Why I love living here

I do it often, but never enough, so here I say it once again:
Thank you God, that I managed to stumble my way across Canada in order to end up here, in beautiful British Columbia.
We are so blessed here, to have these visual wonders surround us with such appreciable abundance. It's hard to stay depressed, or to live without faith for a positive future, when you live with so much to be grateful for.
In fact, wouldn't it be fair to say that it's actually harder to stay depressed, than it is to have one's sadness subside, once you spend a few hours submerged in the beauty of nature..?

I'm grateful for the humbling smallness that befalls me when I stare out at nature's gallery of treasures, such as were on display throughout the mountain park I accidentally visited this afternoon. (I got lost and in so doing found a new world to explore) It's a useful check to one's vanity, to measure oneself within such awe-inspiring splendors. Who could see their personal problems as the most important things in the world, when the world stares back at you and serves up such an endless feast for the senses? What makes our lives valuable in a world that seems so complete without us? What elevates our personal concerns higher than the heights of these trees, these mountains, higher than the sky above us all?
What is so special about us, compared to the awe-inspiring glory we find ourselves in?

The answer takes a while to come, but when it does it is as clear and obvious as the beauty around us: we can feel awe at what we see, therefore we fit in. We are indeed crucial in making nature special, since it is special for us. In itself nature is nothing, it is by our relationship to it that it possesses any meaning at all. So long as we can feel an appreciation for nature's beauty, it is then our lives that are beautiful.

As mankind stumbles its way through attempts to find a balanced harmony with nature, entertaining the blasphemy that the beast of man can be welcome amid such beauty, the winding well-kept trails and welcome park benches speak to the ennobling commitments we make to be of service to our fellow men. If we should forget our ties with nature, it would only be through neglecting our Covenant with our fellow men, a commitment easily renewed by the curiosity to go searching for further splendors, to share with future seekers of natural beauty. We dare justify our existence alongside the marvels of nature by the manner in which we enter into harmonious relationships with others; when considering the dormant brute that lies within man, harmony between men is surely the greater marvel.
Blessed are those granted the good fortune to appreciate it.

All I could think of today, while soaking in one view after another, each more memorable than the last, was all the people I am blessed to know, that I could invite with me the next time I come this way again.

For what good is good fortune, unless is it shared?