“Respect the man of noble races other than your own, who carries out, in a different place, a combat parallel to yours — to ours. He is your ally. He is our ally, be he at the other end of the world. Love all living things whose humble task is not apposed in any way to yours, to ours: men with simple hearts, honest, without vanity and malice,
and all the animals, because they are beautiful, without exception and with exception indifferent to whatever idea there may be. Love them, and you will see the eternal in the glance of their eyes of jet, amber, or emerald.
Love also the trees,
the plants,
the water that runs through the meadow and on to the sea without knowing where it goes;
love the mountain,
the desert,
the forest,
the immense sky, full of light or full of clouds; because all these exceed man and reveal the eternal to you”
-Savitri Devi
Tag Archives: Mountains
A Magical Event
“The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?”
– J. B. Priestley
Of Mountains…
Ah Mountains! Providing peace, sustenance, beauty and strength.
They bring a felt sense for me that is very powerful and deeply comforting. I am embraced and absorbed by them. Completely.
The mountains truly and always are a balm for the soul and provide a cleansing for the spirit. I do so love living amongst these sentinels of abiding serenity and power.
“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.”
-John Muir
“Keep close to Nature’s heart…and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”
-John Muir
“The mountains were his masters. They rimmed in life. They were the cup of reality, beyond growth, beyond struggle and death. They were his absolute unity in the midst of eternal change.”
-Thomas Wolfe
“The greatest gift of life on the mountain is time. Time to think or not think, read or not read, scribble or not scribble — to sleep and cook and walk in the woods, to sit and stare at the shapes of the hills. I produce nothing but words; I consume nothing but food, a little propane, a little firewood. By being utterly useless in the calculations of the culture at large I become useful, at last, to myself.”
-Philip Connors
“The mountains are calling and I must go.”
-John Muir
“Mountains seem to answer an increasing imaginative need in the West. More and more people are discovering a desire for them, and a powerful solace in them. At bottom, mountains, like all wildernesses, challenge our complacent conviction – so easy to lapse into – that the world has been made for humans by humans. Most of us exist for most of the time in worlds which are humanly arranged, themed and controlled. One forgets that there are environments which do not respond to the flick of a switch or the twist of a dial, and which have their own rhythms and orders of existence. Mountains correct this amnesia. By speaking of greater forces than we can possibly invoke, and by confronting us with greater spans of time than we can possibly envisage, mountains refute our excessive trust in the man-made. They pose profound questions about our durability and the importance of our schemes. They induce, I suppose, a modesty in us.”
-Robert Macfarlane
“Mountains are not Stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.”
-Anatoli Boukreev
“Emerald slopes became so tall they touched the clouds, and showers painted diamond waterfalls that sluiced down cliff sides.”
-Victoria Kahler
“The mountain has left me feeling renewed, more content and positive than I’ve been for weeks, as if something has been given back after a long absence, as if my eyes have opened once again. For this time at least, I’ve let myself be rooted in the unshakable sanity of the senses, spared my mind the burden of too much thinking, turned myself outward to experience the world and inward to savor the pleasures it has given me.”
-Richard Nelson
Thin Places
Peter Gomes, a Harvard theologian, writes:
“There is in Celtic mythology the notion of ‘thin places’ in the universe where the visible and the invisible world come into their closest proximity. To seek such places is the vocation of the wise and the good — and for those that find them, the clearest communication between the temporal and eternal. Mountains and rivers are particularly favored as thin places marking invariably as they do, the horizontal and perpendicular frontiers. But perhaps the ultimate of these thin places in the human condition are the experiences people are likely to have as they encounter suffering, joy, and mystery.”
Mountains and Rivers and
Mysteries as the clearest communicators between the temporal and the eternal – yes, for me, absorbed in those sacred places in nature and contemplating the Great Mystery, the visible and invisible are almost merged. The veil is thin and the feeling is of a wondrous oneness.
Dawn Comes After Night and Spring After Winter
Nature’s peace and the knowing that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter, brings solace and serenity in all ways,
always…
“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 off like autumn leaves.”
-John Muir
“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
-Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
