Flowers are spelling it out...

"I often think flowers are the angels' alphabet whereby they write on hills and fields mysterious and beautiful lessons for us to feel and learn."

Beautiful sentiments from Louisa May Alcott (born 1832), who died on this day in 1888, aged 55. Author of Little Women (1868) Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). She was also a transcendentalist, an abolitionist and a feminist.

She is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, near Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and  Henry David Thoreau. What a group of people! They are buried on a hillside now known as'Authors' Ridge'.

Gazing is not seeing....

 "The scenery, when it is truly seen, reacts on the life of the seer. How to live. How to get the most of life.... How to extract its honey from the flower of the world."

(Henry David Thoreau)

 

Often we look at scenery by sweeping the landscape with our eyes commenting on its beauty but without really seeing the objects in front of us.  We tend to glance at things, even other people’s faces, and are unable later to recall the colour of their eyes.  To really see something means taking a little time to stop, be still, and look closely rather than merely forming an impression.  Gaze at a mountain, follow its lines and contours with your eyes, the gashes and chasms cut deep into it flanks, the becks trickling down is side, the rocks and scree strewn at its base, the tree of two bent by the prevailing winds, the grassy knolls, the sheep-folds, the play of the clouds across the top and the changing light and the individual character of the place will make itself known to the seer.  It is only by taking our time and letting the scenery unfold  that we can begin to see it as it is.  Then it will not simply be a fleeting impression but an understanding of the character of the place.  

Something in Mountain Air

Why we need to go to the mountains from time to time...

"There is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires.  Will not man grow to greater perfection intellectually as well as physically under these influences?"

(H.D. Thoreau, On Walking)