Emily Brisse

O WORLD, I cannot hold thee close enough!       Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!       Thy mists that roll and rise! Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag        5 To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff! World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!    Long have I known a glory in it all,       But never knew I this;       Here such a passion is   10 As stretcheth me apart. Lord, I do fear Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year. My soul is all but out of me,—let fall No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call. -- Edna St. Vincent Millay

We went out west to southern Washington and northwestern Oregon recently to visit the first child that has made us Aunt and Uncle . A lovely trip. Inspired lots of writing that I can't quite find the time (or energy) to finish. But these. Thank God for photographs that don't require words. Except I can't quite keep quiet about the fact that, yes, this pregnant lady hiked through the drip, stepped back and forth over switch backs, and stopped (repeatedly) to suck down great gulps of delicious mossy thick green-coated air until I reached the top of Multnomah Falls, sweating, heart pounding, baby dancing inside of me, thankful once again for high places and tall trees and rushing water and the flat-out wonder I feel when I walk upon the world.   

When I was younger, I used to believe that out of everyone I knew, I was the only one who not only appreciated nature, but loved  it, pined for it, understood it as a perfect part of life. I talked to the trees. Yes, I was one of those .  I could spend hours by myself in the woods, or by a stream, or watching the light shift across the surface of a lake. My first memory is of a mountain landscape in Montana, the feeling of the wind rushing up my legs, the blueness of the sky. I began this blog for several reasons, but it was naive to not count among them connection with other "place people." I didn't know. I didn't even guess that fifteen months from its inception, this blog would have introduced me to complete strangers who now feel like friends, and friends who are now ever-more-deeply that because we've had cause to discuss and share about things that before just somehow never came up. I didn't know that what I'd most appreciate a year later about thi...

It's all there if we just slow down enough to look. 

"For a year or two I had been looking at trees, fields, landscape with a secret, strong exaltation. In some moods, some days, I could feel for a clump of grass, a rail fence, a stone pile, such pure unbounded emotion as I used to hope for, and have inklings of, in connection with God." -- From Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro

http://www.npr.org/programs/asc/archives/asc88/index.html#stevens