This planet

(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

Risk

(Sitting on the edge of the world II.  Pike’s Peak, Colorado)

Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life.

~ Herbert Otto

No boundary line to art

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom.  If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.  They teach you there’s a boundary line to music.  But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

~ Charlie Parker

A little music to go with this can be found here.  Enjoy.  🙂

A small part

(Wasp on goldenrod.)

No small part of the earth is insignificant.  There is nothing in nature that doesn’t have purpose.

~ Gary Thorp

The one contained within

(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

Sitting in silence

(Sitting on the edge of the world.)

We sit silently and watch the world around us.  This has taken a lifetime to learn.  It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content.  The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence.  It is a waste, for silence is pure.  Silence is holy.  It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking.  This is the great paradox.

~ Nicholas Sparks

I took this photo when we were at the top of Pike’s Peak in Colorado (altitude of 14,115 feet).  We were, in some spots, above the clouds that day.  I’m not sure what the couple in the photo could see from there as I didn’t walk down that far (and it was quite a distance from where I stood to take the photo).  Perhaps they were just enjoying the bird’s eye view of the clouds and/or each other’s company.

One living organism

(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.

Growing clouds

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

Appearances

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

The absolute and marvelous

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