A bend in the river

Monument to veterans of Battle of Blue Licks near Carlisle, KY

A battle was fought after militias chased the attackers of Bryan Station in what is now Kentucky.
Bryan Station was attacked on August 15, 1782.  The colonists came to the west  side of the Licking River.  There were concerns that the Bryan Station attackers would ambush the colonists in the hills across the river.  The concerns proved to be valid. On August 19 the militias met with the combined force of Loyalists and Shawnee and Delaware tribes.  The militias were forced to retreat back across the Licking River after losing many men to casualties.  Today the Licking River has a natural appearance at the bend where the battle was fought.

Time to listen

Maple Tree leaves - Loretto motherhouse, Kentucky

Walk quietly and look at the work of the trees beside you and above you. A few moments of silence are good to have.  Sometimes you come to the place where your joy comes from deep within you and you want to say "Oh." Saying "Oh" in the silence of the place you are in.

Thomas Merton - Wisdom

Tree Sections - North Bend State Park West Virginia

These sections of  large trees are in the lodge at North Bend State Park in West Virginia. The note on the large tree section states that the tree was a white oak that lived to be 227 years in age.

"Perhaps I am stronger than I think." - Thomas Merton

One touch of nature makes all the world kin. - John Muir

Thomas Merton and the Loretto Community, Kentucky

Fall foliage - Loretto, Kentucky

The Loretto Motherhouse is located on a working farm in Marion County, Kentucky.  The Sisters of Loretto is an American congregation founded in 1812 by Reverend Charles Nerinckx.  The congregation is dedicated to education of youth. The Motherhouse is located on the site of home of Rev. Stephen T. Badin, the first priest ordained in the U.S. Father Badin was ordained in 1793.

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.
                                                                                                                                 -- Thomas Merton

What I Saw - Cornwallis, WV

North Bend Rail Trail - WV - Cornwallis to Ellenboro

What we need.  Wilderness is for us.

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

The Wisdom of Thomas Merton

Water along North Bend Rail Trail - Between Cornwallis and Ellenboro, WV

We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.    -Thomas Merton


Oh Thank you.
Let my body rest. Let me walk into silence and appreciate the place.

And say"Oh!"

The great array that is available to us

Wild turkeys - Clifty Falls, Indiana

If one has a sense of wonder one finds one is a part of nature.  When you are mindful, you are present, you feel that you want to say "Oh!"  We have senses that allow us to feel the beauty of nature, and to absorb the beauty of nature into us.

A great day - gratitude

Cake Rock - Clifty Falls, Indiana

We care about the things we love.  When one comes to this place one loves this place.
We want to protect these things.  The light of imagination comes into our being and we say "Oh!"

Artisan work

Rock Wall from local rocks - McConnell Springs - Lexington, Kentucky

These impressive rock walls are along Old Frankfort Pike west of Lexington.  This wall was available for viewing at McConnell springs in Lexington.  These walls were built at a time when immigrants from Ireland were working to pay off the price of the trip to the United States.  These walls will be standing for decades to come unless some extreme natural event damages the walls.  These walls are very durable.

Paris, Kentucky

Nyssa silvatica -  Black Gum - Paris, Kentucky







This is a Black Gum tree at the arboretum on Seventh Street in Paris, Kentucky.  Because its wood is difficult to split Black Gum is often passed by for harvesting for use as wood.
It is one of the Appalachian highland trees seen by Lucy Braun in her mountain travels.
It is destroyed along with the other trees when surface mining clears the Appalachian land of all plants.

The wild sounds

Cicada, Jefferson County, Kentucky

The biophony includes the sounds that cicadas make.  There is something to be learned in absorbing the many parts to their sounds.  There are cicadas that emerge after a thirteen year time and cicadas that emerge after a seventeen year time.  The adult cicadas commonly heard on summer nights are not these long time silent cicadas but are cicadas that emerge almost every year.  These cicadas are called annual cicadas.  These cicadas have a life of two to five years.  Their sounds can be very intense.

The destruction of the wild

Toppled giant, Spring Mill, Indiana

The great wilds of our country once held to be boundless and inexhaustible are being rapidly invaded and overrun in every direction, and everything destructible in them is
being destroyed. How far destruction may go is not easy to guess. Every
landscape low and high seems doomed to be trampled and harried.

John Muir

The cause of the fall of the giant tree at Spring Mill is unknown.  The great clearing of wild places without regard to the cost is plain to see in the Midwest.  If you see much of the Midwest or the Southeast in this country you see the great loss
of habitat in this country.

Ohio River Bridge - Big Four Bridge

The Big Four Railroad Bridge at night

The former Big Four railroad bridge has been renovated so that people may ascend to the bridge and walk over the Ohio River.  Lighting has been added to the bridge so that a rainbow of colors may be seen at night.  A controller can command the lights on the sides of the bridge to display a purple color or most any color.  The people in  community use the bridge to walk up to the bridge level and view the river from the bridge.  Ohio River bridges must meet a eighty foot height standard so that boats may pass under the bridge decks.  People sometimes walk down the ramps and buy ice cream from the neighborhood sellers in Jeffersonville.   All this walking and moving is good exercise.  Since the air quality in the area has improved doing strenuous outside activities is not as dangerous as it once was.

Chicago, Illinois

SBD Dauntless at Chicago Midway Airport

If you are going to be a traveler you are going to go though a Chicago airport from time to time.  Sometimes it may be O Hare and sometimes it may be Midway.  Once the Douglas Dauntless was the subject of models, toy airplanes, and drawings in books.   Looking at the shape of this Dauntless you can see why it was symbolic of American design and invention.  The Dauntless hangs inside one of the concourses in the Midway airport where it will be preserved for a long time.

The Dauntless and many other aircraft of the time were designed to perform a function and were appealing in their appearance. They looked like racing airplanes with their curves made to reduce drag for maximum performance.  The sound of their engines was another part of their operation that people of their time have talked about with pleasant recollection.

The smell of wood

Wooden Bourbon warehouse Jim Beam property, Kentucky

Warehouse for aging in oak barrels

All wood construction warehouse

Wood construction and wood barrels in Kentucky

The barrels used in bourbon making are built from white oak, Quercus Alba.  The wood that is used in Europe may be from one of two other Quercus species.  The construction of the barrel storage buildings is all wood.  The smell inside the warehouse is the full sense smell of wood.   The storage buildings pictured here are at Clermont, Kentucky.   The operator does not use horse drawn transport to move the barrels around the facility but many of the methods employed here are from at least one hundred years ago. The wood barrels are put into and removed from all wood buildings.  It is very much a place of forest products.

Hammer's Cave Spring and Spring Mill Inn

The water from Hammer's Cave Spring at Spring Mill

The restaurant at Spring Mill Inn near Mitchel, Indiana is a popular place for good food.  I had heard that a desert made from the fruit of the persimmon tree was available for patrons.  I looked for it but I did not find it.  I asked if the persimmon tree dessert was available for me.  Yes! I had it and the only drawback is I think the preparer is adding sugar to the fruit.  Nonetheless it is a treat to enjoy.

The forest area around the inn is very healthy.  It is possible and I hope it is true that the persimmon fruit desserts at Spring Mill Inn are local food.

Hammer's Cave Spring

 

Many people speak of Indiana as the Crossroads of America. The  days of life in the nineteenth century in Indiana are the subject of the historic area at Spring Mill near Mitchel, Indiana.  Samuel Jackson, Jr. had served in the Navy in the War of 1812.  He moved to the area now preserved at Spring Mill in 1814.  In 1817 the Bullitt brothers of Louisville bought the land and began to add structures to the community.  It was the Bullitt brothers that built the three story stone mill.  In 1824 another set of brothers purchased the property.  This time it was the Montgomery brothers of  Philadelphia.  They built a distillery at the site.  In 1833 the Hammer brothers purchased the mill.  The source of the water for the mill is called Hammer's cave.  The tall cedar trees on the lawn have been dated to be older than the time of the Hammer era.  One can touch the same trees that the Hammer children played under in their lives at this beautiful place.

This is a colorful place; those who come may take a wonderful memory with them.

What direction

Overlook view Park Road east of Big Oak Flat Station, Yosemite NP

"Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer." 

John Muir

Seeing

 

 

Harlan County, Kentucky

 

 

 

 

Pico Iyer writes of seeing through the eyes of wonder.  Be aware.  You may be missing beauty that you are not noticing.

Natural Writing




Yosemite Half Dome as viewed from Washburn Point in evening light before sunset

When I pen my writing I often quote authors to amplify the message. It is necessary to bring together history to see the issues of the current time. Today I provide quotes from John Muir of the importance and transformational power of nature's mountains and of nature's rocks.

“Heaven knows that John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God’s mountains.”

“Compare walking on dead planks with walking on living rock where a distinct electric flash seems to attend every step. ”

John Muir

Think of the redemptive power of the mountains and the valleys and live with appreciation.

America's beauty

Honeycomb Rock, Pine Hills Nature Preserve, Indiana

There is something to see, to smell, to explore in America's natural places. The Wilderness Act set aside vast tracts of America simply to be preserved without being built on for the purposes of the commerce of the day. Passed in 1964 it began a step to valuing things like open spaces, clean water and clean air.

 

 

Indiana has been called the Crossroads of America.  Her last few wild places still crackle with sights and sounds of natural beauty.

The nature of Yosemite

Upper Yosemite Falls

Yosemite Falls has a magical aura to it because of the high place where the water leaps from its rocky channel.  The water in Yosemite Creek comes from snow melt.  In the summer Yosemite Falls is not flowing.

Upper Yosemite Falls is a one of the most beautiful waterfalls in existence. The water shoots out in comets that leap out from the lip of the cliff side.  John Muir and another man lived in a cabin built near the base of Lower Yosemite Falls.

Their brave beauty work

Yosemite Plants - Road from Arch Rock Station

Having read John Muir and learned John Muir one hears Muir's descriptions when walking the trails of Yosemite.

The radiance in some places is so great as to be fairly dazzling, keen lance-rays of every color flashing, sparkling in glorious abundance, joining the plants in their fine, brave beauty-work, every flower, every crystal, a window opening into heaven, a mirror reflecting the Creator.

 

 

 

John Muir

Much of the forest, perhaps the majority of the forest is old growth forest.  To visit Yosemite is to visit a Xanadu of protected old growth forest.  Though the trees are protected from cutting they still may be damaged by drought, insects, and blights. Though the sequoias get the attention the sugar pines grow in many more parts of the mountains and valleys of the Sierra Nevada mountains.   The sugar pines are so appealing you want to look at them. 


 

Yosemite Coming Home

Yosemite National Park

The granite of Yosemite causes awe.  The Yosemite Valley is a place of great steep cliffs.  Light comes into the valley.  The shadows of clouds are on the cliff sides. One feels awe at the sight of it.

The Forests of the Sierra Nevada

Blackened tree Yosemite NP Between Big Oak Flat Info Center and Entrance to Yosemite Valley, Big Oak Flat Road

One sees the evidence of recent fires all around.  The forest composition changes with elevation.  Incense cedars are seen in much of the Sierra Nevada forest.

What I Saw - The Range of Light

Conifers including Sugar Pines - Yosemite NP - Big Oak Flat Road After and  Near Big Oak Flat Station

From the Sacramento Airport one travels south on I-5.  It is a mistake to exit to I-80.  One must pass the I-80 exit ramp and continue south on I-5. Taking I-80 will take the traveler to Reno. I-80 never meets CA-99, the needed highway to proceed to the Sierra Nevadas. The correct exit is Business I-80.  The naming is confusing for a Sacramento traveler but the correct selection must be made.  Business I-80 is also state route 50.

From Business I-80 one travels to CA-99.  CA-99 takes one to the San Joaquin valley.  There is an illness called San Joaquin Valley Fever that is caused by inhalation of airborne dust or dirt. The causative organism is the fungus Coccidioides immitis. C. immitis resides in the soil.  The valley has many groves. Cherries are grown in the area near Stockton.  This a large cherry producing area.

From  CA-99 one travels to SR 4.  SR 4 goes to Copperopolis.  From Copperopolis one begins to climb into the Sierra Nevada range.  From SR 4 one travels SR 49 to go further east.  The SR 49 bridge over the New Melones Reservoir is a beautiful bridge.   The water levels in the New Molones Reservoir are strikingly lower than past years.

 One may take SR 49 to SR 120.  SR 120 winds its way to the Big Oak Flat entrance station to Yosemite National Park.  Fires have burned parts of the conifers along the alignment of SR 120. The Rim Fire in 2013 burned many trees along SR 120.

The Sierra Nevadas though logged in the national forest areas have in their highlands Yosemite National park.  The park is a World Heritage Site and an International Biosphere Reserve.  As one enters the park one becomes one with the land.  One feels like one is going home.

 

What I saw - The Range of Light



Yosemite NP - Highway 41- From Tunnel View Overlook



Light...
I know not a singular word fine enough for Light.
Holy beamless, bodiless, inaudible floods of Light.

- John Muir

Cliffs and places - Indiana

Massive Rock - Rocky Hollow Falls Canyon, Indiana



The Turkey Run area has cool shady areas such as the Rocky Hollow Falls Canyon where rare plants may grow.  The ravines have been sculpted by the running water making unusual shapes in the rock faces.

What I saw - Bridge over Sugar Creek, Indiana

The red siding is the side of the covered bridge.  The bridge abutment is
fashioned from Mansfield sandstone.

A stream in the area near Crawfordsville, Indiana is called Turkey Run.  But a much broader area than the immediate area of the stream is known as Turkey Run.

Layers of sand at the bottom of the sea were compressed to become sandstone.  This is the local   Mansfield sandstone.

There is a metal plaque on the door of the house where John Lusk lived. The house is near the Narrows point in Sugar Creek.  The 1883 covered bridge crosses the creek here at the Narrows. The plaque reads “To the memory of John Lusk who saved the trees of Turkey Run.”  The plaque is labeled “The Nature Study Club of Indiana.”

What better thing can be said of a person than he "saved the trees."  In so many cases irreplaceable trees have been lost.  Thanks to John Lusk the trees of Turkey Run are living to this day.

"These forests were composed of about five hundred species of trees, all of them in some way useful to man, ranging in size from twenty-five feet in height and less than one foot in diameter at the ground to four hundred feet in height and more than twenty feet in diameter,—lordly monarchs proclaiming the gospel of beauty like apostles. For many a century after the ice-ploughs were melted, nature fed them and dressed them every day; working like a man, a loving, devoted, painstaking gardener; fingering every leaf and flower and mossy furrowed bole; bending, trimming, modeling, balancing, painting them with the loveliest colors; bringing over them now clouds with cooling shadows and showers, now sunshine; fanning them with gentle winds and rustling their leaves; exercising them in every fibre with storms, and pruning them; loading them with flowers and fruit, loading them with snow, and ever making them more beautiful as the years rolled by. Wide-branching oak and elm in endless variety, walnut and maple, chestnut and beech, ilex and locust, touching limb to limb, spread a leafy translucent canopy along the coast of the Atlantic over the wrinkled folds and ridges of the Alleghanies,—a green billowy sea in summer, golden and purple in autumn, pearly gray like a steadfast frozen mist of interlacing branches and sprays in leafless, restful winter."  John Muir

What I saw - Indiana scenic places

Wedge Rock - This huge rock fell into the ravine from the top of the ravine. The
 trees give help with the size of the rock and the time that the rock has been
resting at its current location.

Punch Bowl - This place shows the work of the erosion of the rock

In Western Indiana the Sugar Creek area near Crawfordsville was once under a sea.  Layers of sand at the bottom of the sea were compressed to become sandstone.  This is now named the Mansfield sandstone. The coal that is found in the area was laid down during the time that the sea was gone but marshes covered the area.  After that time the area was covered with ice.  Rock brought with the ice is called glacial drift.  This material lodged in waterways and changed the flow of surface water.

New surface water streams developed in the area.  The stream that that is now known as Sugar Creek changed the look of the area. Sugar Creek and its tributaries eroded into the Mansfield sandstone.  In places the deep ravine is wider than the upper reaches of the ravine.  The eroded canyons have dramatic shapes.  The cool shady areas provide habitat for rare plants.

When one walks in a Northerly direction the path comes an area of bare rock that looks something like a sloped stack of oatmeal cookies.  A cascade of water noisily falls down this stack of rocks.  The wet rock surfaces are slippery.  After climbing that sloped area the sides of the ravine narrow until one finds almost no places to step without stepping into the high velocity water rushing toward the walker.

A dramatic passageway that goes on for dozens of feet must be negotiated with the churning water constantly flowing through the sandstone.  It is possible to make it through without stepping into the rushing water but it takes some doing.

It is a place of becoming very close to the rock cliff faces.

The radiance of the Sierra

The radiance in some places is so great as to be fairly dazzling, keen lance-rays of every color flashing, sparkling in glorious abundance, joining the plants in their fine, brave beauty-work,-
every flower, every crystal, a window opening into heaven, a mirror reflecting the Creator.

John Muir

This writing is so powerful that it must be repeated.

What I saw - Bernheim Forest

Kentucky native vine

Art Installation - Bernheim Arboretum

The Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest is a located in the Knobs section of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.  The Arboretum was the gift of Isaac W. Bernheim.  Mr. Bernheim immigrated to the United States from Germany.  He and his younger brother established a beverage distillery in Paducah in 1872.  Later they moved their operation to Louisville.  The statue of Thomas Jefferson at the Jefferson County Courthouse is a gift of Isaac Bernheim.

Though his works in Kentucky have been appreciated in the Commonwealth he also was associated with Colorado.  In the 1920s he moved to Denver, Colorado.

The Arboretum site was reclaimed from a heavily cut over area.  That area had salt production and iron production during the 1800s.  Both of these products used wood for fuel in their production.  Most of the trees were cut to accumulate wood for the industries. Many different trees live at the Arboretum. The site is privately owned and is open for visitors to see the trees of the Arboretum.

Leaves extending

 

Cedars in deciduous forest, Marion County, Kentucky

Green leaves extending from forest trees, Marion County, Kentucky

 

 

 

Normally in Kentucky the branches of deciduous trees become alive with new leaves growing along the branches in the month of April. The grass, vines and bushes produce new green leaves.

Flood Waters

Swift Water -Floyd's Fork

Flood water  - Floyd's Fork

During the week before Easter severe thunderstorms hit the Louisville area.  Flood waters caused extensive damage.  The power of the rushing water was heard for days. 

What I saw - Smoke Over Louisville




GE Appliance Park

This smoke from a fire at GE Appliance Park was visable around the city.

What I saw - West Point

Water cascading over the creek bed - Fort Duffield, KY

Wildflowers in bloom - Fort Duffield, KY 

A wooded area has been set aside for historic preservation along Highway 31W at West Point.  The U.S. army constructed a fort there during the American Civil War.  The high area where the fort was located could have controlled a large area of the surrounding land.  The fort and the area of  surrounding land was never attacked during the American Civil War.  The winter of 1862 was a harsh winter.  Some of the soldiers in garrison died of their illnesses during that winter.  There is a listing of deaths and the illness for each decedent if known posted at the park.

It is springtime in Kentucky.  There are numerous flowers in bloom along the streams in this historic park.

The quiet beauty of the flowers stands against the loss that occurred at Fort Duffield. The area speaks of healing.

The attraction of the mountain

Forest - Early Morning Light - Dale Hollow Lake SRP

Warren Macdonald was so drawn to the attraction of walking in nature that he kept going to remote places.  When a huge rock fell on him he lost both lower legs in the post accident surgery.  And after learning to use a prosthesis for each leg he returned to the outdoors.  He returned to walking to summits in less than twelve months from his accident.

Misquoted

Cathedral of the Assumption Marker capped with snow

"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they attack you. Then you win."

This wonderful thought is attributed to Gandhi.  But a study of the record shows no evidence that Gandhi ever said this.  Gandhi did show perseverance in his work. 

"First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you. And that, is what is going to happen to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America."

Research shows that Nicholas Klein said this in 1918 in Baltimore, Maryland.

The takeaway is when you are moving uphill you may be just short of a breakout.  So walk on!

Your life's purpose

Walk Signal capped with snow.

As you walk you consider your happiness or your suffering. Or perhaps some of both.  You consider others around you that you know.

You know something about what you do.  You know who you do it for.  You know what you do well.
You know how others change because of what you teach other people.

The life which is unexamined is not worth living.
Socrates

I appreciate

Morning Mist - Forest- Dale Hollow Lake SRP

"Our real journey in life is interior."
Thomas Merton

"Contemplation is not and cannot be a function of the external self.
There is an irreducible opposition between the deep transcendent self that awakens
only in contemplation and the superficial, external self which we commonly identify with
the first person singular."
Thomas Merton

"If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what
I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am
living for, in detail ask me what I think is keeping me from living
fully for the thing I want to live for."
Thomas Merton

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
― Wendell Berry

Now comes the opportunity. Walk. Practice sitting appreciation. Practice walking appreciation. Your breath fuels your heart.  Let your feet walk peacefully on the land.   Hear the notes in the trees. 

Precious land and waterside places

Stream - forest woods - Dale Hollow Lake SRP

The snow melt has fed water to the streams in Kentucky.  It is a time for  being at waterside places. Today is a day of reflection. We appreciate Thoreau, Merton, Berry and Muir. Merton and Berry lived and wrote in Kentucky; Berry continues to live and work in Kentucky.  Now comes the opportunity. Walk.  Your heart beats in resonance to the land.  Appreciate the water and the rocks here. Rocks were in these cliffs five hundred years ago and longer.

Down

Cherokee Park - Landsacpe plan by Olmsted - Louisville, KY

 

Sometimes we think that our life is rough and others are having a better experience. The life of Frederick Law Olmsted informs us of the reality of human experience. His adult brother died from an illness. His leg was broken in a carriage accident and two weeks after the incident his child died. He was replaced and forced out from his position managing Central Park in New York. One of his major designs was dismissed because the roads were curved instead of strait with corners at the intersections. Olmsted did not have an easy time in his day. There was conflict swirling about his plans for landscapes.