become clear.
-P.Richards
(Big thanks to Pat Richards for the guest perspectives - both words and view! Chew on more of her refreshing weekly musings at God's Friday Girl!)
“... I take what is:
The light beats on the stones,
the wind over water shines
Like long grass through the trees...”
- from “The Words” by David Wagoner (1926-2021)
Yesterday evening's Bitterroot River ramble conjured fond thoughts of Ratty and Mole.
"Then they got out their boat from the boat-house, sculled down the river home, and at a very late hour sat down to supper in their own cosy riverside parlour, to the Rat's great joy and contentment." - The Wind in the Willows, Ch 2,
by Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932)
“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”
-Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889),
from Inversnaid
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.…”
— Mary Oliver (1935-2019), from “Messenger,” found in Mary Oliver’s collection Thirst
“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (Thanks to the ever-actively-curious Tim Ferris for this great quote share.)
I do wonder what travel stories this cottonwood leaf duo could tell (if, of course, they could manage to stop for a chat or interview …).
“The face of the river, in time, became a wonderful book . . . which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it had uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.” — (Samuel Clemens (1835-1910) aka Mark Twain , Life on the Mississippi)
“The marsh, to him who enters it in a receptive mood, holds, besides mosquitoes and stagnation, melody, the mystery of unknown waters, and the sweetness of Nature undisturbed by man.” - Charles William Beebe (1877-1962), The Log of the Sun
“The second day in Oxford arrived, luminescent, the honey hues of sunlight falling from the leaves to settle on the grass like spilled paint. The air was as clear as glass and soft as cotton.” - from Becoming Mrs Lewis by Patti Callahan, Chapter 12
“It has become my way to dispense with incessant seeking in favor of stumbling upon answers. In the words of Picasso, "I find, I do not seek.” No longer desperate to know every outcome these days I tend to wait and see, a far more satisfying way of being that lacks specificity and instead favors experience over analysis.”
-Joan Anderson, in A Year By The Sea, p. 163-164
“Rivers have what man most respects and longs for in his own life—a capacity for renewal and replenishment, continual energy, creativity, cleansing.” — John Kauffman (1923-3014), A Look At Our North Atlantic Rivers
Stormy skies in the weekend forecast - but Flathead Lake is a boon to the soul in any weather. Add to the horizon stretching view a sumptuous, scrumptious patio dinner at Mrs Wonderful’s Cafe and you have the recipe for a perfect Friday night in western Montana.
“Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard.” - Albert Camus (1913-1960)
“We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience.” -
