Looking and seeing

(Atop Bald Mountain.  Boulder, Colorado.)

Merely looking at the world around us is immensely different from seeing it.

~ Frederick Frank

To see a mountain

It does not require a large eye to see a large mountain.  The reason is that, though the eye is small, the soul which sees through it is greater and vaster than all the things which it perceives.  In fact, it is so great that it includes all objects, however large or numerous, within itself.  For it is not so much that you are within the cosmos as that the cosmos is within you.

~ Meher Baba

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.

The love of wilderness

… the love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need — if only we had the eyes to see.  Original sin, the true original sin, is the blind destruction for the sake of greed of this natural paradise which lies all around us — if only we were worthy of it…  No, wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.  A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.

~ Edward Abbey (1927-1929), American writer

The destination

From my earliest youth, I have known that while one is obliged to plan with care the stage of one’s journey, one is entitled to dream, and keep dreaming, of its destination.

~ Shimon Peres