Friday, November 11, 2016

The Mountains Calling :: Three Hundred Sixteen

Bambi, Alex, Maria, Max, Grant, and William, in the Cleveland National Forest~

"The mountains are calling and I must go."
~John Muir

We literally packed up, and went out to hug trees. It was a good day.

“Look! A trickle of water running through some dirt! I'd say our afternoon just got booked solid!”
~Bill Waterson

“Take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints!”
~Chief Seattle

“Don't be ashamed to weep; 'tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.”
~Brian Jacques

“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.”
~J.R.R. Tolkien

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.”
~Anne Frank

“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.”
~EB White

“Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."
~George Eliot

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”
~Rachel Carson


“Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.”
~Cree prophecy

“Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.”
~Oscar Wilde

“I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house."
~Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.”
~Jimmy Carter

“Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn--that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness--that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.”
~Jane Austen


“I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it.”
~William Shakespeare


"When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

Wendell Berry

“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.”
~Gary Snyder

“How I go to the woods...

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of
praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much.”

~Mary Oliver

“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It's so fuckin' heroic.”
~George Carlin

With Infinity More Monkeys, a picture a day.

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