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.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

I am nothing but the lucidity that is in me.



"What is important is that life itself should be 'lucid' in me (whoever I am).  I am nothing but the lucidity that is 'in me.'  To be opaque and dense with opinion, with passion, with need, with hate, with power, is not to be there, to be absent, to non-exist.  The labor of convincing myself that this non-existing is a real presence: this is the source of all falsity and suffering . . . To extinguish the feeling of anguish, [I need] . . . straight lucidity."

Thomas Merton, 1966

Photo: Redosier Dogwood leaves glowing in last light, Canyonlands National Park, UT; November 23, 2012

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