We dream about these things — the moment we’ll first hold our babies snug in shaky yet sturdy arms, their first words/steps/soccer matches/graduations/and on and on. We also dream in technicolor about the moment we along with our children will first gaze out upon the sunken depths of Earth at Bryce and the Grand Canyon, and when, together, we will first see the geysers of Yellowstone National Park.
Maybe your exact moments are and will be different, but we all have them, those crystal clear visions of family life adventures we will someday share with the people we hold most dear. I’ve been fortunate to see many of my dreamed about moments become realities, including that Yellowstone scene I described above.
It was perfect, that adventure, that moment — absolutely picture perfect.
The drive into the famed Yellowstone Valley, where bison roam free and geysers exhale, is mildly tedious. There are stretches of not-so-much-to-see which, if framed properly, serve to elevate the anticipation for the moment when, alas, there is so very much to behold.
I was driving the Sedona on that bland-ish patch of open road on our initial foray into the park from our cabin in West Yellowstone when we came to catch our first sight of the famous steam — a field of white steam rising, blending with the stratus clouds and the sky blue sky. In the foreground of this most iconic landscape were, thanks to it being late-June, an expansive field of golden sun yellow and sage purple wildflowers.
I yanked the minivan off to the right, grinding to a halt on the pebbles that trim the road. Without instruction, the girls — my wife, two daughters, and 20-year-old niece — slid open their side doors and bolted like gazelles on the African plain into this most idyllic American panorama. After 75 yards or so, they plopped down and, without a word, simply were; they were just there with the geysers of Yellowstone, for the first time ever, there among the wildflowers, beneath an unspoiled summer umbrella of big vast sky.
With camera and long lens in hand, and car keys sloshing around in my cargo shorts pocket, I dashed to a spot in that same field some distance behind them. Caught between two minds of simply ‘being there’ myself and capturing their moment of Yellowstone zen, I rather quickly framed this shot, made it, and then stood there, alone but together with my family, allowing the joy of this perfect moment to blow through my salt & pepper hair, a sign of the age it has taken to finally find myself in this moment, with these fantastic people with whom I am privileged to share a life.
For those 2 or 20 minutes, I don’t know how long we were actually in that field of flowers, there was no place else I longed to be and no one else I longed to be with.
Because those kinds of perfect moments can be rare, this is a photograph of a moment I want to focus on forever to remind myself of the calm and beauty that is out there waiting to be discovered by families like mine, like yours, families who long for shared adventures to simply be there and to focus on the moments that matter most in life.
Would you like a chance to win an epic family vacation of your own, complete with the possibility of many moments that matter?
Simply enter HERE, then post one of your favorite family moments to Instagram using the #FocusOnMoments hashtag and you’re in the running!
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a sponsored campaign with Fracture on behalf of their #FocusOnMoments campaign, however the memories are all mine. Check them out HERE, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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