Artist Stephen Lyman was inspired by wildlife and wilderness and nowhere more than in his beloved Yosemite Park. There, he could climb the highest point of a crest at 11,860 feet and feel seated on a throne in a place where the universe seemed upside down, as though gravity were irrelevant and the sky around him became an ocean. No wonder Lyman’s muse, naturalist and    con-servationist John Muir, said that from these heights in Yosemite he loved nothing more than to dip his head into the sky.  “On an off-trail backpacking trip, after a steep, strenuous climb up what I thought was the side of the mountain, the rock suddenly dropped away into space and I realized I was on a ridge,” said artist Stephen Lyman. “That experience was the inspiration for this painting. The mountain goats are surveying the expanse of a clearing storm from the ‘end of the ridge.’”