In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Shadowed.”

Garden of the Gods

Aren’t wonderful childhood memories the best? We lived in Colorado Springs for six years when I was 4 – 9 or so. My favorite memories are of Pikes Peak, Garden of the Gods, playing on my sister’s husband’s family ranch, and Glenwood Springs. I was able to take my husband to all these places in 2011, except the ranch! The family moved. But my last picture showed what things I loved about the ranch, the boulders!

So while there on this particular trip, we also traveled to the top of Pikes Peak where I learned “America the Beautiful” was written – in part and was inspired.  So looking at these shadows, helps one see how this song was created:

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

Written by Katharine Lee Bates, and the music was composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward.