“Green was the silence, wet was the light,
the month of June trembled like a butterfly.”-Pablo Neruda
“I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.”
-L. M. Montgomery
“It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.”
-Maud Hart Lovelace
Tag Archives: Nature
That’s How the Light Gets In
“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”-Leonard Cohen
It’s all about the light. As a photographer and lover of all the wonder, I look for light continually. It is there to be found. We naturally gravitate to it, we revel in it, we bathe in its warmth, dance in its radiance, savor its luminance of all the wonders around us.
When darkness comes, light a candle, sit close and peer into the flame-light. Wait for the sunshine. We can trust that it will come, through the cracks and around the obstacles. Until then, “ring the bells that still can ring, and forget your perfect offering!”
Little Wonders (There are No Weeds) – A Gallery of Photos
Ruth Bebee Hill, in her book of the Lakota, Hanta Yo, first introduced me to the nonexistence of a “weed”. I was in my twenties when I first read her words and hadn’t thought of a weed in just that way before. In her dedication to authenticity, the author translated the entirety of her book to the Lakota language from English, then back to English again for publication (this has since been disputed). She stated that she had a deep sense that she had not captured the essence of the Lakota experience on her first try in English, and in learning the language, and therefore the worldview and conceptual landscape the culture lived in, she was able to give the reader a more true feel and understanding of the life and connections of the Lakota (ethnologists again disagree). No word for “weed” exists in the Lakota language (this I believe they do agree on!). They do not have a concept for a throw away or non-respected plant in their world. There is an honoring of all that is given as useful, unique and sacred. This is a good way of living on the planet.
I captured these images (slideshow will load below) in my yard and woods. Not planted and unplanned, these living wonders are gifts given by nature. Beautiful and appreciated beyond measure. Certainly not “weeds”.
Bloom Where You’re Planted
“Just let go. Let go of how you thought your life should be, and
embrace the life that is trying to work its way into your consciousness.”~ Caroline Myss
“Bloom Where You’re Planted”
-Saint Francis de Sales
“Happiness is not in our circumstance, but in ourselves, it is not something we see, like a rainbow, or feel like the heat of fire, happiness is something we are.”
-John B. Sheerin
Certainly I have waited for… perfect circumstances, a perfect body, a perfect life – to know happiness.
There is no more waiting. Now I am blooming every day, where I am, accepting all that IS. I know happiness. It is here now. It is in spite of, and embracing of, all that is. Yes, we can all, bloom where we’re planted.
“I live most often in what I call the marvelous messy middle- where I feel ALL my feelings deeply, I just don’t spend so much time in the negative ones. “
-Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy
The Most Beautiful Place on Earth
“This is the most beautiful place on earth.
There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary.”-Edward Abbey
This is the most beautiful place on earth. These words by Edward Abbey come to mind this morning, this perfect morning, at home. “There are many such places”. And there are. I have been away from home for ten days and have seen many of these most beautiful places – Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, Craters of the Moon, The Nez Perce Trail, Capital Reef… Landscapes so varied and divine as to be overwhelming. Wondrous.
But no less wondrous are the home woods… deep forests and tall trees, 
raven conversations, 
deer family 
visits, chipmunks, 
dandelions, luxuriant green carpets, stone song, bees buzzing, one perfect sky-blue butterfly, tiny wild violets, the sunlight on the new maple leaves…
Yes, there are wonders everywhere. Beauty. Connection. Spirit.
Home holds me. The most beautiful place on earth.
New Life
Craters of the Moon allows a glimpse of the new earth, recently formed. The black lava slowly accepts life – tiny flowers dot the landscape everywhere, 
lichens help provide soil, little trees gain purchase.
Nature sculptures invite the eye to linger. It is so quiet – but life is stirring.
Zion National Park – A Gallery of Photos
A Sanctuary of Peace and Refuge
Zion. The word evokes a place of sanctuary – of peace and refuge. The majestic red rocks of Zion National Park are in a state of continual change. The feeling of ancient wisdom, calm, peace, and movement – of evolving – are so palpable here. A deep knowing energy pervades the air, the earth, the rocks.
“Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution?
I suspect that it does…”
-Edward Abbey
Large Cathedrals and Small Chapels
Here immersed in these extravagant wonders formed over millennia, are cathedrals of stone so immense they cover an expanse as far as the eye can see. Within these grand cathedrals, in every nook, are small chapels of amazement. Every glance a testament, a long look a revelation. An acknowledgement.
“A weird, lovely, fantastic object out of nature like Delicate Arch has the curious ability to remind us—like rock and sunlight and wind and wilderness—that out there is a different world, older and greater and deeper by far than ours, a world which surrounds and sustains the little world of men as sea and sky surround and sustain a ship. The shock of the real. For a little while we are again able to see, as the child sees, a world of marvels. For a few moments we discover that nothing can be taken for granted, for if this ring of stone is marvelous then all which shaped it is marvelous, and our journey here on earth, able to see and touch and hear in the midst of tangible and mysterious things-in-themselves, is the most strange and daring of all adventures.”
-Edward Abbey
Stone Poetry
The ranger at the entrance station for Bryce National Park provides a brochure that explains the science behind the majestic spires, cathedrals, layers of colors, sculptures… but the facts can’t prepare you for the wonder of it all. The scale, the quiet, the sacred feeling that pervades – all are immense. Travelers talk in whispers. We glance at each other with a sort of shrug that says, “How can we take in all this?” It is sacred, it is all encompassing, it is peace.
“If a man knew enough he could write a whole book about the juniper tree. Not juniper trees in general but that one particular juniper tree that grows from a ledge of naked sandstone near the old entrance to Arches National Monument.”
-Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire, A Season in the Wilderness
