Welcome! I am a contemplative thinker and photographer from Colorado. In this blog, you'll discover photographs that I've taken on my hiking and backpacking trips, mostly in the American West. I've paired these with my favorite inspirational and philosophical quotes - literary passages that emphasize the innate spirituality of the natural world. I hope you enjoy them!

If you'd like to purchase photo-quote greeting cards, please go to www.NaturePhoto-QuoteCards.com .


In the Spirit of Wildness,

Stephen Hatch
Fort Collins, Colorado

P.S. There's a label index at the bottom of the blog.

Monday, April 30, 2012

Where there is no joy there can be no courage, and without courage all other virtues are useless. Therefore, the frogs, the toads, keep on singing.


"Why do frogs and toads sing?  What do they have to sing about? . . . It may be the case that these small beings are singing not only to claim their stake in the pond, not only to attract a mate, but also out of spontaneous love and joy . . . Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution?  I suspect it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction.  Where there is no joy there can be no courage, and without courage all other virtues are useless.  Therefore the frogs, the toads, keep on singing
. . . "

Edward Abbey

Photo: Western Toad, Red Mountain Open Space, Larimer County, CO, April 29, 2012

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Rock is transparent as the sky, and glows like a thought with immortal life.


"I spring to my feet, crying: 'Heavens and earth!  Rock is not light, not heavy, but is transparent and unfathomable as the sky itself.  Every pore gushes, glows like a thought with immortal life, . . . the whole rocky picture seemingly translucent as if lighted from within by its own internal light!' "

The Contemplative John Muir, pp. 77-78. 

Photo: Sunlight shines through a screen of rain, with White Loco growing on the hillside in the foreground, Reservoir Ridge Natural Area, CO, April 23, 2012.  For a look at my book: "The Contemplative John Muir," go  here.

We perceive in water, leaves and silence more than sufficient of the absolute and marvelous.


"The only sound is the whisper of the running water, the touch of my bare feet on the sand, and once or twice, out of the stillness, the clear song of the canyon wren . . . If a man's imagination were not so weak, so easily tired, if his capacity for wonder not so limited, he would abandon forever his fantasies of the supernal.  He would learn to perceive in water, leaves and silence more than sufficient of the absolute and marvelous, more than enough to console him . . ."

Edward Abbey

Photo: Joanne hiking within reflections of the red cliffs in Professor Creek, Castle Valley, UT, April 21, 2012

Friday, April 27, 2012

The Spring desert is engaged in rampant foreplay.


"I first wallowed in botanical eroticism years ago, when the long, cold winters of my Montana home propelled me southward to cheat.  By changing latitudes I could begin spring early.  Beyond the northern Rockies' hard grip, the Colorado Plateau deserts were warm and soft, already engaged in rampant foreplay.  The business of every plant, tree and creature was the business of reproduction . . . The wildflowers taught me color, . . . all the colors possible in a panorama of polychromatic reds held under a dome of azure sky."

Ellen Meloy

Photo: Desert Paintbrush at sunrise, with the Three Muses in the background; Arches National Park, UT, April 21, 2012

Thursday, April 26, 2012

The brave, sweet, heartbreaking beauty of all wild and lonely things.


"Love of Heaven slanders earth; be true to the earth . . . We in America are being systematically robbed.  Robbed of the most elementary decencies of life - clean air, sunlight, pure unmedicated water . . . , silence, solitude and space, even time, even death.  Instead? . . .

Tee Vee.  Hi-Fi.  Super-Duper.  Glittering shit.  And, finally, morphine.  Not socialism, not capitalism is the enemy but - industry and technology carried to excess, to and beyond the point of madness . . .

Back in Abbey's country again.  I walk in beauty, I go in beauty . . . Red naked rock again, the enormous and dazzling sky . . . magnificence everywhere I look . . . The brave, sweet, heartbreaking beauty of all wild and lonely things."

Edward Abbey

Photo: Joanne hiking along Professor Creek in MaryJane Canyon, Castle Valley, near Moab, UT, April 21, 2012.  Yes, those colors really ARE real!

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

A love affair with a pile of rock


"What's the use: no matter where I go, what I do, I can't get the canyon country out of my heart.  A love affair with a pile of rock.  Will I never be content until I make my home on the rim of Utah . . . ?  Guess not."

Edward Abbey

Photo:  Balanced Rock and the La Sal Mountains blush in evening alpenglow, Arches National Park, UT; April 21, 2012.  When Abbey worked as a park ranger at Arches and wrote "Desert Solitaire," he lived near this spot.

Monday, April 23, 2012

The desert paintbrush is the queen of slickrotica.


"The desert paintbrush is the queen of slickrotica.  You can tell by its fiery scarlet and early bloom, as if it wants these curvaceous sweeps of sandstone to itself . . . Red is common among early bloomers, as if nature wished to jump-start spring, to skip the formalities and lunge into an unfeigned passion that dissolves reason or reluctance."

Ellen Meloy

Photo: Desert paintbrush glows in last light, Arches National Park, UT, April 21, 2012

Thursday, April 19, 2012

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.


"Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

Jesus

(Recorded in Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25 and Luke 18:25)

Photo: Ypsilon Peak made it through! View from Round Mountain, Big Thompson Canyon, CO, April 13, 2012

Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.


"Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain."

Joseph Campbell

Photo: emerging River Birch leaves, Lory State Park, CO, April 17, 2012 

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Each day, reserve a few hours for your higher calling. Treat those as a bubble that protects you from worldly intrusion.


"I have known dozens of artists, and most of them live without knowing where their life is going or how it is going to be . . . The normal situation is that, perhaps for years, you work away at your art, your life vocation, your life-fulfilling field of action, and there's no money in it.  You have to live, though, so you get a job.  Then, you are doing so well in your job that your employer wants to move you into a higher position.  You'll have to give more to the job than before, and you will receive a higher salary, but your new commitments will cut down on your free time . . . To keep up with your responsibilities and your fitness, and still nurture your creative aspect, you must put a hermetically sealed retort, so that there is no intrusion, around a certain number of hours each day - however many you can honestly afford - and that time must be inviolate . . . Give a certain number of hours a day to your art, and make it consistent."

Joseph Campbell

Photo: Dewdrops rest on a Pasqueflower petal, Young Gulch, Roosevelt National Forest, CO, April 14, 2012. Each water droplet reminds me of the sort of "bubble" that Campbell is talking about.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Bliss is the key to discovering Reality


"Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: Sat, Chit, Ananda. The word 'Sat' means being. 'Chit' means consciousness. 'Ananda' means bliss or rapture. I thought, 'I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being.' I think it worked."

Joseph Campbell

Photo: Mist condensed on a Pasqueflower, Young Gulch, Roosevelt National Forest, CO, April 14, 2012

Sunday, April 15, 2012

The world is incomprehensibly beautiful - an endless prospect of magic and wonder.


"I frankly profess a somewhat mystical concept of nature; I believe the world is incomprehensibly beautiful - an endless prospect of magic and wonder.  Whatever mess we observe is our own responsibility! . . . There is a profound difference between recreation and re-creation, and the experience of nature relates to the latter."

Ansel Adams

Photo: White Violet in the mist, Young Gulch, Roosevelt National Forest, CO, April 14, 2012

Tenderness is a sort of elastic appropriation of the essence of things into the essence of yourself, and the giving of yourself to the resultant combination of essences.


"Tenderness - a sort of elastic appropriation of the essence of things into the essence of yourself, without asking too many intellectual questions, and the giving of yourself to the resultant combination of essences.  The soup stirs the cook - perhaps that's what happens in Art."

Ansel Adams, in a letter to Alfred Stieglitz

Photo: A Pasqueflower on a misty day, Young Gulch, Roosevelt National Forest, CO, April 14, 2012

Saturday, April 14, 2012

There is a real social significance in a photograph of a rock.


"Because your greatest work is of nature and deals with the eternal, you are accused of being 'Inhuman,' 'not interested in humanity,' 'oblivious to the GREAT issues of Today.'  They don't realize that what takes their breath away when they look at your work is your profound expression of HUMAN emotion.  That you touch the innermost spirit as few artists in any medium ever have."

Nancy Newhall, to Ansel Adams

"I still believe there is a real social significance in a rock - just as there is in a line of unemployed.  For that opinion I am charged with inhumanity, unawareness."

Ansel Adams, to Edward Weston

"I agree with you that there is just as much 'social significance in a rock' as in 'a line of unemployed.'  All depends on the seeing . . . If I have in some way awakened others to a broader conception of life - added significance and beauty to their lives - . . . then I have functioned, and am satisfied."

Edward Weston, to Ansel Adams

Photo: Wild plum blossoms against a backdrop of red rock, Lory State Park, CO, April 5, 2012

Friday, April 13, 2012

The complexities of the modern world are extremely foolish in the face of the eternal openness and beauty of these mountains.

"I hope you had a most delightful trip in the High Country, and that you were benefited in mind and soul and body by the divine influence of the mountains.  I think nothing can be compared to the Hills for the elevation of spirit, and peace of mind, which they produce in man when he lives intelligently among them . . . I look on the lines and forms of the mountains and all other aspects of Nature as if they were but the vast expression of ideas within the Cosmic Mind, if such it can be called . . . The complexities of the modern world . . . are extremely foolish in the face of the eternal openness and beauty of these mountains."

Ansel Adams, in a letter to  Virginia Best, 1925

Photo: Wild Plum bushes blossoming with the foothills in the background, Lory State Park, CO April 12, 2012

Thursday, April 12, 2012

To see a flower takes time, just as having a friend takes time


"Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time - like to have a friend takes time."

Georgia O'Keeffe 

Photo: Pasqueflowers bejeweled in drops of condensed mist, Lory State Park, CO, April 11, 2012 

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

America is a land of joy - more than any other land.


"I am getting very tired of . . . being called 'dead' because I do not include 'social' material and subjects of 'class-significance' [in my work] . . . It is childish to continue to dwell on the negative aspects of society, at least to concentrate on them . . . I am not afraid of beauty, of poetry, of sentiment.  I think it is just as important to bring to people evidence of the beauty of the world of nature and of man as it is to give them a 'document' of ugliness, squalor, and despair . . . For every grim image of Harlem, there should be some buoyant truthful image of a hopeful society and some image of the natural scene . . . Is there no way photography can be used to suggest a better life - not just to stress the unfortunate aspects of existence? . . . There must be . . . America is a land of joy - more than any other land.  With all the misery, all the economic troubles, and the crack-pot politicians, we are still . . . the most beautiful country in the world . . . I am a congenital optimist; I feel we are coming out of this mess earlier than most people think; and that the world will be a better place for it."

Ansel Adams

Photo: Pasqueflowers with Long's Peak and Mt. Meeker in the background, Lory State Park, CO, April 10, 2012

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

A true answer will not aim to establish anything, but rather to set all well afloat


"We are not so far from right when we answer one question by asking another. Yes and No are lies.  A true answer will not aim to establish anything, but rather to set all well afloat.  All answers are in the future, and day answereth to day.  Do we think we can anticipate them?"

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Pasqueflowers floating in light, Lory State Park, CO, April 9, 2012

Monday, April 9, 2012

Rocks have a kind of life perhaps not so different from ours as we imagine.


"Rocks have a kind of life perhaps not so different from ours as we imagine."

The Contemplative John Muir, p. 114

Photo: Rock wall, Eldorado Canyon State Park, CO, Easter Sunday, April 8, 2012.  If you want to check out my book, go here.

 

Saturday, April 7, 2012

In the resurrection life, God may be said to suffer and humanity is the creator of heaven.


“The ineffable union of the human nature and the divine, whereby God suffers and humanity descends from heaven with the divine, expresses the most excellent communication according to the exchange of properties which naturally belong to each nature of Christ.”

Maximus the Confessor, 7th century

“My suffering is in God, and my suffering is God . . . My suffering is God, and therefore is not really mine . . . God assumed me totally . . . In Christ there was so great a union of the Word with flesh that he communicated his own properties to it, so that God may be said to suffer and humanity is the creator of heaven.”

Meister Eckhart, 14th century

Resurrection doesn't mean that suffering and death are suddenly done away with. Rather, they are transformed in our union with the Great Mystery - in God.  Because of our union with the Divine - embodied par excellence in Jesus, who then mirrors our own union and sacredness back to us - divinity and humanity interpenetrate and exchange places.  Thus, when we suffer, it is actually God who is suffering within us. And when God creates the world anew, it is accomplished through us!

Photo: Pasqueflowers and a bee, with Greyrock in the distance, Roosevelt National Forest, CO, March 31, 2012


The fire of sacrifice and suffering creates the light of insight and invention.


The death and resurrection of Christ are events which are always occurring at the very heart of all reality.  Like sunlight diamonds that disappear into a beautiful alpine lake in order to reappear - in a slightly different position - a split-second later, each moment of our lives dies into the spacious vastness of our divine awareness,  only to pop back out - miraculously reborn - in the very next moment.  The purpose of spirituality is to train us to identify ourselves with that vastness instead of with the momentary flashing of our sunlight- diamond ego-selves .  For the ego must die over and over again if it is to be reborn as something larger.

To use a different image, we can say that the light of spiritual insight can only occur if something within us burns up in an intense fire of transformation.  We see this process occur whenever the fire of suffering stimulates us to shift our perspective in order to see life in a whole new way - enlightened.  On a practical level, we recall that most new enlightening discoveries occur because of a prior suffering.  New pharmaceuticals invented to cure debilitating diseases are prime examples of this principle.

Every artist knows this process of sacrifice and resurrection, of fire and light.  For it is the fire of suffering that causes the artistic person to create a work of art which transforms that suffering into something beautiful.  For example, we might recall that many amazing songs arise out of an experience of lost or unrequited love. But the process occurs in reverse fashion as well.  As soon as an artistic work is created, doubt and disillusionment about the value of that work almost inevitably occur.  The artist often thinks the artwork is despicable, and then experiences intense depression.  However, transformation can occur when the artist realizes that these afflictive emotions are actually the fire of sacrifice that must occur if the artwork is to be created and sustained in existence.  But there is magic occurring here:

Returning to the fire-and-light metaphor, we might imagine that the light of the work of art is so powerful, it covers up the fire of sacrifice that creates it, just as the light of the sun overwhelms our ability to see the powerful solar explosions that are continually occurring and which create that very light. Because of this magical principle, we only can perceive the fire of afflictive emotion (which actually - like a labor pain - is the source of the light) when the radiance of the new insight which arises from that fire dies down a bit.

Sacrifice and resurrection are motifs that occurs throughout all of life.  Plants and animals die when we ingest them, that they might be reborn as the substance of our human lives.  We have to hike over steep trails to fully appreciate the destination - a peak or lake, for example - at the end. Labor pains are necessary to bring forth a child.  In all of these examples, Christ's death and resurrection are fully present as archetypal realities that empower the entire process.

Photo: Alpenglow fires the peaks near Crater Lake, Indian Peaks Wilderness, CO, August 8, 2009

Friday, April 6, 2012

Contemplating our crucified earth


"What does it mean for us as followers of Francis of Assisi to take a contemplative approach to our modern-day ecological crises?  If we dare to look and really see, we encounter Creation crucified - at our hands . . . If Francis were to walk our earth today, he would encounter for the first time his Sister Mother Earth, Brother Wind and Sister Water polluted and desecrated, the creatures he loved endangered and some gone forever . . . The story of Francis' encounter with a leper offers powerful guidance here . . . He saw in the leper's eyes that God 'humbly bends low in love and hides in weak and fragile forms' . . . Like Francis in his encounter with the leper, we must learn how to gaze upon our damaged, disfigured and disregarded Earth with contemplative eyes, for when we hold within our hearts the pain of our world long enough for it to transform us, we discover the courage and hope needed to act on behalf of creation."

Sister Ilia Delio, Order of St. Francis

Photo:  When I backpacked up to Four-Mile Lake in Colorado's San Juan Mountains on July 2, 2011, I realized to my dismay that almost every tree around the lake was dead, victims of a massive epidemic of bark beetles.  This disease is spreading all over the Western U.S. in part because of global warming.  I awoke at 6:00 A.M. the next morning to the sound of a tree crashing to the ground nearby, even though there was no wind present.  Realizing this was a dangerous place to remain, I immediately broke camp and moved on. 
The haze evident here is from forest fire smoke originating in northern New Mexico, the result of an intense drought.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Mountains die that we may live.


"The great heart of the hills sends its life down in streams . . . among the stems and beneath the leaves of lilies . . . Mountains die that we may live."

The Contemplative John Muir, p. 35

Photo: Globeflowers and Marsh-marigolds proliferate in an alpine marsh, Never Summer Range, CO, July 19, 2011.  I'm you are interested in checking out my book, go here.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

A threatened Sequoia exclaims: "Forgive them, they know not what they do."


"Forty-seven years ago one of these Calaveras king sequoias, . . . more than three hundred feet high, was skinned alive to a height of one hundred and sixteen feet from the ground and the bark sent to London to show how fine and big that Calaveras tree was – as sensible a scheme as skinning our great men would be to prove their greatness.  This grand tree is, of course, dead, a ghastly disfigured ruin, but it still stands erect and holds forth its majestic arms, as if alive and saying, 'Forgive them, they know not what they do.' "

The Contemplative John Muir, p. 36

Photo: Giant Sequoia, Yosemite National Park, CA, July 28, 2012.  If you want to check out my book, go here.




Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Only a person who risks is free.


"To place your ideas, your dreams before the crowd is to risk their loss.  To love is to risk not being loved in return.  To live is to risk dying.  To hope is to risk despair.  To try is to risk failure.  But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.  The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, and is nothing.  He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love - live.  Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave, he has forfeited freedom.  Only a person who risks is free."

The National Outdoor Leadership School

Photo: Stunted Limber Pine making a go of it on Battle Mountain, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, March 30, 2012

Sunday, April 1, 2012

In God's wildness lies the hope of the world.


"In God's wildness lies the hope of the world, the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness.  The galling harness of civilization drops off, and the wounds heal 'ere we are aware."

The Contemplative John Muir, p. 208

Photo: Pasqueflowers on the Greyrock Trail, Roosevelt National Forest, CO, March 31, 2012.  If you are interested in Stephen Hatch's new book, go here.