Articles Cooperation by Tom Carney Cooperation G oing to the High Sierras each summer has become something of a ritual for my family. One of the things I like most about these jaunts is the experience of the sheer beauty of nature. There is something special about the high country in Yosemite. The atmosphere is charged with energy that one can actually hear. A new and completely different panoramic vista appears around every bend and tugs one's attention from the inspection of a Mariposa lily or a group of pussy-paws or lupine or shooting stars.
Beauty abounds on a scale that runs from tiny to sky size.
To wake up at one or two in the morning and to go outside and look up is a complete surprise, a wonder of indescribable proportion. In the daylight hours, enormous towering white clouds appear to be alive and intelligent as they follow mysterious, but somehow purposeful, paths across a sky so blue it is hard to believe. When the clouds mass and block the sun, turning day to practically night, a whole other horizon-wide drama of epic proportions unfolds. After fifteen minutes or an hour or two, holes open in the clouds and a new act of ethereal beauty of pastel light and color starts. For a conscious and observant person, the play only stops when one falls asleep.