“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

                        From A Visit from St. Nicholas

                        by  Clement Clarke Moore

"We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every particle is equally related; the eternal ONE."

                                                                         by Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Now during the cold winter days I have begun to edit the pictures from our summer at the cabin. One advantage to spending the entire summer at the cabin is watching the birds from mating through nesting and the first flights of the young. So here in June we see the Brown Headed Cowbird scoping out the territory and then in late August the White Throated Sparrow feeding the Cowbird chick.

"Perhaps you have noticed that even in the slightest breeze you can hear the voice of the cottonwood tree; this we understand is its prayer to the Great Spirit, for not only men, but all things and all beings pray to Him continually in different ways."

                                                                        by Black Elk

Parked in my spot again, eh!

Just let out some air.

And my work here is done.

"Vast and majestic, mountains embrace your shadow;

broad and deep, rivers harbour your voice."

                T'ao Ch'ien

"I look south to Deer-Gate Mountain. haze

lavish, as if some fragrance remained.

but his old mountain home is lost there:

mist thick and forests all silvered azure."

from Hsiang Travels: Thinking of Meng Hao-jan

by Po Chu-i

"When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, 

striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through 

space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, 

the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty"

                  from Travels in Alaska

                       by John Muir

" I reached Cold Mountain and all cares stopped

no idle thoughts remained in my head

nothing to do I write poems on rocks

and trust the current like an unmoored boat"

from the Collected Songs of Cold Mountain

" Is the soul solid, like iron?

Or is it tender and breakable, like

the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?"

from Some Questions You Might Ask

by Mary Oliver

" But in memory, the safe places never fall into themselves. They 

remain warmly lit by lantern. Burlap bags always full of potatoes, 

 damp wooden shelves jewelled with jars of preserves." 

from Winter Morning Walks, february 24

 by Ted Kooser

"Most people are on the world, not in it -- have no conscious 
sympathy or relationship to anything about them -- undiffused,

 separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone,

 touching but separate."

from John of the Mountains: 
The Unpublished Journals of John Muir

We were lucky enough to catch the glacier calving.

"As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing.

I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the

avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, 

and get as near the heart of the world as I can." 

                                                                                  Journals of John Muir