Four days in Yosemite was enough to fall for the place, and nowhere near enough to see all of it.
The park is the result of millions of years of glaciers moving through granite, carving valleys, polishing domes, and leaving enormous boulders scattered across the landscape as they retreated. Nothing here was planned, yet somehow every element feels precisely placed. There is an unexpected order to the landscape, even in its randomness.
One of my favorite places was Olmsted Point, where enormous granite boulders sit across the landscape with an almost deliberate randomness. Left behind by glaciers, they appear almost staged, as if someone had carefully positioned them. Their monumental scale and simple geometry create spaces that feel both dramatic and remarkably calm: a strange, cool place to wander through and explore.
Tuolumne Meadows was the opposite kind of beautiful: no boulders, no drama, just wide open space.
One highlight was hiking to the top of Mount Hoffmann. The trail passes an alpine lake and moves through dense forest before the landscape opens up completely, giving way to bare granite and alpine meadows. From the summit, Yosemite Valley unfolds below, revealing the scale and complexity of the landscape in a way that is difficult to capture in a photograph. Even North Dome, so imposing from below, looked surprisingly small from above.
The forests also felt distinctly different from those in Europe: wilder, less managed, and more connected to the surrounding landscape. Fallen trees, exposed roots, and natural undergrowth are left undisturbed, creating a sense of wilderness that feels very different from the cultivated forests I’m used to in Europe.
What stayed with me most was the way everything belongs together: pale granite, dark green forests, open meadows, clear morning, and warm evening light. The landscape is at once simple and complex, monumental and intimate. Nothing feels arranged, yet everything seems to fit. It is a reminder that some of the most compelling forms of beauty come from simplicity, scale, material, and a natural response to the place
