Photographing nature has always been a passion of mine.

I got my first camera at a very young age, and ever since then I have been obsessed with taking time to go out and explore as much as I can, finding those perfect shots. During the summer of 2017, I spent some time exploring some national parks in the Southwest United States. I find that to this day I am still sorting through my photos and reminiscing about all of the time I spent enjoying adventure after adventure.

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An excerpt from my photo journal during this trip:

“Gentlemen, why in heaven’s name this haste? You have time enough. […] Ages and ages lie before you. Why sacrifice the present to the future, fancying that you will be happier when your fields teem with wealth and your cities with people? In Europe, we have cities wealthier and more populous than yours, and we are not happy. You dream of your posterity; but your posterity will look back to yours as the golden age, and envy those who first burst into this silent, splendid nature, who first lifted up their axes upon these tall trees, and lined these waters with busy wharves. Why, then, seek to complete in a few decades what the other nations of the world took thousands of years over in the older continents? […] Why, in your hurry to subdue and utilize nature, squander her splendid gifts? […] Why hasten the advent of that threatening day when the vacant spaces of the continent shall all have been filled, and the poverty or discontent of the older States shall find no outlet? You have opportunities such as mankind has never had before, and may never have again. Your work is great and noble; it is done for a future longer and vaster than our conceptions can embrace. Why not make its outlines and beginnings worthy of these destinies, the thought of which gilds your hopes and elevates your purposes?”

– Lord James Bryce

It is often that we find ourselves taking this beautiful planet for granted. With recent events, it seems that the temporary lifespan of nature has been forgotten. It may not seem temporary- as our lives last a millisecond within the realm of earth’s life- but the impact we have on the natural world is the most toxic opponent the earth has come up against since the meteors and asteroids that scarred the surface of our planet millions of years ago. While you are enjoying snapshots of some of the most artistic masterpieces that our country has to offer, landscapes that can never be recreated once they’re gone, I ask you to think of the personal impact you have on our planet.

Our home is precious to me, and many others, and has been for so many through the generations. Famed founder of the Sierra Club, John Muir once vigorously advocated the importance of protecting our natural wonderlands here in the United States as Natural Parks to President Theodore Roosevelt, who upon arriving in the Yosemite Valley, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon found himself in the midst of something much bigger than his mere human experience. Roosevelt, with the help of Muir and others, decided not only to protect these masterpieces but to give it to the people, which still allows us to enjoy these wonders to this day. This will not be the case if protections cease to exist. These places and the living things that reside in them deserve to be preserved because they were here on this earth much before you and I. From the tallest of the Sequoias to the smallest beginnings of a hoodoo in the Bryce Canyon’s Amphitheater, or to the animals making these places their home, their world is just as important as you and I and our own little worlds we live in day by day.

I fell in love with the spontaneity and the spectacle of nature, and I am now vowing to do as much as I can to protect it. From the smallest acts like recycling paper and reducing our own use of plastic, we can move forward not only in innovation but in health and a higher level of being. Let nature take its course, do not taint the natural world with your industrial hands. We will not be able to sustain ourselves without the natural world, and the natural world can no longer sustain itself without our care. Next time you find a new beautiful nook in a part of the world, remember to think about what life might be like if it was destroyed.