we were stationed at 32nd Street in the ’80s. (I don’t think you can do that these days.)
These are all beautiful places. My favorite is the south island of New Zealand.
Great post. Great pics. Thanks.
Thank you that was beautiful. That’s exactly how I feel too. I wonder occasionally if I’m just fickle. But actually there IS beauty everywhere and in everyone.
Wonderful post, and so true. It’s so neat that you see the beauty of the desert – most people miss that. It’s a kind of beauty all its own.
I wonder if anybody else here has seen Bicycle Lake in the spring, when the lupine are in bloom? (Sorry – no pictures.)
One cannot improve on this. Your ability, Cow Girl, to write so well, and to capture the beauty of each place, and highlight it’s magnificence, does you proud. You are able to make the best of every place you are, and somehow convey to each person the special qualities you find. You have a gift. A gift of making the best out of each circumstance you find. May you always have that, and, as you have done here, be able to share it with others.
Thank you. And God Bless!!
I wish I were your neighbor just in case any of that joy rubs off!
Cow Girl,
Best post of the year! Thanks so much. (Tied with a few others).
I’m sorry to disagree with you but Tucson is the prettiest place in the world.
I’ll see your Tucson and raise you the Southern Alps beyond Lake Wakatipu in South Island, New Zealand.
There are a hundred vistas in New Zealand as nice or nicer than this one.
With all due respect, I think this is missing the point. I think what the author is trying to get across is that the most beautiful place in the world is where you are. The human heart makes its own beauty. And one can close his or her eyes, and, whether the place is majestic, or a back alley, the majesty is within each of us, and our dreams make the most humble of places the most beautiful spot that ever was!
When I was a sophomore in high school, I went to a little school called Henley High School in Klamath Falls, Oregon. It wasn’t very big, maybe 600 students, but it was where all us Air Force brats went. Many of you probably know that Klamath Falls is on the brown side of the mountains. Because of our size, we didn’t compete with Klamath Falls High School, which had 1,200 or 1,5oo students. That meant that all of the schools we competed against were 60 or 80 miles away. I was on the track team then. We were still in the throes of winter, and everything was brown, heading to a meet in Ashland or Medford. We went over the pass, and 600 or 800 feet below us was a lovely emerald green valley. I remember it to this day.
Just marvelous! Thank you for this.
My husband was stationed at North Island, then Point Loma at the sub base, and then spent a few years at 32nd Street. He was a simulator tech, so he kept all the training devices working. We loved San Diego in the “old” days. I’m pretty sure that you couldn’t live in a camper there these days. We lived there between ’73 and ’87.
Wowie, wowie, wowie!! That is pretty gorgeous!!
One of our daughters lives in Portland. When we visit her, I am in awe of the stunning beauty. We went over to Tillamook to visit once–talk about GREEN!! I noticed that they had no haystacks, and then I realized that those lucky cows get to graze in grassy pastures all year round. Wow. Oregon is also the most beautiful place in the world.
Wonderful post! Of course, if you want it all, you have to come to Michigan: sandy beaches and rocky shorelines, large ocean-like lakes (unsalted & shark-free!), endless numbers of trees, beautiful fall foliage, deserts (well, sand dunes), waterfalls, picturesque covered bridges, beautiful sunsets over seemingly endless water, lighthouses, even mountains (well, pretty tall hills). Some examples:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^This^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
(Though I wouldn’t have been as flowery about it, say, “Beauty is inside, not outside.”
I have several friends who teach at my school who are Michiganders. They’re in the desert because they couldn’t get a teaching job in Michigan. But, after seeing these amazing photos, I may have to come for a vacation in Michigan!! They tell me how gorgeous it is, and you’ve proved it.
Here are a couple of photos that my husband found from the olden days, when we were at Dog Beach. It would have been 1978 from the age of those two children of ours. We were with friends, and I think altogether we had more dogs than children that day.
The van…the bell bottoms…it was a different time.
Yep, that’s the place! Just missed you by a few years.
What a lovely, lovely post. Do you write poetry too?