You could do worse than...

What is the best way to spend the day?  You could do worse than...

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,

To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;

To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;

Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;

This is not solitude, 'tis but to hold
Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.

 

(extract from Solitude, Lord Byron)

Beyond Ourselves

Meeting some ducks in Borrowdale, Cumbria

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” 

(Albert Einstein)

Relationship in Nature

   

 "Into this surrounding space, as you sit, or stand, or lie, as necessity may dictate, you fling forth your spirit; and the spirit of what you are gazing at — for every scene that exists hath its spirit — flows back responsively into your mind; until between your mind and this cubic segment of the cosmos there comes to be established a strange and rhythmical harmony, lulling your senses and liberating your soul with a feeling for which at present human language has no name."

(John Cowper Powys, Philosophy of Solitude)