It’s been a while since our little jaunt from east to west across America came to an end in San Francisco.  It was really just an extended family holiday but travelling across a continent of such magnificent landscapes and amazing towns and cities always leaves you changed a little.

It’s easy for us to criticise the countries that we live in and to take the incredible privilege of doing so for granted, but when I think back to standing at the Ground Zero Memorial in New York City on this anniversary of 9/11, and when I hear in the news everyday stories of madness and destruction, lack of human rights and freedoms in so many other countries in the world, I realise that America, along with so many other countries where freedom and democracy are regraded as a basic human right, is a pretty good place.

Those spectacular American landscapes and landforms, more than any others that I’ve seen, remind us that the world is very old, much older than any holy book would have you believe.  They were there before we arrived, and they’ll be there long after we’ve gone.  Homo sapiens in all of his/her arrogance doesn’t appear to be capable of realising that the universe isn’t all about tiny, insignificant us, it couldn’t be less so.  But beautiful mountains, plains, lakes, rivers and seas at least give us the chance to see the world as it really is, if only we take the time to look.