Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.
John Muir
A Sierra Club profile.
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The picture above is titled Solitude and painted by Loretta Kasper.
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I have a bench in a shady spot that over looks the pond in the back. The hills sweep down to the shore of the pond in a little valley that provides a contemplative vista. It's no Grand Canyon, but you get to overlooks a piece of Mother Nature that offers quiet beauty, a chance to see various forms of bird and animal. Most of all, it gives the opportunity to sit, sip on a glass of water and appreciate the world around me.
John Muir had it right over a century ago. He was a true visionary and I first encountered his ideas in high school. His book, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, provides a good look at what drove the "Father of Our National Parks" and gives a good taste of the hardships and struggles of growing up on a Wisconsin farm in the mid-1800s.
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