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, January 16, 2014

According to Emerson, we are not meant to have disciples!


"I have been writing and speaking for twenty-five or thirty years, and have not now one disciple. Why? Not that what I said was not true; not that it has not found intelligent receivers; but because it did not go forth from any wish in me to bring people to me, but rather to themselves. I delight in driving them from me. What could I do, if they came to me? . . . This is my boast: that I have no school followers. I would account it a measure of the impurity of my insight if it did not create independence."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1858


I love this quote! I chose this photo because this particular aspen tree is so unique. How could any other tree be quite like it?  And yet - and here is the fascinating thing - aspen trees in any given grove are all interconnected through their common root system!  That means that when each of us lives according to our own individual identity, we contribute our unique gifts to the Whole!

Photo: Contorted Aspen tree in a driving snowstorm; Bierstadt Moraine, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; January 10, 2014

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