(Looking into the eye of a horse.)
A lovely horse is always an experience… It is an emotional experience of the kind that is spoiled by words.
~ Beryl Markham
Nature
There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory. We have forgotten this language. We do not even remember that it exists.
~ Derrick Jensen
The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair admist the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
(Painted Mines. Colorado.)
I have a friend who feels sometimes that the world is hostile to human life — he says it chills us and kills us. But how could we be were it not for this planet that provided our very shape? Two conditions — gravity and a livable temperature range between freezing and boiling — have given us fluids and flesh. The trees we climb and the ground we walk on have given us five fingers and toes. The ‘place’ (from the root plat, broad, spreading, flat) gave us far-seeing eyes, the streams and breezes gave us versatile tongues and whorly ears. The land gave us a stride, and the lake a dive. The amazement gave us our kind of mind. We should be thankful for that, and take nature’s stricter lessons with some grace.
~ Gary Snyder
(Wasp on goldenrod.)
No small part of the earth is insignificant. There is nothing in nature that doesn’t have purpose.
~ Gary Thorp
(A hole in the brambles.)
There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.
~ Hermann Hesse
(Mushrooms found early one morning in Rocky Mountain National Park.)
Always think of the universe as one living organism, with a single substance and a single soul.
~ Marcus Aurelius
An interesting little clip to go with the post can be found here.
How to Grow Clouds
It takes a lot of work: it is necessary to weed very carefully, to toss out muck and small stones by hand, to kneel on the earth, bend over, dig about in the soil, water profusely, collect caterpillars, exterminate aphids, loosen the ground and serve the earth; when your back hurts from all this and you straighten up and look at the sky, you will have the prettiest clouds.
~ Karel Capek
Reality has changed chameleonlike before my eyes so many times that I have learned, or am learning, to trust almost anything except what appears to be so.
~ Maya Angelou
If a man’s imagination were not so weak, so easily tired, if his capacity for wonder not so limited, he would abandon forever such fantasies of the supernal. He would learn to perceive in water, leaves and silence more than sufficient of the absolute and marvelous, more than enough to console him for the loss of the ancient dreams.
~ Edward Abbey
Bountiful Healing 