Just a few images from the Yellowstone Country.

Just because.

It had been years since we had visited Artist's Point, the overlook on the south side of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone that gives such an impressive view of the yellow, rugged canyon and, more importantly, the Upper Falls.

A man taking pictures of his wife with the falls in the background, so hesitant about letting me take his camera and get a picture of them both together.

"Nah, I sleep with her," he said, as if that made any sense.

But they let me take the shot, just the same.

The young couple, likely to be newlyweds, or at least newly a couple, who asked me to do the same for them. The third couple at that point.

"You're never going to get out of here," the young man sympathized, as his companion awkwardly snuggled close for the shot.

Then there was the other couple, the silent ones half hidden in the trees on the trail out to the overlook. Him carefully stroking away on his sketch pad, jars of colours set carefully on the rock wall near him. His companion sitting peacefully, unbored at his side, quietly watching him draw as she nibbled on their lunch.

We saw them again later that day, sitting on a bench in the Upper Geyser Basin, shortly after the wife and I had suffered only the third serious argument of our quarter-century of marriage. Him scratching away at his pad, a little more furiously this time, perhaps because the light was waning, her looking just as patient as before, but this time watching the splendor around them.

I feel as if we have entered the gate into Mordor. A land where trees are ripped down for their wood, the land ravaged for greed. We've been here before, and survived. The land will heal itself, given enough time.

But I so dread the journey.