I felt the need to detour away from the food world for a minute and post some pictures I have taken over the last few years... It's really hard to explain to someone an experience so close at heart if they've never experienced it. How do you describe the joy of walking with Spring for six months or what a mother feels when she has a baby? I love nature..I love experiencing it thru the windows of our VDUB Kaya. These are the things that are truly important... Throw your TV set out the window... go experience the magic of life.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel, What I can never express, yet cannot all conceal.
For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have.
And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw,
the more abundant is its flow.
Antoine de Saint Exupery
I heard a thousand blended notes,While in a grove I sat reclined,In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughtsBring sad thoughts to the mind. To her fair works did nature link The human soul that through me ran; And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made of man Through primrose tuffs, in that sweet bower, The periwinkle tailed its wreaths' And tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes. The birds around me hopped and played Their thoughts I cannot measureBut the least motion which they made, It seemed a thrill of pleasure. The budding twigs spread out their fan, To catch the breezy air: And I must think, do all I can,That there was pleasure there. From heaven if this belief be sent, If such be nature's holy plan Have I not reason to lament What man has made of man?
- Woodsworth
Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy. We know the sap that courses through the trees as we know the blood that runs through our veins. We are part of the earth and the earth is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle; these are our brothers. the rocky crests, the berries in the meadow, the body heat of the pony and the people, all belong to the same family. The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors. Each shimmering reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father. The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and give drink to our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother or sister. The air is precious to us. The air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. The earth is our mother. What befalls the earth befalls all the children of the earth. All things are connected like the blood that connects us all. We did not weave the web of life; we are mearly strands in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. This we know: that our god is also your god. The earth is precious to God and to harm the earth is to heap contempt upon its creator. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many people and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is it to say good-bye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival. We love the earth as a newborn loves its mother’s heartbeat. Preserve the land for all children and love it, as God loves us all. We Indians are part of this land. You too are part of this land. The earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you. None of us can be apart. We are all brothers and sisters, together woven in to this sacred earth.
~ Chief Seattle
"Nature is the great emptiness, the source out of which our culture and all its flowering comes, and in order not to lose sight of this, not to become orphans lost in the minutiae of our daily lives and, like the rich man’s son starving outside his father’s gate, to forget who we are, it is vital that wildness be preserved for its own sake, which is to say, for our sake."
–Dan Gerber
“I heard them talking to one another in murmurs and whispers. They talked about illness, money, shabby domestic cares. Their talk painted the walls of a dismal prison in which men had locked themselves up. And suddenly I had a vision of the face of destiny.”
Each flower is a soul opening out to nature.
– Gérard de Nerval
“Even as an old peasant woman recognizes her god in a painted image, in a childish medal, in a chaplet, so life would speak to us in it’s humblest language in order we understand. The joy of living, I say, was summed up for me in the remembered sensation of that burning and aromatic swallow, that mixture of milk and coffee and bread by which men hold communion with tranquil pastures, exotic plantations, and golden harvests, communion with earth.”
Antoine Saint Exupery
“There is another call, the one that arrives the day when what once worked no longer does. Sometimes people need a shock; sometimes a tocsin call. It’s time for a wake up call. A man fired from a job; a child runs away from home; ulcers overtake a body. The ancients called this “soul loss”. Today, the equivalent is the loss of meaning or purpose in our lives. There is a void where there should be what Gerard Manley Hopkins calls “juice and joy.” The heart grows cold, life loses it’s vitality. Our accomplishments seem meaningless.” - Phil Cousineau
“I have a vision of the Songlines stretching across the continents and the ages; that wherever men have trodden they have left a trail of song (of which we may, now and then, catch an echo); and that these trails must reach back, in time and space, to an isolated pocket in the African Savannah, where the First Man opening his mouth in defiance of the terrors that surrounded him, shouted the opening stanza of the World Song “I AM!”~ Bruce Chatwin
“Gold & rose color of a dream I had,not too long ago Misty blue and lilac, too. There you were sleeping under a tree of songsleeping so peacefully. In your hand a flower played and you smiled my name...” - Jimi Hendrix
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. – John Muir
"These city walls, are like a prison. We got keep on living with our backs against the wall. We are creatures of love; victims of hate...Start living on a higher vibration. Perfection of divinity is everyone's duty. Don't waste your time, living for the vanities. We are creatures of faith; victims of destiny...which we created. Now we are living on a higher vibration."
- Ziggy Marley
"whispering voices,whispering choices...some always lose their soul for silver and gold. Silver and gold have I none. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth Rise up and walk, Rise up and walk. Reaping time and creeping time...You reap what you sowreaping time, creeping time..."
- Lee Scratch Perry
Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.
– John Muir
"Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth the cost in things natural, wild and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important tahn television, and the chance to find a pasque flower is a right as inalienable as free speech." - Aldo Leopold
"In all my future lives May I never fall underthe influence of evil companions; May I never harmeven a single hair of any living being; May I never be deprived of the sublime light of Dharma"
This is one little episode in the funeral of the native flora, which in turn is one episode in the floras of the world. Mechanized man, oblivious of floras, is proud of his progress in cleaning up the landscape on which willy nilly he must live out his days. It might be wise to prohibit at once all teachings of real botany and real history, lest some future citizen suffer qualms about the floristic price of his good life.
- Aldo Leopold
I wonder whether the process ordinarily referred to as 'growing up' is not actually growing down; whether experience, so much touted among adults as the thing children lack, is not actually a progressive dilution of the essentials by the trivialities of living.
- Aldo Leopold
We spoke harshly of the Spaniards who, in their zeal for gold and converts, had needlessly extinguished the native indians. It did not occur to us that we, too, were the captains of an invasion too sure of it's own righteousness.
~ Aldo Leopold
Relegating grizzlies to ALASKA is about like relegating happiness to heaven; one may never get there.- Aldo Leopold
For seven years I dwelt in the loose palace of exile. Playing strange games with the girls of the Island. Now I have come again to the land of the fair and the strong and the wise. Brothers and Sisters of the pale forest. Children of the night. Who among you will run with the hunt? Now, night arrives with her purple legions. Retire now to your tents and to your dreams. Tomorrow we enter the town of my birth. I want to be ready.
- Jim Morrison
"I hate this age. When the war is over, nothing but emptiness will be left. For centuries, humanity has been descending an immense staircase whose top is hidden in the clouds and whose lowest steps are lost in a dark abyss. We could have ascended the staircase; instead we chose to descend it. Spiritual decay is terrible."- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"if my words did glow, with the gold of sunshine.And my tunes were played on the heart unstrung. Would you hear my voicecome through the music? Would you hold it near as it were your own?"
- Grateful Dead
"The oldest religion discovered (it) long ago. It is the basis of all religious thought. It is the supreme "trick", which has been somewhat forgotten since the advent of material progress. That "trick" is sacrifice. And by sacrifice I mean neither renunciation of all good things of life, nor despair in repentance. By sacrifice, I mean a free gift, a gift that demands nothing in return. It is not what you receive that magnifies you, but what you give."
~ St. Exupery
"The opening of the Trunk Moment of Inner FreedomWhen the Mind is opened and the Infinite Universe revealed and the Soul is left to wander Dazed and Confused searching here and there for Teachers and Friends."
- Jim Morrison
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
~ Thoreau
"it was a childish ignorance, but now 'tis little joy to know I'm farther off from heaven than when I was a boy."
- Thomas Hood
"I remember the games of my childhood-the dark and golden park we peopled with gods; the limitless Kingdomwe made of this square mile never thoroughly explored, never thoroughly charted. We created a secret civilization where footfalls had meaning and things a savor known in no other world.And when we grow to be men and live under other laws, what remains of that park filled with the shadows of childhood, magical, freezing, burning? What do we learn when we return to it and stroll with a sort of dispair...marvelling that within a space so small we should have founded a Kingdom that had seemed to us infinite-what do we learn except that in this infinity we shall never again set foot, and that it is into the game and not the park that we have lost the power to enter?"
"you become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."
"it is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
What is essential is invisible to the eye"
"Don't you understand that somewhere along the way we have gone astray? The human anthill is richer than ever before. We have more wealth and more leisure, and yet we lack something essential, which we find difficult to describe. We feel less human; somewhere we have lost our mysterious prerogatives."
When I have Sacrificed My Angel Soul
I died a mineral, and became a plantI died a plant and rose an animal.I died an animal and I was a man.Why should I fear? When was I less by dying Yet once more I shall die as man, to soar With the blessed angels; but even from angelhood I must pass on. All except God perishes.When I have sacrificed my angel soul,I shall become that which no mind ever conceived.O, let me not exist for non-Existence proclaims,"To Him, we shall return."
- Jalal-Vddin Rumi
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