AN OCTOBER WALK IN THE MOUNTAINS

I spent yesterday 
walking various trails of the Blue Ridge Mountains, 
which are always resplendent in the colors of late October.
This image is of a colorful cove of Lake Sequoyah, near Highlands, North Carolina

When walking through the woods, 

we usually look straight ahead or to the sides.  

Over the years, however, I've discovered that some 

of them most wonderful sights can only be seen by looking up.

I love the abstract patterns created by tree limbs from this angle.

There are many large lakes in the Blue Ridge Mountains,

but one also stumbles upon tranquil small ponds like this one off the beaten path.

I'm especially attracted to the beautiful abstract designs found

 in nature.  This image is a reflection of some of the autumn foliage in a slow- 

moving section of the Chattooga River, just to the west of Highlands, North Carolina.

This is a stretch of the North Fork of the Chattooga River.

As I walked along a trail

that followed the Chattooga River, 

I came upon a man and his two sons out for a day of fishing.

This was one of the trails I walked yesterday, 

a four-mile loop around Lake Fairfield, near Sapphire, North Carolina.

Looking across Lake Fairfield, I could see 

the sheer rock face of Old Bald Mountain, wrapped in the warm colors of autumn. 

On one of the high look-out points between Highland and Cashiers

North Carolina, I had a great view of the lush foliage that saturated the valley below.

Just outside the town of Highlands, my eyes fell upon 

this little section of woods, which reminded me of an impressionist painting.

A section of woods between Highland and Cashiers

On the edge of Lake Fairfield, with Old Bald Mountain in the distance

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 away from you like the leaves of Autumn.

John Muir, The Mountains of California 

A SPLENDID SUNDAY WALK: RAVEN ROCK TRAIL

As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.

                                Stephen Graham, The Gentle Art of Tramping 


After several bruising weeks of winter weather, the temperature has risen in recent days, the ice in higher elevations has melted, and the trails of the Blue Ridge mountains are once again beckoning the winter walker.  For those of us who have suffered from a bit of "cabin fever" lately, the prospect of spending more time outdoors is a welcome relief.

Early yesterday morning, I drove up to the piedmont area of the mountains and set out on the Raven Rock Trail, an interesting circuit hike that offers moderately challenging ascents and descents, as well as magnificent views of Lake Keowee. From the moment I entered the trailhead, I became a different person — no judgments, no analysis, no anxiety, no resentment — just pure, unadulterated peace and joy.  How liberating it is to be in the woods, far from the material world and the maddening crowds!

A few photos of my walk are set forth below, along with some observations about the importance of our connections with the natural world.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Thoreau 

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

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.

George Washington Carver 

Until we understand what the land is, we are at odds with everything we touch.  And to come to that understanding it is necessary, even now, to leave the regions of our conquest — the cleared fields, the towns and cities, the highways — and re-enter the woods.  For only there can a man encounter the silence and the darkness of his own absence.  Only in this silence and darkness can he recover the sense of the world's longevity, of its ability to thrive without him, of his inferiority to it and his dependence on it.  Perhaps then, having heard that silence and seen that darkness, he will grow humble before the place and begin to take it in — to learn from it what it is.

Wendell Berry 

In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things.  In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me.

John Fowles

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 freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

John Muir 

The poetry of the earth is never dead.

Keats 

                                           What would the world be, once bereft
                                           Of wet and of wildness?  Let them be left,
                                           O let them be left, wildness and wet;
                                           Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

                                                         Gerard Manley Hopkins

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

Walt Whitman

And this our life, exempt from the public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running books, sermons in stone, and good in everything.

Shakespeare

The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening.  It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.

Thoreau 

MEDITATIONS ON NATURE

If there is one thing clear about the centuries dominated by the factory and the wheel, it is that although the machine can make anything from a spoon to a landing-craft, a natural joy in earthly living is something it never has and never will be able to manufacture.

Henry Beston

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of the fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.

Richard Feynman 

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness?  Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.

Rachel Carson 

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

 John Muir

Only spread a fern-frond over a man's head and worldly cares are cast out, and freedom and beauty and peace come in.

John Muir 

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness.  This mysterious unity and integrity is wisdom, the mother of all . . . There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fountain of action and joy.  It rises up in wordless gentleness, and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being.

Thomas Merton 

Look!  Look!  Look deep into nature and you will understand everything.

Albert Einstein

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.

E.B. White 

The earth laughs in flowers.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.

Henry David Thoreau

Wisdom begins in wonder.

Socrates

                                         i thank You God for this most amazing

                                         day: for the leaping greenly spirit of trees

                                         and a blue dream of sky; and for everything

                                         which is natural which is infinite which is yes

e.e. cummings

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Lao Tzu

The world will never starve for wonder, but only for want of wonder.

C.K. Chesterton

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on—have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear—what remains?  Nature remains.

Walt Whitman

Notes on Photos:  All photos were taken in the last couple of days here in coastal South Carolina. 

NOVEMBER REFLECTIONS

Perhaps it is trite to say this, but nature is, indeed, an amazing artist!  If you have any doubt, just look at the interplay of color, form, and reflections in this little scene that I discovered near my home late one afternoon earlier in the week.  For one blissful and surreal moment, I felt that I was standing in the middle of a Monet painting.

Amazingly, this scene was found next to a well-traveled bridge on the upper headwaters of the Tred Avon River.  Cars were crossing the bridge incessantly while I stood on the riverbank, but no one seemed to notice the miracle of light that was occurring not more than fifty feet from the road.  Strange, isn't it?  The magic can be so close, yet most people are too busy to notice it.

After discovering this lovely scene by happenstance, I decided to take a more disciplined approach to my photography this week.  More specifically, I made sure that, camera in hand, I was near some body of tranquil water during the hour just after sunrise and the hour just before sunset, the two hours of day when the light is usually at its best, especially in mid-November.  A few of the photos taken this week are set forth below, paired with some relevant thoughts about the role that nature plays in the preservation of our sanity.

Some of these photos are representational, while others are abstract.  Each image, however, reflects that beauty than can be discovered on rivers, lakes, and ponds during the luminous days of autumn.  Enjoy!

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

John Muir 

I'll tell you how the sun rose a ribbon at a time.

Emily Dickinson 

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

Desiderata

Civilization has fallen out of touch with night. With lights, we drive the holiness and the beauty of night back to the forests and the seas; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it.  Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of the night?  Do they fear the vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars?

Henry Beston,
"The Outermost House" 

There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night . . .

Rachel Carson 

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Lao Tzu 

Each moment of the year has its own beauty . . . a picture which was never before and shall never be seen again.

Emerson 

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

e.e. cummings 

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

Walt Whitman 

We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.  For it can be a means of assuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.

Wallace Stegner 

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 . . .

Wendell Berry 

If the only prayer you said in your life was, "thank you," that would suffice.

Meister Eckhart


Peace to everyone and thank you!