“Although I deeply love oceans, deserts and other wild landscapes, it is only mountains that beckon me with that sort of painful magnetic pull to walk deeper and deeper into their beauty. They keep me continuously wanting to know more, feel more, see more.”
-Victoria Erickson
“The song of the wind softened, gentled. Behind the violence of the birthing of galaxies and stars and planets came a quiet and tender melody, a gentle love song. All the raging of creation, the continuing hydrogen explosions on the countless suns, the heaving of planetary bodies, all was enfolded in a patient, waiting love.”
-Madeleine L’Engle
“Yours are the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen”
-Bernie Taupin
“Stay close to anything that makes you glad you are alive.”
-Hafez
“We seldom think of November in terms of beauty or any other specially satisfying tribute. November is simply that interval between colorful and dark December. Then, nearly every year, come a few November days of clear, crisp weather that makes one wonder why November seldom gets its due.
There is the November sky, clean of summer dust, blown clear this day of the urban smog that so often hazes autumn….
There is the touch of November in the air, chill enough to have a slight tang, like properly aged cider. Not air that caresses, nor yet air that nips. Air that makes one breathe deeply and think of spring water and walk briskly.”-Hal Borland
“In November, the trees are standing all sticks and bones. Without their leaves, how lovely they are, spreading their arms like dancers. They know it is time to be still.”
-Cynthia Rylant
“You are seen.
You are known.
You are loved.
-SARK
“Love isn’t concerned with being fluffy and good looking- love moves endlessly on in indelible waves of wonderment, and I am astonished by its endless surging onward.”
-SARK
There are so many ways to Love! So many incarnations, expressions, tapestries, layers, emotions…
For me reading SARK’s deeply felt words today, “multiplying the love exponentially”, I felt my love for the wild ones rise up, vividly and passionately. The emotion was rich, almost overwhelming. Beautiful. It felt right to use these images of elk, for the post. Yes, I see you, I know you and I love you. Especially as hunting season gets underway here in Montana, there too is a place for this reverence and awe. There is wonder in their wildness, their families, their sovereignty to live wild and free.
If you don’t already, follow SARK as she re-embraces Love after devastating loss. For the pain there are no words for, she has found them. Eloquently. And still, after some time for deep grief, she “dated the world” and then allowed her heart to evolve again into opening to all of the universe’s gifts. And there, waiting, where it had always been, she found LOVE.
Here’s a sample of SARK’s writing about her astonished reawakened Love. Subscribe for her always inspirational posts. Highly recommended! As Maya Angelou says, “We in this world, and this weary world itself, have a great gaping need for SARK.” Indeed.
http://planetsark.com/astonished/?utm_source=ONTRAPORT-email-broadcast&utm_medium=ONTRAPORT-email-broadcast&utm_term=&utm_content=Astonished&utm_campaign=10282018
And as you likely know SARK periodically, in addition to these inspirational posts, offers empowering workshops and writing retreats (on line and in person).
Stay “astonished ya’ll! Love is always there. Always. In All Ways.
“Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.”
-Jim Bishop
“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Days decrease,
And autumn grows, autumn in everything.”
-Robert Browning
“A big moon, waxing, looms overhead. In a few days, it will be a Hunter’s Moon, the first full moon after the Harvest Moon, a reminder of the season. So too is the feel of the crisp air upon the face and the forest preparing for winter. I inhale the familiar smell of the birches mixing with the fire we are building. I hear the rush of
the river outside, competing with the bubblings of familiar voices inside. A big hawk circled in the twilight and I know that bears, wild turkeys, and so many other marvelous creatures are pas
sing around us in the darkness.
This is a moment I want to savor, am determined to savor, while knowing that life is fragile and fleeting. These are troubling times, but if we lose our moments of common humanity, our connection with nature, a sense that there is still so much beauty, we risk losing everything.”
-Dan Rather
“So I’m packing my bags for the misty mountains…”
-Led Zeppelin
“What you seek is seeking you.”
-Rumi
“In our time, in our civilization, sitting and doing nothing is considered either to be a luxury or a waste of time. But sitting can produce the most nourishing calm and joy and we can all afford some time to sit. How wonderful to sit and do nothing.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh
For me, especially to sit and do nothing in Nature easily produces that state of nourishing calm that Thich Nhat Hanh’s quote describes. Nature’s abundance and abiding wisdom is found in this quiet calm of sitting. It is a meditation, it is connection, and it is joy; certainly it is joy.
The wonderfulness of sitting and doing nothing in nature is so fulfilling, so very full and rich.
“And I awake to the perfect patience of mountains.”
e. e. cummings
