And there they were

Just like that, there they were, as if someone pulled a lever to change the scene. Rising abruptly from the surrounding landscape, the Teton Range in Wyoming is stunning. Rugged and snow-covered they are a photographer's and mountaineer's dream. And a dream, too, for those who come upon them.

I had come driving around a curve on the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway on my way to Grand Teton National Park from Yellowstone National Park, and there they were before me. No gradual rise or small hills to alert me to a change in elevation, nope they were simply there. I was momentarily stunned to see such a scene before me and could not muster any words except for "wow." Certainly, it seemed, as I think back now, not an appropriate word for the moment or the grandeur. But perhaps it was as it was the easiest word my breath could make while experiencing a moment of now. For contained in that one word was a multitude of feelings and thoughts—awe, wonder, reverence and a deep sense of the age and majesty of planet number three.

Grand they are and grand they stand. Wow.

Grand!

Grand the plains of the north,

Grand the delta of the south,

Grand the torch of the east,

Grand the canyon of the west,

Grand the land ever new,

Grand the sky hung azure blue,

Grand country of wide span

And

Many American—

Grander still this land loved best:

Is that it is grandly blest!

Have you been to Grand Teton National Park? What did you think and experience when you first saw them?

 Note: The image shown was taken on the west side of the Teton Range in Idaho and does not depict the view from the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway.