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, September 8, 2012

The presence of the ancestors and of their stories still inhabits the landscape.



"I'm sure that this story [we are telling] will exist a thousand years from now.  We may not recognize that it exists, but it'll be out there in the air.  It'll be out there in the timeless wastes . . . A story does not have to be told to exist.  Even if all the storytellers in the world or all the people in the world were to cease to exist, that particular story would remain . . . I do believe that every word that we speak passes not into death but into some other dimension of existence.  I think that every story that was ever told might be right out there in the landscape . . ."

N. Scott Momaday
Kiowa writer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Photo: Desert Paintbrush and Horsecollar Ruin (Ancestral Puebloan); Natural Bridges National Monument, UT; September 3, 2012.  Whenever I hike within these canyons, I can somehow sense the presence - often in palpable way -  of the people who lived here, and of their stories.  Many other travelers in canyon country feel similarly.

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