This summer Gwen Heerschap, a senior in the department, was one of the recipients of the Roy DeBoer Travel Prize. Below you can read some of the presentation she wrote which ,was given on the October 9th 2013 Common Lecture, and view some of her photographs.
"My proposition was to personify the landscape; to articulate, through writing, photography and sketching, what it feels like to go in.
This concept is something that I fully didn't understand prior to my arrival because I had not yet experienced it and I am not sorry to tell you I still don't fully understand.
I say this because Yosemite National Park... is a place beyond human."
"Yosemite's rich landscape absorbed me more than I could absorb it.
Natures poetic, rhythmical sensations stimulated every pore of my body ....leaving a current that still lingers in me today.
I became entrance from vivid texture of the life and death that surrounded me."
"....the road to the valley widens you along the mountains bringing you so close to the edge there are moments when it seems as if the asphalt is holding onto its side for dear life.
Traveling along this road, I experienced the vista I was seeking to find. The only sound I could form from my mouth was an expression of awe and disbelief.
It left me anxiously wondering how the Earth would reveal itself next.
A short 10 minutes later the road penetrates the side of a mountain forcing you to travel through it and I must inform you, this void in the mountain is really a portal into another universe. "
"Every corner I turned Nature was staring back at me.. laughing in my face, in all her glory.
And all I could do was laugh with her.
To the last hours of this day, I must give credit to a man I met in Yosemite. He arrived at the camp site next to mine on my first morning, offered and served me hot water on my second, confirmed how free spirited California hippies really are and became a mentor on how to become a professional camper and Yosemite explorer.
He told me, if I do anything today, Sunset at Glacier Point had to be it.
This.. is sunset at Glacier Point...
It is Vast and deep, clam and beautiful , eerie and humbling…pure wilderness.
This vista you see here will consume man alive.
It will swallow every human whole and regurgitate them as hosts of its Being.
And Just as the landscape consumed me, the darkness consumed landscape.
Maybe it's the night that made this universe so surreal?
The shadows grew larger and the landscape more still.
It was unclear if this was the earth starting to hold its breath… or beginning a slow.. deep exhale.
I stayed and watched until I could only see faint outlines.
These faint outlines exhilarated the reminder that before me laid pure wilderness filled with layers of deception, clarity, wonder...and life."
