This week, I am at Yosemite National Park in California. I’ve lived in Illinois my entire life and never before have I traveled west of Illinois. Aside from the two hour-long car rides every day and my arm being covered in a thousand bug bites, I am in complete awe.

The majestic waterfalls, the rumbling creeks, the jaw-dropping cliffs. All of it is completely new to me and it is simply amazing. During the day, I climb rocks and during the night, I see a million stars in the sky. I never knew something so beautiful existed...and it’s not man-made.

Since man has entered this world, each and every thing he has touched has altered the path our natural world follows. I think my eighth grade social studies teacher used the best word to describe it when he was talking about Columbus’s trip to America: consequential. Man has not been wholly good or wholly bad, but his presence has caused the world many consequences.

Now I may seem to be rambling and trying to be philosophical, but these have been my thoughts recently. I was actually down in the Yosemite Valley when I first heard the news story about the truck in Nice killing 84 people.

I’m sure you, the reader, have read a million stories and opinions on terrorism. It could be easy for me to be sucked into that whirlwind of hatred and complaining and I imagine you don’t want to read about that. Thus, I hope my recent experiences can give way to a new perspective on terror.

As I was standing in the Yosemite valley the other day, I felt so small. I did a present-ness exercise to fully grasp the depth of my present situation. The exercise is as follows: list five things you can see, four you can hear, three you can touch, two you can smell and one you can taste. For me, here is what I recognized:

1. Sight:
   1. The brown, crooked bark on a gigantic tree that shot at least fifty feet out of the ground.
   2. The rugged cliffs that rose before me, graffitied in a mixture of browns and grays from years in the wilderness.
   3. A squirrel, fuzzy and brown with a white jacket munching on an old orange peel.
   4. My family, tired and sweaty but with looks of contentment on their faces.
   5. A creek to my right with the light glinting off its ever-changing surface.
2. Sound:
   1. That creek, babbling away as it collided with rocks and other currents along its meandering path.
   2. A bird chirping in the distance.
   3. Cars, heard very faintly from the road miles away.
   4. Gravel shifting as it was being traversed by hikers.
3. Touch
   1. The soft leaves of the tree beside me.
   2. My shirt, soaking and sticking to back with sweat.
   3. My camera in my hands as I tried my best to capture the beauty around me.
4. Smell
   1. Bug spray, from the hikers around me protecting themselves from dive-bombing mosquitoes.
   2. Nature, a smell I can’t quite describe, but it is very clean and crisp.
5. Taste
   1. The sweet, sweet water that meets my parched mouth after hours of climbing.

Hopefully, from these descriptions, you can somewhat paint a picture of my hike. I was deeply moved by the peace and calm of the nature around me on this small portion of land unfettered by humans.

Before I went to Yosemite, I heard about acts of terror and sighed sadly. I felt despair, sadness and anger. Now, as I emerge from this wilderness, I am changed. I have seen the Earth without the effects of humans upon it. When I see and hear about horror, I have this image, this snapshot, of Yosemite on my mind.

Nature doesn’t have evil, nature doesn’t kill millions of innocent people for no reason. I remain deeply saddened by the violence and savagery I see in the world. But now with this new perspective, I see our world almost falling apart, but I have hope because as long as patches of heaven, like Yosemite, remain and us humans are committed to allowing them to remain, there must still be good in the world.