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We are all part of the ancient Sacred Circle of Life, and therefore we are all Indigenous Peoples of Mother Earth. The essential truth of this reality cannot be denied no matter how we look at it; it is simply an irrevocable truth.
~ Chief Phil Lane Jr.
Bryce Canyon, photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name.
~Alice Meynell, “The Spirit of Place”
Toutle Ridge, photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
We are all one. Birds, plants, animals. minerals – we are all different manifestations of the same essential energy.
~ Alejandro Lerner
Moonrise, Glacier Point, Yosemite – photo by Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
As dreams are the healing songs
from the wilderness of our unconscious –
So wild animals, wild plants, wild landscapes
are the healing dreams
from the deep singing mind
of the Earth
~ Dale Pendell
Yosemite Valley, photo by Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been – a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.
~ Starhawk
Photo by Zastrozzi Dh Photography, used with permission
Were coming full circle back to ancient indigenous wisdom we all once held – interdependence, kinship, reciprocity & reverence.
~ Kenny Ausubel
Keyhole Arch, Pfeiffer Beach – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
A language is a flash of the human spirit. Its a vehicle through which the soul of each particular culture comes into the material world. Every language is an old growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities.
~ Wade Davis
Winter, Cascade Creek, Yosemite – photo by Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
Your deepest roots are in nature. No matter who you are, where you live, or what kind of life you lead, you remain irrevocably linked with the rest of creation.
~ Charles Cook
Salmon Cascades, photo by TAO Photography, used with permission
Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering its a feather bed.
~ Terence McKenna
Big Sur Coast, Photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
All life is Sacred. We come into life as sacred beings. When we abuse the Sacredness of life we affect all Creation.
~ White Buffalo Calf Woman Proclamation 2014
Columbia Gorge – Mushrooms, photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what is, surrender to the Now. Let it teach you Being. Let it teach you integrity – which means to be one, to be yourself, to be real. Let it teach you how to live and how to die, and how not to make living and dying into a problem.
~ Eckhart Tolle
Pinnacles National Park, photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
This is a new day.
We vow to go through it in mindfulness.
The sun of wisdom has now risen,
shining in every direction.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Second Burroughs at Mt. Rainier – photo by KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Yosemite – photo by Gary Hart Photography, used with permission
When you live guided by intuition rather than thought, your life dances like writing on water, fresh and untraceable.
~ Mooji
Big Sur, CA – photo by Don Smith Photography, used with permission
I would like to live the way a river flows:
Carried out by the surprise of its own unfolding.
~ John ODonohue
Lower Gray Wolf River, KR Backwoods Photography, used with permission
