THE SPLENDOR AND TRAVAIL OF THE EARTH

Solitary Sandpiper

Upstate South Carolina

"We need another and wiser and perhaps more mystical concept of animals.  Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion.  We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves.  And therein we err, and greatly err.  For the animal shall not be measured by man.  In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.  They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth."

Henry Beston

The Outermost House:

A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod 

SOLITUDE AND FREEDOM

Hermit Thrush

Upstate South Carolina

A man can be himself

only so long as he is alone;

and if he does not love solitude,

he will not love freedom; for it is only

when he is alone that he is really free.

Arthur Schopenhauer

HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS

Song Sparrow

Upstate South Carolina

"Hope" is the Thing with Feathers

By Emily Dickinson

"Hope" is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I've heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

EVERYTHING IS A MIRACLE

Dobbins Farm

Upstate South Carolina

There are only two ways to live your life.

One is as though nothing is a miracle.

The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Albert Einstein

An Overlooked Danger

 

Bird on a Wire

Savannah Sparrow

Dobbins Farm

Upstate South Carolina

The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety.

Goethe

MOON OVER DOBBINS FARM

Moon Over Dobbins Farm

Upstate South Carolina

The moon does not fight.

It attacks no one.

It does  not worry.

It does not try to crush others.

It keeps to its course, 

but by its very nature, it gently influences.

What other body could pull

an entire ocean from shore to shore?

The moon is faithful to its nature

and its power is never diminished.

Ming-Dao Deng

Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony

SIGNS AND WONDERS

Red-shouldered Hawk

Some things happen only once, twice in a lifetime.

The world is full of signs and wonders that come, and go,

and if you are lucky you might be alive to see them.  I thought

the world was ending, but my hawk saved me, and the terror was gone.

Helen Macdonald

H is for Hawk