An early sign of the gift, powerful and definitive, came when I reached the Sierra Nevada on my dissertation quest. Over the preceding days of driving a thousand plus miles, I had endured bouts of high anxiety. What on earth had I done by leaving a good job and taking off on a romantic journey that might only expose my incompetence as writer, Nature explorer, and scholar, and having no notion what I would do when (if) I successfully finished?
A Life Considered, page 65
photo by Pablo Fierro
National Indie Excellence Award Finalist 2020
We recognize awakening when we experience it, wonder at the moment’s appearance and passing, and appreciate its teaching.
Reverence for Existence, page 58
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.
~John Muir
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2022 The Northern Route – Mönsterås Sweden
11 October: Ferried back to the mainland (Oskarshamn) from Visby last evening, spent the night there, and then drove south 100 km to my present hotel—a lap of luxury sort of place that I’d have never chosen but through neglect let the agent do. I’m by nature too ascetic for this elegant spa sort of thing, and don’t like the people who seem thrilled with it. But I’ve walked around and seen some interesting trees so the stay isn’t wasted, just the frivolous stuff. On a whim I pulled into a little town called Mönsterås along the way to the hotel. As I got to the downtown, I discovered that it was ancient almost in the Visby sense: narrow...
It is the twenty-seventh of October now, and early in the morning. The moon is over the southwest mountains. It has definitely moved out of fullness, more noticeable than last night. I have never before asked when and where the moon changes phases. But now I know: always, everywhere, slowly.
Reverence for Existence, page 147
“Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally.”
But in some of nature’s forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.
~ John Muir