Dan's Outside

Can You Believe That?

My wife, Patty, posts the following on her blog:

On Jeopardy Just Now. “Yosemite Falls, the largest falls in the United States, is located in this state.”

The two answers given? Wyoming and Montana.

I share some of my photos on one of my faculty web sites at De Anza College. From time to time a student will ask about the photos and I’ll take a moment to talk about them. Sometimes when the question is, “Where did you take that photo?” I’ll ask the class, “Does anyone know where this is?” Often almost no one knows, even though most of the locations are no more than a day away. Most astonishing, I posted a classic winter view of Yosemite Valley recently and no one in one of my classes recognized the location.

I say this not to criticize my students, but to observe how localized their experience is in many ways and how many of them seem disconnected from their physical surroundings – at least those beyond the local freeways and malls. Very few seem to have gotten out an experienced the astonishing landscape of this state, and many are unaware of how close they are to such things as the Sierra Nevade range, the Great Central Valley, the redwoods, the basin and range country.
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May 7, 2006 - Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary