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!

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In the Spirit of Wildness,

Stephen Hatch
Fort Collins, Colorado

P.S. There's a label index at the bottom of the blog.

Monday, October 28, 2013

When we situate death within a vaster, more spacious context, it seems less threatening and less final.


Yesterday, I found the sun-bleached bones of an elk rib-cage lying in a large meadow, radiant with golden aspen trees.  The scene reminded me that the best way to deal with death is to view it as part of a larger, more spacious reality - represented by the golden meadow - that is an embodiment of the vastness of divine awareness.  While various manifestations of life and death come and go, the spacious backdrop of divine consciousness - out of which these elements emerge and to which they all eventually return - remains stable and unchanged.  The task of meditation is to identify ourselves more with spacious awareness, and less with the cycle of life-and death.

Photo: Elk rib-cage lying in an aspen meadow; Elkhorn Creek, Red Feather Lakes, CO; October 26, 2013


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