The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only hope.

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s life may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

~ Wendell Berry

Wildflowers and Bishop Creek, Eastern Sierra, CA – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission