30.9.10

I put it shining anywhere I please.
By walking slowly on some evening later,
I've pulled it from a crate of crooked trees,
And brought it over glossy water, greater,
And dropped it in, and seen the image wallow,
The color run, all sorts of wonder follow.
 
 - from "The Freedom of the Moon" 
Robert Frost

29.9.10


"And this, our life exempt from public haunt, 
find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
sermons in stones, and good in everything."
- William Shakespeare

27.9.10


Two men were fighting over a piece of land. Each claimed ownership and bolstered his claim with apparent proof. To resolve their differences, they agreed to put the case before the rabbi. The rabbi listened but could not come to a decision because both seemed to be right. Finally he said, "Since I cannot decide to whom this land belongs, let us ask the land." He put his ear to the ground, and after a moment straightened up. 

"Gentlemen, the land says that it belongs to neither of you - but that you belong to it."
- The Talmud

26.9.10


"Only he who gives thanks for the little things 
receives the big things."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

19.9.10


Number 8 - Jackson Pollock

Mexican Night - Robert Motherwell


Man with Guitar - George Braque

White Over Red - Mark Rothko


Ma Jolie, Woman with Zither or Guitar - Pablo Picasso

Cherry Lake Cliff - Wilderness

18.9.10

    Mooses come walking over the hill
    Mooses come walking, they rarely stand still
    When mooses come walking they go where they will
    When mooses come walking over the hill
    - Arlo Guthrie

13.9.10


"A great nose is the banner of a great man, a generous heart, a towering spirit, an expansive soul--such as I unmistakably am, and such as you dare not to dream of being..."


- Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Act 1

12.9.10

7 A.M. trail start 
Cold. Wind. Why am I awake?
... To see otters play.

  

6.9.10



"Blueberries, as big as the end of your thumb,
Real sky blue, and heavy, and ready to drum."



"It must be on charcoal they fatten their fruit.
I taste in them sometimes the flavor of soot."


"He has brought them all up on wild berries, they say,
Like birds. They store a great many away."


- Robert Frost

5.9.10


Holiness cannot be confined

I don't think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a hypaethral book, such a Thoreau talked about - a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. That is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air, and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances, will hardly balk at the fuming of water into wine - which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is fumed into grapes. 
What the Bible might mean, or how it could mean anything, in a closed, air-conditioned building, I do not know. I know that holiness cannot be confined. When you think you have captured it, it has already escaped; only its poor, pale ashes are left. It is after this foolish capture and the inevitable escape that you get translations of the Bible that read like newspaper. Holiness is everywhere in Creation, it is as common as raindrops and leaves and blades of grass, but it does not sound like a newspaper. 

-Wendell Berry

4.9.10

2.9.10


Christian Bane (age 23), on the 27th of July, having already walked 8.5 miles, portaged an eighty pound aluminum canoe 8.5 miles to Lake Superior - without resting it down. 




I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.  Philippians 4:13

1.9.10




"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.  The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops.  Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters."
-Norman Maclean