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.

Monday, April 15, 2013

Our highest calling is to serve as cross-pollinators of the various aspects of wisdom.


I love watching honeybees move from one flower to the next, performing the vital function of cross-pollination while gathering the raw materials to make honey for their own sustenance.  They teach us that our role as human beings is to draw nourishment from the wisdom of the multitude of "flowers" we encounter in our daily lives; i.e., from the various personality types, genders, cultures, philosophies and spiritual traditions - and  from the different elements of the natural world.  In the process, we thereby end up cross-pollinating all of the various aspects of wisdom with one another.

During the first stages of life, it makes sense that we would remain within the same "flower" - seeking the abundance of nourishment that it has to offer - but eventually it begins to dawn on us that we are meant to become explorers of wisdom in ALL of its various manifestations.  Indeed, the unique gift of the human species is precisely our ability to view the cosmos as a giant puzzle into which we assemble all of the various puzzle pieces into a single whole, or perhaps even into several different grand puzzles.  What an adventure!

Photo: A honeybee seeks pollen from Pasqueflowers; Horsetooth Mountain Park, Larimer County, CO; April 8, 2013





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