“Gardens were far from my mind in the High Sierra. I was on a months-long backpacking hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, which was buried beneath the vast snowfields we were struggling through.

At this elevation, 11,500 feet [3,505 meters], the dazzling summer sun melts snow into patterns of soft ‘cups,’ which greatly inhibit hiking. There is beauty in infinite fields of snow cups. They are graceful. But it’s hard to focus on their beauty after days of plunging through them.

One day, around noon, my hiking partner Will Gray stopped and pointed straight down. A swallowtail butterfly was resting in a snow cup. The scene held us for some time. When we plunged on, the butterfly was still there, an improbable jewel in a garden of snow.”

—From the National Geographic book Seeing Gardens, 2000