For people like me, who don't grow up with snow, this sort of scene is just jaw-droppingly beautiful

For people like me, who don't grow up with snow, this sort of scene is just jaw-droppingly beautiful.  Enough for me to go wow, and (carefully, slowly) pull over the car on my way to my first visit to Yosemite.

In New Zealand when I was growing up we planned for months in advance for that first time we would go "to the mountain" and would be able to see snow for the first time.  My brother and I laboured over building a sled which I'm fairly sure was somewhat like blind children attempting to devise tools for painting.  And then even so we went in the shoulder season when in New Zealand - in the North Island - the snowline is above the treeline, and "the mountain" is a volcano (all the imporant ones are), so after the treeline we ascended through a kind of Mordor.  A monochromatic terrain of black scoria and patches of snow, until we made it to the place where there were chairlifts, to take us up to where the real snowfields were.

And despite those memories, and these memories, I know now that another ten or fifteen miles down the road from the breathless magical moment when I took this picture, I turned the corner to catch my first glimpse of the amazing valley that is Yosemite.

And after that, after all, it seems this photo is actually fairly dull.

Sorry about that :-)