North Cascades National Park
Therefore I declare that man to be an enemy of nature who does not esteem high mountains worthy of long study. Of a truth the highest parts of the loftiest peaks seem to be above the laws that rule our world below, as if they belonged to another sphere. Up there the action of the all-powerful sun is not the same, nor is that of the air or winds. There the snow is everlasting and this softest of substances that melts between our fingers cares nothing for the fierceness of the sun and its burning rays. So far it is from disappearing with the lapse of time that it passes into hardest ice and crystals that nothing can dissolve.
~Conrad Gesner in a letter to James Vogel
