Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink,
taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of the earth.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
We need the tonic of wildness...at the same time that we are earnest
to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and
unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and
unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.
When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that
only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence,
that petty fears and petty pleasure are but the shadow of the reality.
We must look for a long time before we can see.
[some of my favorite quotes from Henry David Thoreau along with pictures from a recent walk we too by the Matanuska River]