Water is the only drink for a wise man.

"Water is the only drink for a wise man."

Henry David Thoreau

"The poet's habit of living should be set on a key so low and plain, that the common influences should delight him. His cheerfulness should be the gift of the sunlight; the air should suffice for his inspiration, and he should be tipsy with water."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photos: Copeland Falls, Lodgepole Pine cones, and a bright yellow streambed, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, April 11, 2015

To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty.

"To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photos: (Top) Sunrise on St. Mary's Lake; (Middle) Pasqueflower and Glacier Lilies, Logan Pass; (Bottom) Grinnell Lake with Wild Buckwheat; All three photos were taken at Glacier National Park, MT, July 22, 2014

This is my boast: that I have no school followers.

"I have been writing and speaking for twenty-five or thirty years, and have not now one disciple. Why? Not that what I said was not true; not that it has not found intelligent receivers; but because it did not go forth from any wish in me to bring people to me, but rather to themselves. I delight in driving them from me. What could I do, if they came to me? . . . This is my boast: that I have no school followers. I would account it a measure of the impurity of my insight if it did not create independence."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1858

Photo: A horse grazes in the field across the street from my house, Larimer County, CO, February 16, 2015

Nature and Mind mirror one another.

"Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact . . .

"Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of mind, . . .

"and that state of mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture."

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Photos: (Top) Wild Geranium leaf and cascades on Cow Creek, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, October 17, 2014; (Second) Cottonwood tree and Eagle Rock, near Estes Park, CO, October 17, 2014; (Third) Narrowleaf Cottonwood leaves and cascades on Cow Creek, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, October 17, 2014; (Bottom) Narrowleaf Cottonwood leaf resting on a lichen-covered rock, Red Mountain Open Space, Larimer County, CO, October 18, 2014