Life In A Water Town

How Boundless The Day

Image by Idee Montijo of IdeeExplores

How boundless the day seems as we revel in these storm-beaten sky gardens amid so vast a congregation of onlooking mountains! Strange and admirable it is that the more savage and chilly and storm-chafed the mountains, the finer the glow on their faces and the finer plants they bear. The myriads of flowers tingeing the mountain-top do not seem to have grown out of the dry, rough gravel of disintegration, but rather they appear as visitors, a cloud of witnesses to Nature's love in what we in our timid ignorance and unbelief call howling desert .The surface of the ground ,so dull and forbidding at first sight, besides being rich in plants shines and sparkles with crystals: mica, hornblende, feldspar, quartz, tourmaline.

The radiance in some places is so great as to be fairly dazzling, keen lance rays of every color flashing, sparkling in glorious abundance, joining the plants in their fine, brave beauty-work- every crystal, every flower a window opening into heaven, a mirror reflecting the Creator.... Toward sunset, enjoyed a fine run to camp...enjoying wild excitement and excess of strength, and so ends a day that will never end.

-- Meditations of John Muir

___________________________

Known as "John of the Mountains" and "Father of the National Parks", Scottish-American author John Muir was an influential environmental philosopher, naturalist, botanist, author, zoologist, and glaciologist. He was one of the earliest advocates for preservation of the American wilderness and is one of my inspirations for creating fine art images of wild places.

Maple and Aspen trees crowd the lower reaches of the mountain in a riot of cozy colors. The above image is called Boundless. It features a high-vantage point view of icy-cold Lower Lake in the Adirondacks Mountain Reserve, New York, on a crisp autumn day in October 2021. 

___________________________

If wild places inspire you, I invite you to visit my website's Collections page for captivating fine art images.

 

Excerpt above from Meditations of John Muir, Nature's Temple. Chris Highland, 2001, Wilderness Press.