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.

Celebrating the 100th Post

Scenic stream Lake Cumberland SRP, Kentucky

This marks the 100th post available in waterside places.  Today is a day of reflection.  We have learned from Thoreau, Roosevelt, Merton, Berry and Muir.  Merton and Berry lived and wrote in Kentucky; Berry continues to live  and work in Kentucky.  I appreciate the water and the rocks here.  The rocks draw one to approach.

The people

Trails through the woods are good.  The places we can go to are there because of people's hard work.  Many worked their entire life to keep these natural places from being developed and forever lost.  When we go up to a peak on a trail constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) we benefit from the planning and hard work of those depression era workers.  With every step we take we can call them to mind.

Forest and Boulders - Southeast Kentucky

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but Nature's sources never fail. ... The petty discomforts that beset the awkward guest, the unskilled camper, are quickly forgotten, while all that is precious remains. Fears vanish as soon as one is fairly free in the wilderness."
John Muir

"Life is a great adventure... accept it in such a spirit." Theodore Roosevelt

"If you wish to advance into the infinite, explore the finite in all directions."
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe 

"Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”
― Henry David Thoreau

Name for humans

Bardstown, Nelson County, Kentucky

The scientific name for today's humans is Homo sapiens sapiens.  This is from Latin for one who tastes.  So the idea is one who senses in the body.  Do we live our name?  Are we tasting fully now?
“I believe that life should be lived so vividly and so intensely that thoughts of another life, or of a longer life, are not necessary.”
-Marjory Stoneman Douglas

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."
-Henry David Thoreau

The photograph is an ash tree on a bright day in Kentucky.

On your journey

 

Blanton Forest

 

“As Thoreau famously said, it doesn't matter where or how far you go - the farther commonly the worse - the important thing is how alive you are. Writing of every kind is a way to wake oneself up and keep as alive as when one has just fallen in love.”
-Pico Iyer
You can be sleepwalking through your journey or you can be attentive to what you see on your journey. You can see by practicing sensing.

Being awake

"Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”
― Henry David Thoreau