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.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Echoes of a Divine Love-Word Appear Continually as Though Out of Nowhere!


I was sitting just before sunset on a rocky promontory overlooking this sea of aspen when a bull elk began bugling somewhere from within all of that gold.  Because he was totally invisible, I got the sense that his voice was like an  echo emerging out of nowhere.  Similar to an experience I had several weeks earlier while listening to the elk in a meadow within Rocky Mountain National Park,  I immediately felt I was in the presence of the Great Mystery.  It seemed that each bugle - together with each aspen tree, mountain and cloud - was actually an echo of a love-word that the Great Mystery was just about to speak but was never able!  For before he could even utter it, he had already lost himself for all eternity in blissful ecstasy, a bliss I could also sense within myself as I melted into the wide-open sea of love present within all of that gold. Magically, even though the love-word had never been uttered, echoes somehow emerged, anyway!  This intuition  imparted to me a wonderful sense of the playful mystery of life and offered me the strength to return home and embody the qualities of this sublime scene within my everyday life.

Photo: changing aspen and Marcellina Peak, viewed from the Oh-Be-Joyful Trail near Crested Butte, CO, October 1, 2011

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