Each moment has a quality of delicacy.

People sometimes seem to delight in telling another person: "Don't be so sensitive!"  It is true of course that each of us needs to identify ourselves more with the vast, stable core of our inner self  than with the more superficial aspects of our personality.  However, there is a sense in which each moment of our lives is delicate and fragile: partly existing, partly not-existing.  Emerson once exclaimed: "The world is so beautiful, I can HARDLY believe it exists!"  Indeed, each moment of our lives partakes in this quality of  "hardly."  Like an echo emerging out of nowhere, it is improbable in its existence, yet THERE IT IS in all of its glory, anyway!

Photo: Delicate blossoms of alpine bog laurel appear in a marsh near Lion Lake #1, with Mt. Alice in the background; Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; June 15, 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: Bluebells blooming on the shore of Lake of Many Winds, Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; June 25, 2012

The warm blood of God flows through trees, living or fallen.

"The warm blood of God flows through these mountain granites, flows through these frozen streams, flows through trees living or fallen, flows through death itself."

The Contemplative John Muir, p. 298

Photo: The beautiful grain of a long-deceased tree displays itself along the Colorado Trail, South Park, CO; June 23, 2012

All things emerge - luminous and newborn - out of the vast space of God's loving awareness.

Meditation practice offers us the realization that each object of experience emerges - magically, almost - from within the vast space of awareness.  It's as though the meditator embodies the vastness of a divine mind which is Love, and then watches spellbound as each thing arises - luminous and newborn - as an expression of that vastness, spontaneous and full of surprise.  All things emerge out of divine love, yes - but that love is a blissful state of awareness in which God eternally loses himself, a self-forgetting that nevertheless is the magical source of each and every being!

Photo: Alpine Sunflowers backlit on the shore of Lake of Many Winds, with Pilot Mountain in the background; Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; June 25, 2012

Out of the experience of shunyata spaciousness comes the experience of mahamudra, where the things that emerge from shunyata are amazingly vivid.

"Mahamudra is a way of bringing together the notion of the immense emptiness of space, shunyata, and manifestation within shunyata . . . From the shunyata experience of emptiness, we are led to mahamudra . . . Having had all illusions removed by the experience of shunyata, there is a sense of extraordinary clarity.  That clarity is called mahamudra. . . .So the mahamudra experience is vividness . . . The eternally youthful quality of the mahamudra experience is one of its outstanding qualities.  It is eternally youthful because there is no sense of repetition, no sense of wearing out of interest because of familiarity.  Every experience is a new, fresh experience.  So it is childlike, innocent and childlike . . . The energies around you - textures, colors, different states of mind, relationships - are very vivid and precise . . . Shunyata fullness [the experience of the spaciousness of awareness out of which all things emerge] is rather gray and transparent and dull, like London fog.  But the mahamudra experience of fullness is of little particles dancing with each other within the fullness [of spaciousness]  It's like a sky full of stars and shooting stars and all the rest - so many activities are taking place."

Chogyam Trungpa, Tibetan Buddhist Rinpoche

Photo: Parry Primrose blooms at Thunder Lake, Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; June 25, 2012

In the fire of suffering, the opposites present within us are melted into something new.

"You yourself are a conflict that rages in itself and against itself, in order to melt its incompatible substances, the male and the female, in the fire of suffering, and thus create that fixed and unalterable form which is the goal of like.  Everyone goes through this mill, consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or forcibly.  We are crucified between the opposites and delivered up to the torture until the 'reconciling third' takes shape.  Do not doubt the rightness of the two sides within you, and let whatever may happen, happen . . . The apparently unendurable conflict is proof of the rightness of your life.  A life without inner contradiction is either only half a life or else a life in the Beyond, which is destined only for angels.  But God loves human beings more than the angels."

Carl Jung, 1945

Photo: Sunset, made orange by smoke from the Waldo Canyon Fire the same day it began; Aspen Campground, South Park, CO; June 23, 2012

Because God has an overflowing being, he transcends all knowledge.

"Because God has an overflowing being, he transcends all knowledge."

Meister Eckhart, 14th century Germany

Photo: Colorado Columbines proliferating just below Lake of Many Winds, Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; June 25, 2012.

Since God continually self-empties through love, there is no way the faculty of reason - which must freeze a thing to know it - could ever grasp him in order to examine and know him.

"Exhilarated and buoyant by what I was reveling in, I pushed up the first three thousand feet almost without stopping to take a breath . . . The mountains fairly seized me, and 'ere I knew I was was up the Canyon . . . I was alone and during the whole excursion . . . , was in a kind of calm, incurable ecstasy.  I am hopelessly and forever a mountaineer."

The Contemplative John Muir, p. 197

Photo: Alpine Sunflowers blooming next to Lake of Many Winds (11,610 feet high),Wild  Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; June 25, 2012.  I can really resonate with what Muir wrote here.  Yesterday, I needed to escape the thick forest fire smoke and 102 degree heat that was so oppressive here in town.  So I took off to the high country, and ended up doing a 16-mile round trip hike to Lake of Many Winds, a 3000-foot climb.  The last 1000 feet were quite steep, but the higher I climbed, the more energized I felt. Steep cliffs, cascading streams fed by large snowfields, vast wildflower meadows, and dramatic peaks all put me in a state of ecstatic joy that made the climb seem like no effort at all.  It was amazing!

Whoever wants to be great among you must be the servant of all.

"Whoever wants to be great among you must be the servant of all."

Jesus

(Matthew 20:26)

Photo: King's Crown growing at Bluebird Lake, Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park; June 18, 2012

It is good for us to keep as much joy in life as we can.

"It is good for us, I think, to keep as much joy in life as we can.  We busy ourselves with so many things that are not of the heart and spirit.  We worry about money, we agonize over the terrible state of the world, we fret at household duties or business minutiae, we work, we argue, we squander our strength in a million ways.  And all the time the wonder of life is around us, the ecstasy of breathing air ravished by blossoms, of walking on fern-cool driftways, of listening to young leaves moving in the moonlight, and of seeing the twilight stars in the violet bowl of the sky.  There is enough joy in one day to furnish forth the world, if we but knew it."

Gladys Tabor

Photo: Alpine Sunflowers radiate in air made orange by forest fire smoke, Georgia Pass, Mosquito Range, CO; June 23, 2012

Mother Earth and Father Sky are eternal helpmates.

"Now the Mother Earth
And the Father Sky
Meeting, joining one another;
Helpmates ever, they"

Navajo poem

Photo: A mountain, clouds, sunlight and forest fire haze create an amazing moment.  Georgia Pass, Mosquito Range, CO; June 23, 2012

My solitude belongs to society and to God.

"Work.  To be a solitary and not an individualist.  Not concerned with mere perfecting of my own life . . . My solitude belongs to society and to God.  Are these just words?  Solitude for its special work, the deepening of thought and awareness."

Thomas Merton, Journal, 1960

Photo: Lodgepole Pine snag in the Ouzel Burn, with Mt. Copland in the background, Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; June 18, 2012

I am pleased to see how little man and his affairs occupy the landscape.

"Man and his affairs, church and state and school, trade and commerce, and manufactures and agriculture, even politics, the most alarming of them all - I am pleased to see how little space they occupy in the landscape."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Alpine Avens blooming on Trail Ridge Road, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; June 16, 2012

In the desert landscape, each thing suggests everything else.

"Combine intensity (not density) with clarity.  CLEAR AND INTENSE.  Like the desert landscape, the desert light, the desert atmosphere - clear, intense and infinitely suggestive.  Hard distinctions, precise outlines - but each thing, suggesting, somehow, everything else.  As in truth each thing does."

Edward Abbey

Photo:  West Temple and first light on Sacred Datura, Zion National Park, UT; May 27, 2012

Perhaps the true nature of the Earth is to be heavenly!

"Heavenliness - again.  For instance, walking  yesterday afternoon - as if my feet acquired a heavenly lightness from contact with the earth.  As though the earth itself were filled with an indescribable spirituality and lightness, as if the true nature of the earth were to be heavenly, or rather as if all things, in truth, had a heavenly existence.  As if existence itself was heavenliness . . . , all transformed!"

Thomas Merton

Photo: Sometimes the light is absolutely exquisite, shining as though through a tunnel of clouds - for just a few moments. Globeflower blooms, Lion Lakes, Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; June 15, 2012

It is the job of humans to connect the material, spiritual and supernatural powers.

"God put Three Powers into the world for us to use.  We need them all.  We Indians know all three.  It took us a million years to find them.  There's the material power, the spiritual power, and the supernatural power.  The material power is the goodness of this Earth.  The spiritual power is the goodness of human beings.  The supernatural power is the goodness of God, the Great Spirit.  The Three Powers are separate.  They're not connected.  It's the job of human beings to make that connection.  We connect the Three Powers with our prayers, with our ceremonies, with our deeds.  Every good deed is a pillar of the Creation.  Every prayer holds up the world.  Our ceremony, our Sun Dance, keeps the Universe in harmony by connecting the Three Powers . . . The third power refers to God Himself, the Great Mysterious.  You can't use it for yourself.  That's sorcery.  IT'S supposed to use you."

Noble Red Man (Mathew King), Lakota elder

Photo: Bear Lodge from my campsite, Devil's Tower National Monument, WY; May19, 2012

"Pussy willows are important in the spring.  In a world seething with mistrust, suspicion and clashing ideologies, pussy willows may be vital to the welfare of man and his serenity."

Sigurd F. Olson

Photo: Willow catkins and the sparkling, vibrant Bluebird Lake, Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; June 15, 2012

In the solitude and stillness of Nature, I receive the equivalent of what others get by churchgoing and prayer.

"There is nothing so sanative, so poetic, as a walk in the woods and fields . . . Nothing so inspires me and excites such serene and profitable thought.  The objects are elevating.  In the street and in society I am almost invariably cheap and dissipated, my life unspeakably mean [mundane].  No amount of gold or respectability would in the least redeem it . . . But alone in distant woods or fields, . . . I come to myself.  I once more feel myself grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine.  I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get by churchgoing and prayer.  I come to my solitary walk as the homesick go home.  I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful . . . I come out to these solitudes, where the problem of existence is simplified.  I get away a mile or two from the town into the stillness and solitude of nature, with rocks, trees, plants, snow, . . . and it is as if I had come to an open window . . . I am not satisfied with ordinary windows.  I must have a true skylight.  My true skylight is on the outside of the village . . . This stillness, solitude, wildness of nature . . . This is what I go out to seek.  It is as if I always met in those places some grand, serene, immortal, infinitely encouraging, though invisible, companion, and walked with him."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Marsh-marigold meadow, Flat Tops Wilderness, CO; June 9, 2012

A lake is earth's eye, looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his or her own nature.

"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature.  It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.  The flowing plants next to the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Indian Paintbrush and the Chinese Wall, West Lost Lake, Flat Tops Wilderness, CO; June 9, 2012

When we are stilled like a lake, our depths are revealed to us.

"Sometimes we are clarified & calmed healthily as we never were before in our lives . . . so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves.  All the world goes by us & is reflected in our deeps.  Such clarity!  Obtained by such pure means!  By simple living - by honesty of purpose - we live & rejoice."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: West Lost Lake near my backcountry campsite just after sunrise.  Flat Tops Wilderness, CO; June 10, 2012

Living by the pond will be success if I shall have left myself behind.

"I want to go soon and live away by the pond where I shall hear only the wind whispering among the reeds.  It will be success if I shall have left myself behind."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Indian Paintbrush, East Lost Lake, and the Chinese Wall, Flat Tops Wilderness, CO; June 9, 2012

Beauty serenely disdains to annihilate us.

"For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure.  And we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us."

Rainer Maria Rilke

Photo: The High Park Fire near sunset, June 11, 2012

Phenomena are "saved" when we gasp at their loveliness with the ahh of wonder.

"Phenomena need not be saved by grace or faith or all-embracing theory.  They are saved by our simple gasping at their imaginal loveliness.  The ahh of wonder, of recognition.  The aesthetic response saves the phenomenon, the phenomenon which is the face of the world."

James Hillman

"We are saved when we see our own beauty in the display of everyday life.  We find our own face, the unique visage of our soul, in the world's display of itself."

Thomas Moore

Photo: Indian Paintbrush and the beautiful teal-colored Mirror Lake, Flat Tops Wilderness, CO; June 10, 2012

In this silent, serene wilderness the weary can gain a heart-bath in perfect peace.

"In this silent, serene wilderness the weary can gain a heart-bath in perfect peace."

The Contemplative John Muir, p. 187

Photo: Indian Paintbrush blooms near my campsite on West Lost Lake, Flat Tops Wilderness, CO; June 9, 2012

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.

 

"Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake."

Wallace Stevens

Photo: Sunset near my campsite at West Lost Lake, Flat Tops Wilderness, CO; June 8, 2012

All life around stems from the green; in green all life abounds. She's the Circle of Life . . .

 

She’s the Circle of Life

She’s the womb of the Sun’s creation

She’s his forever wife

She’s a harvest of every nation

She’s the Mother of every life born

Through each day and each night

With the Father she gave the Earth form

She’s the Circle of Life . . .

All life around stems from the green

In green all life abounds

We step her dance and speak her song

When each season sounds 

From the snow pack in the highlands

Her blood flows with the Spring

Forever the Sun’s lover

A songbird choir sings . . .

Jack Gladstone, Blackfeet Tribe

Photo:  I took this picture just two weeks after the Hewlett Fire ravaged the Greyrock area last month.  Here, the soil was totally black with ash.  Notice the black at the top of the grasses, scorched by the fire. Then - further down - the brown and white layers, where the grass tried to grow in the heat of the aftermath.  Finally, at the bottom, the grass was able to turn green and proliferate after a rain.  And this just two weeks after the fire!  Next spring, I expect a bumper crop of pasqueflowers to be growing here.


Greyrock Meadow, Roosevelt National Forest, CO; June 4, 2012.


Jack Gladstone sings every summer in the "Native America Speaks" program at Glacier National Park, MT

Let us create a concentrate out of scattered moments of beauty.

The sacred task of the human being as artist involves collecting those occurrences of beauty that are scattered like springtime flowers amongst the brown of the previous year's grasses, and then making a sort of concentrate out of them.  This concentrate - in the form of a painting, a piece of music, a sculpture, a photograph, a piece of writing, or even a simple recollection of those fragments of beauty - is then available to be dropped like a teabag into life's more mundane moments, allowing those moments to steep in them and to acquire their exquisite flavor.

Photo: Sky Pilot and Alpine Avens blooming in meadows that are freshly emerged from their wintertime covering of snow. Flat Tops Wilderness, CO; June 9, 2012

The trials of life are a fire that produces the light of insight.

"As matter of some sort must be consumed to cause fire, so certainly can no true life begin without some previous death.  The candle must lose itself, its substance, if it is to give light . . . The greater the fire, the greater the light to arise from it, for divine fire is a cause of the light . . . But in love, the fire dies and transmutes itself into the kingdom of joy.

Jacob Boehme, 17th century German mystic

Photo: Horsetooth Reservoir glows with a strange ethereal light caused by the High Park Fire, near Fort Collins, CO; June 11, 2012

Humans desire mystery, not industrial gimmickry.

"What most humans really desire is something quite different from industrial gimmickry - liberty, spontaneity, nakedness, mystery, wildness, wilderness."

Edward Abbey

Photo: Indian Paintbrush at East Lost Lake, the Chinese Wall in the background, Flat Tops Wilderness, CO; June 9, 2012

It is a vulnerable enterprise to feel deeply about a landscape.

"I think of my own stream of desires, how cautious I have become with love.  It is a vulnerable enterprise to feel deeply and I may not survive my affections.  Andre Breton says, 'Hardly anyone dares to face with open eyes the great delights of love.'  If I choose not to become attached to nouns - a person, place, or thing - then when I refuse an intimate's love or hoard my spirit, when a known landscape is . . . [reduced] to a stubble . . . , my heart cannot be broken because I never risked giving it away . . . The land is love.  Love is what we fear . .. It is time for us to take off ours masks . . . and admit we are lovers, engaged in an erotics of place.  Loving the land . . . It is a primal affair."

Terry Tempest Williams

Photo: Prairie Coneflower (Mexican Hat) with Horsetooth Reservoir in the middleground, and the High Park Fire in the background close to sunset; June 11, 2012.  Near Ft. Collins, CO. The fire is now at 43, 000 acres.

Lakes are precious gems.

"White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light.  If they were permanently congealed, and small enough to be clutched, they would, perchance, be carried off by servants, like precious stones, to adorn the heads of emperors; but being liquid, and ample, and secured to us and our successors forever, we disregard them, and run after the diamond of Kohinoor.  They are too pure to have market value . . . How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters are they!"

Henry David Thoreau, "Walden"

Photo: Wild Buckwheat growing next to Mirror Lake, Flattops Wilderness, CO; June 10, 2012.  Yes, the lake really IS that color!

Flowers and Insects are spiritual presences who are here to inspire us.

"The myriads of flowers appear as visitors, a cloud of witnesses to Nature's love . . . Insect swarms are dancing in the sunbeams, burrowing in the ground, diving, swimming, a cloud of witnesses telling Nature's joy."

The Contemplative John Muir, pp. 310-311

Photo: An iridescent green bee-fly gathers pollen on an Indian Blanketflower (Gaillardia) flower; Lory State Park, CO, May 31, 2012.  The term "cloud of witnesses" comes from the Bible - Hebrews 12:1 - where St. Paul is referring to the multitudes of holy people who have died, yet who are still present with us in spirit, ready to assist and inspire us.  Interestingly, Muir changes the meaning of the term to refer to the spiritual presence of flowers and insects!

Follow your bliss.

"Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls."

Joseph Campbell

Photo: An insect feasts on Wild Rose pollen, Rist Canyon, CO; June 5, 2012 

Our suffering actually belongs to that of the Greater Whole.

The experience of intense suffering - whether physical, mental, emotional or spiritual - is one of the great challenges of life, one that each of us experiences at some time or other.  When this occurs, we feel isolated and alienated from the rest of humanity, as though the suffering is only our own.  During such times we seek liberation, yet wonder if we will ever be truly free of the suffering.

One way I've found of dealing with the intensity of suffering is to release it - by an act of faith - to the Greater Whole.  I then treat the suffering not as simply my own, but as that of humanity, of the Earth, of the Divine.  Indeed, as great mystics like St. Francis of Assisi and St. Mother Teresa remind us, God suffers.  That is in fact a major point of the Cross event.  When I view the suffering I experience as belonging to Someone Else who indwells me,  I do not feel quite so alienated any more.  In fact, I am then free to offer consolation to the One who is suffering within me.

Some of the early Christian mystics viewed Christ as a place where divine and human natures exchange places - a sort of "crossroads," which is one possible interpretation of the Cross event.  Because of the mutual self-emptying of both God and humanity in Christ, human suffering turns out to be God's suffering, and God's creativity turns out to be human creativity.  Here, another word for God might be "Divine Humanity" or "the Sacred Earth." Applied to the rest of us - as members of Christ's "body," regardless of our religious persuasion - this means that when our suffering is revealed as belonging to the Divine, we then acquire the ability in turn to become the power of Divine creativity.

During such times, we find the grace - especially through artistic endeavors - to act like an oyster, turning an irritating grit of sand into a pearl.  The suffering does not thereby end, but now, at least, we are able to transcend our sense of isolation and alienation, which is - after all - a large part of what contributes to the intensity of the suffering in the first place.

Photo: Ponderosa pines and Douglas-firs killed two weeks earlier by the Hewlett fire, Greyrock Trail, Roosevelt National Forest, CO, June 4, 2012

Do not yearn to be popular; be exquisite.

"Do not yearn to be popular; be exquisite."

C. JoyBell

Photo: Rare and endangered Yellow Lady's Slipper Orchid growing in an aspen grove, Larimer County, CO; June 5, 2012

The mountains call to us: "Come up higher!"

"You climb in a kind of natural ecstasy as if lifted by the very spirit of the mountains, which seems ever to call, 'Come up higher!' . . . This is true transportation."

The Contemplative John Muir, p. 44

Photo: Marsh-Marigold flowers blooming on the bank of Finch Lake, Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; June 1, 2012

It is rare to find a person who follows their talent to the dark places where it leads.

“Everyone has talent. What's rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads.”

Erica Jong

Photo: The rare and endangered Yellow Lady's Slipper; Aspen grove, Larimer County, CO; June 5, 2012

Silence - pure nothingness - is a Cross at the center of the world, out of which all things continually emerge.

"I have an obligation to preserve the stillness, the silence, the poverty, the virginal point of pure nothingness which is at the center of all other loves.  I cultivate this plant silently in the middle of the night and water it with psalms and prophecies in silence.  It becomes the most beautiful of all the plants in the garden, at once the primordial paradise plant, the axis mundi [center of the world], the cosmic axle, and the Cross."

Thomas Merton

Photo: Tufted Evening-Primrose and Checkerboard Mesa at sunrise, Zion National Park, UT; May 28, 2012.  Notice how Merton connects silence with the Cross.  For in that place of stillness where all words die away, everything is reborn - "resurrected" - as though out of nowhere ("pure nothingness").

Suffering is overcome by bearing pain for others.

"When the Dalai Lama visited the United States in 1981, someone asked him, in a small audience, how it was that Buddhists have developed such a wonderful path for overcoming suffering, while Christians have been wallowing in their suffering for almost two thousand years.  The Dalai Lama responded by saying, 'It is not as easy as all that.  Suffering is not overcome by leaving pain behind; suffering is overcome by bearing pain for others.'  And that is one of those answers that is as Christian as it is Buddhist."

Brother David Steindl-Rast

Photo: Prickly-Pear cactus pads killed by the Hewlett Fire, translucent in the sunlight. Greyrock Trail, Roosevelt National Forest, CO; June 4, 2012. The fire was contained just two weeks ago.  Notice the new grass stalk.

True spirituality is rare, and therefore quite valuable.

 

True spirituality involves an ability to be exquisitely aware of one's motivations, presuppositions, biases, personality traits, and the filter through which one looks at life, AND the capacity to transcend those qualities by allowing them to become transparent to a larger, more spacious Divine self.  This combination is quite rare, which makes it all the more valuable when we encounter it in a living human being.

Photo: Purple Lady's Slipper, a very rare and endangered orchid; Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; June 1, 2012

The mountains are calling and I must go.

"The mountains are calling and I must go."

John Muir

Photo: Marsh-marigolds leaning toward Mount Copeland (R) and Ogalalla Peak (L), Finch Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; June 1, 2012

We are Earth's self-awareness.

Our calling in life is to be the place of awareness in which the Divine present within the Earth knows and celebrates her beauty and goodness.

Photo: Calypso Orchid, Wild Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; June 1, 2012

Silence is truth's speaking trumpet.

"Silence is audible to all people, at all times, and in all places.  She is when we hear inwardly, sound when we hear outwardly . . . Sounds are a faint utterance of Silence . . . They are heighteners and intensifiers of the Silence . . . Silence is truth's speaking trumpet, the sole oracle, the true Delphi, which kings and courtiers would do well to consult . . . For through Silence all revelations have been made, and just in proportion as people have consulted her oracle within, they have obtained clear insight."

Henry David Thoreau

Photo: Sacred Datura (or Angels' Trumpet) set against the backdrop of West Temple and the Towers of the Virgin, Zion National Park, UT; May 27, 2012

Something never dreamed of in the desert has found us.

"I can see for miles into the 'strange mystic unknown' Southwest . . . Something never dreamed of, I have found, or IT has found me . . .

"On Gawd: This citified religion is no blame good; if they can't find him (Gawd) in the woods or swamps or mountains, or along the seashore or in the desert, they sure as hell won't find him in their stinking old theological libraries.

Edward Abbey

Photo: Plains Prickly-pear cactus with the cliffs of Zion Canyon in the background; near Observation Point, Zion National Park, UT; May 26, 2012

Drugged, sense and mind, by desert thoughts, canyon thoughts.

"Oh, the red cruel deathly loveliness of the desert . . . The mute and timeless and implacable and sinister and incredible and heart-troubling mind-stunning canyons of the rich Colorado . . . , silences with glory, soaked in awe . . . A harsh cruel land, stark, naked beauty; terrible and deathly, untamed and untamable, lovelier than any song; a man's country.

"Drugged.  I'm drugged, sense and mind, by desert thoughts, canyon thoughts.  I've been thinking of the Colorado Plateau . . . Thinking of those great canyons, and of the terrible and grand and unearthly wilderness of rock that surrounds them, my nerves and brain get taut and sharp and hot . . . I've got to go there, be there, live there: it's become an obsession with me, a passion!

Edward Abbey

Photo: Maidenhair fern and red-streaked, thousand-foot-high cliffs of Navajo sandstone, Zion Canyon, Zion National Park, UT; May 27, 2012. 

The Virgin River of Zion Canyon is considered a part of the basin of the Colorado River and of the Colorado Plateau.

Hope is patience with the lamp lit.

"Hope is patience with the lamp lit."

Tertullian, 2nd century

Photo: Sacred Datura blossom, with the Watchman in the background; Zion National Park, UT, May 27, 2012