We are blessed to live on this beautiful planet. Yet, most people don’t show any gratitude.
Benedicto
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets’ towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you– beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.
“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here.”
“I feel again the poignant urge to grasp it, embrace it, know all
at once and all in all; but the harder I strive for such a consummation,
the more elusive that it becomes, slipping like a dream through my
arms. Can this desire be satisfied only in death? Something in our
human consciousness seems to make us forever spectators of
the world we live in.
Maybe some of my crackpot, occultist friends are right; maybe we
really are aliens here on earth, our spirits born on some other,
simpler, more human planet. But why were we sent here?
What is our mission, comrades, and when do we get paid?
A writer’s epitaph: He fell in love with the planted earth,
but the affair was never consummated.”
— Edward Abbey
“To the consternation of the “committed” reviewer, he is not a
conservationist or an environmentalist or a boxable list of any other
kind; he keeps on showing up as Edward Abbey, a horse of another
color, and one that requires some care to appreciate.”
— from “A Few Words in Favor of Ed Abbey” by Wendell Berry
Sonoran Desert Eye
“He had the zeal of a true believer and the sting of a scorpion.”
“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.”
Saguaros In Sabino Canyon — Photo-Artistry by kenne
“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit,
and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.
A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild,
the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins
and betraying the principle of civilization itself.”
The Society of the Fifth Cave Christmas Celebration, December 19, 2009
The Society of the Fifth Cave, “A Reading Club for the Non-Discriminating Bourgeoisie,” has existed in one form are another, since 1983. I became a member in 1998. The last time I was able to attend one of our monthly meetings was September 2012.
— kenne
“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”
David Fitzsimmons,Tucso Arizona Daily Star — Source: CagleCartoon.com
Recently, Joy received a Bookmans gift card. Bookmans is more than just a bookstore, it’s an entertainment exchange with a commitment to the people and communities they have served for over forty years. While there, I selected three books: Epitaph for a Desert Anarchist — The Life and Legacy of Edward Abbey by James Bishop; The River of Doubt by Candie Millard; Spanish Essentials for Dummies, the last two in preparation for my August trip to the Amazon in northern Bolivia. — kenne
“I’m alright. It’s the world that is dysfunctioning.”
I sometimes choose to think that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun . . . belief? What do I believe in? I believe in sun. In rock. In the dogma of the sun and the doctrine of the rock. I believe in blood, fire, woman, rivers, eagles, storms, drums, flutes, banjos and broom-tailed horses.
Canyonlands National Park — Image by kenne
Sonoran Sky Island — Images by kenne
Sonoran Desert Eye
Wilderness of Rocks In Pusch Ridge Wilderness — Images by kenne
Wilderness Floor
Painted Desert– B&W Image by kenne
Saguaros In Sabino Canyon — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Painted Lady Butterfly On A Bluedicks Wildflower (Sabino Canyon Recreation Area) — Image by kenne
Brown Haze — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Pondering the Hiking Moments On the Trail — Photo-Artistry by kenne
The Society of the Fifth Cave Christmas Celebration, December 19, 2009
David Fitzsimmons,Tucso Arizona Daily Star — Source: CagleCartoon.com
Bear Canyon Trail — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Becoming is Superior to Being 