“Grandma, Grandma.....”

“Every American, BY LAW, should be required to see the Grand Tetons at dawn,” I said to my friend **** as she entered the Canandaigua YMCA pool for our aquacise class.
Yrs trly has been doing aquacise for the past couple months to hopefully improve his balance, which is dreadful.
I was poolside practicing get-ups.
What prompted this was the YMCA had their gizmo on that roils the water in their kiddie-pool; a pump that blasts water toward the surface creating turbulence.
“They got the jet on,” **** had said.
“Yeah, but it ain’t Yellowstone,” I said. “Ever been to Yellowstone?” I asked.
“Why yes I have,” **** said.
“All kinds of crazy stuff is going on in there,” I said. “Bubbling stink-pots, geysers, foaming mud-bogs.”
“Ever seen the Grand Tetons at down?” I asked.
**** thereupon related her Tetons story.
“Grandma, Grandma, Grandma,” her grandchildren said, running back to their campsite in lee of the Tetons.
“The Ranger just told is ‘Tetons’ is French for ‘tits.’”
“Why thank you, ****. I’ll hafta tell all my friends.”
“For 40 years we lived on Long Island. Go out at night, and ya might see a couple stars.
Co out west, and....”
“Billions and billions of stars,” I interjected; “just like Carl Sagan said.
We’re at some campground in Colorado, 10,000 feet. I step outside in the dark, and ‘billions and billions of stars.’
And I could hear coyotes yipping. Ya don’t get stuff like that around here.
I walk out of a supermarket in Jackson Hole, and a gigantic rock-face is across the street. Wegmans ain’t like that.”
“How about Pikes Peak?” I asked. “Every American, by law, should be required to drive the Pikes Peak road.”
“Couldn’t do it,” **** said. “Had to turn around half-way. Scared of heights.”
“Ya don’t make mistakes,” I said. “Thousand-foot drop-offs await.”
And when ya get to the top, ya sing ‘America-the-Beautiful’ at the top of yer lungs. Amber waves of grain to the east, and purple-mountain majesties to the west.
That’s where that was written, first as a poem by Katharine Lee Bates.
It should be our national anthem.”

“O beautiful for spacious skies....”

“That was 1987; only to Montana. 1980 all the way to the Pacific.
Stopped in Monument Valley, the Four-Corners, on the way back, stepped out, and utter silence. No birds, no rustling trees or shrubbery; only the faintly wafting wind.
Don’t know how old **** and her husband are. They may be older than me. I’m 73.
“I’ve always loved traveling,” **** said.
I have this awful feeling appreciation of this nation’s beauty is being lost to SnapChat, Facebook, etc.
Even now we have a prez who governs by Tweet.