Light. Space. Light and space without time, I think, for this is a country with only the slightest traces of human history. In the doctrine of the geologists with their scheme of ages, eons and epochs all is flux, as Heraclitus taught, but from the mortally human point of view the landscape of the Colorado is like a section of eternity- timeless. In all my years in the canyon country I have yet see a rock fall, of its own volition, so to speak, aside from floods. To convince myself of the reality of change and therefore time I will sometimes push a stone over the edge of a cliff and watch it descend and wait- lighting my pipe- for the report of its impact and disintegration to return. Doing my bit to help, of course, aiding natural processes and verifying the hypotheses of geological morphology. But am not entirely convinced.

Nature says the rock is billions of years old, but the book says different, so even though men wrote the book, and God made the rock and God gave us minds that have found ways to tell how old it is, we still choose to believe the Scripture.

To be young means to be original, to have remained nearer to the sources of life: it means to be able to stand up and shake off the fetters of an outlived civilization, to dare — where others lack the courage — to plunge again into the elemental.

Her enchanted hair was the first gold,
and still she sits, young while the earth is old.

I used to think that eighty was a very old age. Now I am ninety. I do not think this any more. As long as you are able to admire and to love, you are young.

In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.

They were still so young they hadn't learned to count the odds and to sense they might owe the universe a tragedy.

What can poor mortals say about clouds?While a description of their huge glowing domes and ridges, shadowy gulfs and canyons, and feather-edged ravines is being tried, they vanish, leaving no visible ruins. Nevertheless, these fleeting sky mountains are as substantial and significant as the more lasting upheavals of granite beneath them. Both alike are built up and die, and in God's calendar difference of duration is nothing. We can only dream about them in wondering, worshiping admiration, happier than we dare tell even to friends who see farthest in sympathy, glad to know that not a crystal or vapor particle of them, hard or sot, is lost; that they sink and vanish only to rise again and again in higher and higher beauty.

We need to realize that we are as young as our faith and as old as our doubts. We are also as young as our self-confidence and as old as our fears. We are as young as our hopes and as old as our despairs. We will develop faith, self-confidence and hope.

To me, young has no meaning. It’s something you can do nothing about, nothing at all. But youth is a quality. And if you have it, you never lose it.

To arrive in the Rocky Mountains by plane would be to see them in one kind of context,as pretty scenery. But to arrive after days of hard travel across the prairies would be to see them in another way, as a goal, a promised land.

Youth is not an age thing. It's a quality. Once you've had it, you never lose it.

What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew

Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.