Imagining other worlds, you end up changing this one.
~ Umberto Eco
Jasper National Park, Canada – photo by Devadana Sanctuary
Devadana Sanctuary
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At the deepest level of ecological awareness you are talking about spiritual awareness. Spiritual awareness is an understanding of being imbedded in a larger whole, a cosmic whole, of belonging to the universe.
~ Fritjof Capra
Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska – photo by Devadana Sanctuary
I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
~ John Muir
Lower Reid Falls, Skagway, Alaska – photo by Devadana Sanctuary
Some of us are drawn to mountains the way the moon draws the tide. Both the great forests and the mountains live in my bones. They have taught me, humbled me, purified me, and changed me: Mount Fuji, Mount Shasta, Mount Kailas, the Schreckhorn, Kanchenjunga. Mountains are abodes for ancestor and deity. They are places where energy is discovered, made, acquired and spent. Mountains are symbols, as well, of enduring truth and of the human quest for spirit. I was told long ago to spend time with mountains.
From The Fruitful Darkness, by Joan Halifax
Alaska Sunset – Photo courtesy of Maria Miller
The soil is all of the earth that is really ours. The seasons, with their heat and their cold make the soil. The storms make the soil, with water, the most powerful substance on Earth. The winds make the soil, spreading dust across thousands of miles. The tides make the soil, stirring the river deltas and their fertile slimes. And above all, the trees and the plants, the dead and the digested, the eaters and the eaten, make the soil…We spend our lives hurrying away from the real, as though it were deadly to us. ‘It must be somewhere up there on the horizon,’ we think. And all the time it is in the soil, right beneath our feet.
~ An Excerpt from Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, by William Bryant Logan
Athabasca River, Jasper National Park, photo by Devadana Sanctuary
LOST
Stand still.
The trees ahead and the bushes beside you are not lost.
Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still.
The forest knows Where you are.
You must let it find you.
~ David Wagoner
Photo by Devadana Sanctuary – Banff National Park, Canada
How strange and wonderful is our home, our earth,
With its swirling vaporous atmosphere,
Its flowing and frozen climbing creatures,
The croaking things with wings that hang on rocks
And soar through fog, the furry grass, the scaly seas
How utterly rich and wild
~ Edward Abbey
Jasper National Park, photo by Devadana Sanctuary
The mountains, I become part of it
The herbs, the fir tree, I become part of it.
The morning mists, the clouds, the gathering waters,
I become part of it.
The wilderness, the dew drops, the pollen
I become part of it.
~Navaho Chant
Athabasca Falls, Banff National Park, Canada
In Western culture we have a tendency to talk about nature rather than speak to nature…
~ Didier Lacraze
Spirit Island, Lake Maligne, Jasper National Park – photo by Devadana Sanctuary
I have come to terms with the future.
From this day onward I will walk easy on the earth.
Plant trees.
Kill no living things.
Live in harmony with all creatures.
I will restore the earth where I am.
Use no more of its resources than I need.
And, listen to what it is telling me.
~ M. J. Slim Hooey
Along the Ice Fields Parkway, Banff National Park, Alberta – photo by Devadana Sanctuary
The oaks and the pines, and their brethren of the wood, have seen so many suns rise and set, so many seasons come and go, and so many generations pass into silence, that we may well wonder what “the story of the trees” would be to us if they had tongues to tell it, or we ears fine enough to understand.
~Author Unknown, quoted in Quotations for Special Occasions by Maud van Buren, 1938
Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada – Photo by Devadana Sanctuary
Life in all its variety and beauty calls us for a response – a new integrated understanding of who we are as humans. This is not only about stewardship of the Earth but also about embracing our embeddedness in nature in radical, fresh, and enlivening ways. Humans, Earth, and the rest of life are bound in single story and destiny. It is no longer a question of “saving the environment” as if it were something out there apart from us. We humans are the environment, and it is us…
~ Mary Evelyn Tucker
Forest Goddess, by Lars van de Goor Photography Art, used with permission
We often forget that we are nature. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, weve lost our connection to ourselves.
~ Andy Goldsworthy
Salt Creek Beach, photo by TAO Photography, used with permission
When you recognize the sacredness, the beauty, the incredible stillness and dignity in which a flower or a tree exists, you add something to the flower or the tree. Through your recognition, your awareness, nature too comes to know itself.
~ Eckhart Tolle
Photo by Zastrozzi Dh Photography, used with permission
We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach, OR – Mirwais Azami Photography, used with permission
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