I have this habit of starting posts and then…nothing. I’ll get a paragraph or two, or sometimes I save a draft with a two sentence idea.  This post, I started in Alaska. I’d just been on a glacier cruise in Wittier, and I was in awe, to say the least. And yet, I felt like it needed more. Instead, I think it just needed a photo or two.

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I’m on the bus between Wittier and Anchorage, just after finishing one of the most spectacular days of travel. And as I sit here, I want to savor every moment. I want to savor the moment when I saw those sea lions, playing on the rocks, and how the glaciers didn’t look so blue because the sun was shining down on us but the sea was that perfect shade of teal. The shade I’ve always associated with the ocean, because it’s the color of the Puget Sound. I want to remember how absolutely thrilled I was to see sea otters playing and swimming around our boat. How cold and crisp the air is here, even only a few days in to fall. How the glaciers, larger than I could have imagined, more beautiful that I could have dreamed, have lost miles of their mass into the ocean due to our planet warming. How these mountains kiss the water as the tide comes in, how the clay bottom of the sound looked as the tide went out this morning.

Because this is why I travel. To experience the newness of life. To taste the beauty of the world. It’s not to check off a list or to brag to my friends. It’s to open my eyes to the beauty of the world. To feel my heart swell with admiration for what this world holds. And I hope that, as I see the beauty in this world, I appreciate it more. That I cherish it enough to do my best to save it for my children, and their children. Because I want them to understand the beauty of Alaska too.

These images can be purchased as prints here.