I declare, this world is so beautiful that I can hardly believe it exists!

"I declare, this world is so beautiful that I can hardly believe it exists!"

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Photo: Sunrise in the West Thumb Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, WY, September 5, 2015

Yellowstone has a subjectivity that changes us forever . . .

How can I adequately describe the magic of Yellowstone as though it were a graspable object? This ethereal landscape possesses a subjectivity all Her own that grabs ahold of our awareness and brings us into union with Her, thus changing us forever.

She then hopes we will indeed try to describe Her, not in precise concepts, but in language that matches her color, using all of the poetry, paradox and beauty of word-pictures that we can muster. As Emerson says in his essay on poetry, Nature wants "to re-publish and spread her fame in OUR world of the mind."   :)

Photos: West Thumb Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, WY, September 4, 2015. 

A thing is beautiful when it has a cosmic quality . . .

"The new virtue which constitutes a thing beautiful is a certain cosmical quality, or a power to suggest relation to the whole world and so lift the object out of a pitiful individuality. Every natural feature - sea, sky, rainbow, flowers, musical tone - has in it something which is not private but universal, . . . and is therefore beautiful . . . The feat of the imagination is in showing the convertibility of every thing into every other thing."

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Photos: (Top) Paintbrush and The Grand Teton; (Middle) Marsh-Marigolds, The Grand and Middle Tetons; (Bottom) Mist near my backcountry campsite. All three photos were taken in Grand Teton National Park, WY, on July 4-6, 2015

Beauty is the creator of the universe.

"The world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful. God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe."

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Photo: Elephanthead flowers, Snowy Range, WY, July 10, 2015

Every object rightly seen unlocks a new faculty of the Soul.

"Every object rightly seen unlocks a new faculty of the Soul."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photos: Ponderosa Pine cone lying on a sandbar in Medano Creek, Great Sand Dunes National Park, CO, June 6, 2015

These flowers make no reference to former flowers or to better ones; they exist with God TODAY.

"If a man claims to know and speak of God, and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul.

"Man is timid and apologetic, he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing flower. These flowers make no reference to former flowers or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the flower; it is perfect in every moment of its existence."

Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Self-Reliance" (1847)

Well, in quoting Emerson here, I just violated his counsel! :)

Photos: Pasqueflowers, Lory State Park, CO, March 25, 2015

 

Imagination is in fact one of the traits that makes us most human. Whenever I hike up to Arthur's Rock - just a few miles from my home - I love seeing the face of "Arthur" gazing intently up at the western sky. This face encourages me to be spacious in my awareness, and to maintain the sense of optimism I've felt ever since I was a kid whenever I look toward the west. Similarly, when I photographed golden Willow trees the other day next to the Big Thompson River, I imagined the water as Mother Earth's hair flowing down ceaselessly from the mountains.

And when I hiked up to Emerald Lake later that afternoon, the contorted Limber Pines appeared to me as wise elders who've weathered the storms of life, encouraging me to do likewise.

Imagination is actually a form of perception, as indigenous peoples have always known. Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us that "The feat of imagination is in showing the convertability of every thing into every other thing." Thus, imagination is a a major way of actualizing the innate oneness of all things. However, imagining is not simply an activity that WE engage in. Rather, it is a living presence who visits us. As Joy Harjo - a poet and musician from the Muskogee Nation - reminds us: "The imagining needs praise as does any living thing. Stories are evidence of this praise." Our Euro-American culture views this awareness of both the imagination and of Nature as personal as a naive "anthropomorphizing," as though human beings are the only creature that is innately personal. However, Thomas Moore reminds us that "When a psychologist says that we are projecting personality in the world when we talk to it, that psychologist is speaking NARCISSISTICALLY, as though personality and soul belong only to the human subject."

In our era, people in our society have given up their own imaginative capacities, relying instead on the imaginings of the so-called "professionals"; that is, of movie and TV producers, to do the imagining FOR them. This shirking of one's human responsibility to creatively re-imagine the world is one of the reasons for the massive epidemic of depression that afflicts our culture. For indigenous peoples, our imagining gives us a participation in the life and action of the Creator. In the absence of this kind of imagining, people in our current society have begun to feel passive and disconnected from the life around them. It is no wonder, then, that depression is so prevalent!

May all of us discover the unique ways in which WE are called to participate in the Creator's work by exercising OUR OWN imaginative capacities!

Photos: (Top) The "face" of Arthur's Rock gazes up at the western sky, Lory State Park, CO, November 15, 2014; (Middle) The Big Thompson River is Mother's Earth's hair flowing down from the mountains between golden Willow trees, west of Loveland, CO, November 14, 2014; (Bottom) A gnarly Limber Pine is a wise elder encouraging us to weather the storms of life, Dream Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, November 14, 2014.  The Thomas Moore quote is from Care of the Soul, p. 61.

The virtue which constitutes a thing beautiful is a certain cosmical quality.

"The new virtue which constitutes a thing beautiful is a certain cosmical quality, or a power to suggest relation to the whole world, and so lift the object out of a pitiful individuality.

"Every natural feature . . . has in it something which is not private, but universal, speaks of that central benefit which is the soul of Nature, and thereby is beautiful."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photos: (Top) Greyrock, field and Cottonwood, Bellvue, CO, October 23, 2014; (Middle) Cottonwoods and hills, Livermore, CO, October 13, 2014; (Bottom) Bellvue Dome, field, deer, and Cottonwoods, Bellvue, CO, October 15, 2014

Beauty is the moment of transition, as if the form were just ready to flow into other forms.

 

"Beauty is the moment of transition, as if the form were just ready to flow into other forms."

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Photos: (Top) Aspens, Spruces and Firs with a dusting of snow, near Gould, CO, October 13, 2014; (Middle) Aspens up Poudre Canyon, near Fort Collins, CO, October 13, 2014; (Bottom) Cottonwoods and red cliffs, Red Mountain Open Space, Larimer County, CO, October 18, 2014

Persons acquaint us with the impersonal . . .

"Persons are supplementary to the primary teaching of the soul. In youth we are mad for persons . . . But the larger experience of man discovers the identical nature appearing through them all. Persons themselves acquaint us with the impersonal . . .

[For] the [impersonal] Oversoul is the background of our being, . . . an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photos: (Left) A Cottonwood leaf rests on a root of its parent tree, Horsetooth Reservoir, Larimer County, CO, October 21, 2014; (Top RIght) Cottonwood trees, Horsetooth Reservoir, and the foothills, Larimer County, CO, October 21, 2014;(Middle Right) Cottonwood tree and cliffs, Red Mountain Open Space, Larimer County, CO, October 20, 2014; (Bottom Right) Red cliffs at sunset, Red Mountain Open Space, Larimer County, CO, October 18, 2014

The Universe is the externalization of the soul

"The Universe is the externalization of the soul."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

(Top) Aspens and the peaks above Moraine Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, October 11, 2014; (Second) Sunrise on Lost Lake, near Paonia, CO, September 27, 2014;

(Third) Changing Aspens and the Ruby Range, just off the Kebler Pass Road, CO, September 27, 2014; (Bottom) Aspen trees in the Flattops Wilderness, CO, October 5, 2014

I declare, this world is so beautiful, I can hardly believe it exists!

 

 "I said to my companion: 'I declare, this world is so beautiful, I can hardly believe it exists!"

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photos: Yes, we had our first real snow!

  

 These photos were taken in the Rawah Range, CO; October 2, 2014

I declare this world is so beautiful that I can hardly believe it exists!

 

"I declare this world is so beautiful that I can hardly believe it exists!"

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photo: Globeflowers backlit by evening sunlight, with Mt. Alice in the background; Lion Lakes, Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; July 11, 2014

Whoso would be a human being must be a nonconformist.

"Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the humanity of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. Whoso would be a human being must be a nonconformist. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. Insist on yourself; never imitate. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No person yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. What is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every person is unique. Is not a person better than a town? Nothing can bring you peace but yourself."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photo: A single white Sky Pilot flower blossoms in a sea of the usual purple members of the same species; Snowy Range, Medicine Bow National Forest, WY; July 2, 2014

Imagination reveals the convertibility of every thing into every other thing.

 

"Imagination is a very high sort of seeing.  The feat of the imagination is in showing the convertibility of every thing into every other thing."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Photos: (Top) Bryce Canyon hoodoos; Bryce Canyon National Park, UT; May 24, 2014; (Bottom) Desert Varnish; Escalante River Canyon, Escalante - Grand Staircase National Monument, UT; May 25, 2014

The world is mind precipitated.

 

"Nature is the incarnation of a thought, and turns to a thought, again, as ice becomes water and gas. The world is mind precipitated."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photo: Blue ice on Lake Haiyaha; Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; March 17, 2014

Mountains are great poets.

 

"Mountains are great poets, and one glance at this fine cliff scene undoes a great deal of prose, and reinstates us wronged people in our rights. All life, all society begins to get illuminated and transparent . . . Space is felt as a great thing."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photo: Apache and Shoshoni Peaks, Indian Peaks Wilderness, CO; March 8, 2014

Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn . . .

 

"Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning . . . , and under every deep a lower deep opens."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photo: Snow patterns and clouds over Bierstadt Lake; Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; February 24, 2014

The world is mind precipitated.

 

"Nature is the incarnation of a thought, and turns to thought, again, as ice becomes water and gas.  The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is forever escaping again into the state of free thought."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photo: Rings of snow on Bierstadt Lake, with Long's Peak in the background; Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; February 24, 2014

"You shall have joy, or you shall have power," said God; "you shall not have both."

" 'You shall have joy, or you shall have power,' said God; 'you shall not have both.' "

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photo: Spirea (pink) and American Bistort (white), with the peaks of the North Cascades in the background; Mount Baker Wilderness, WA; July 23, 2013

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