Morning Trip (84)

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

Break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapour is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.

Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.

Going to the mountains is going home.

Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.

As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I’ll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.

Everybody needs beauty…places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul alike.

One day’s exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books.

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.”

–source

The Spectacular Average

How do you know when you have been active? Been of value? Been spectacular? average? I came here today as part of my morning habits. And I thought, and I was bothered. I thought about all of the images that I am posting daily on Purple Shoe Photography that no one knows about. I thought of the lack of posts here, because my expression has been leaning more toward the joy of sharing what my eye gets to see. I thought of my idea to post a few images here with links back to my photography blog. I thought of the partial poem that came to me last night, more as an utterance of affection for a loved one, that simply ended in emotion and feeling no longer connected to words and thus incomplete. There is no end to that kind of expression for me, but others, I suppose would not understand the reason for the posting in such a form.

I wonder at the hours spent attached to this chair. I note my observances of one of the children that by looking at her body or listening for a vocal sharing of what activity of value that has occurred that I too, may appear as doing nothing.

I got up this morning and I looked at all of the wonderful things that had sprung (come springing?) forth from the hearts and minds and spirits of those I follow each day. I particularly looked at images of nature and had nearly as much joy as having been to my own Tree Place.

I read about The Gypsies and the Mother Goddess over at Paulo Coelho’s blog. I shifted from listening to Silencio to Dinah Washington while reading.

I moved on to Writing Without Paper, and noted the post today about Sister Beckett. It had a link within it over to PBS. It has been quite a while since I thought to venture there and I am very glad that I did. The video section is different from what I have encountered before there and I viewed John Muir In The New World. I put that link off to the right side menu over there.>>>>
**edit–ok, so I removed the widget since publishing, here is the link– John Muir in the New World–PBS Click to Watch!

I have eaten, taken the required daily steps to keep me functioning, on many levels. And I feel satisfied and full. It is not yet eleven in the morning and I have had days worth of mental input and stimulation for my spirit! I’m headed outside to walk to the nearby park and after, I shall go back to reading a book that I began last night. I finished with the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret yesterday afternoon, upon the suggestion to read given by friend Kathy over at Lake Superior Spirit.

Morning Trip (53)

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.
– The Yosemite (1912), page 256.

Morning Trip (34)

“I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!”
— John Muir

Morning Trip (3)

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. ~John Muir, 1913, in L.M. Wolfe, ed., John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, 1938

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. ~Henry David Thoreau

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. ~Elwyn Brooks White, Essays of E.B. White, 1977