July 18, 2006 at 8:51 AM
When I am moving among the mountains, traveling across great distances, Creation's expansive qualities begin to have an effect on me. It swallows me whole. It engulfs me with untouched grace, and its raw elements are the music in my ears; the wind through the valleys, the water moving downward, and the inhabitants of the sky and land are all I hear.I am small. I am fragile. Yet, I am capable of amazing things, both good and evil. Under the open and ever changing sky, my mind clears and unfolds, and I begin to think about... About? I begin to Think. Think. The mind absorbs and meditates freely, as my feet move in cadence to the steady breathing of my laboring lungs.
I crave it. I crave solitude and simplicity and sweat and beauty. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear of hearing.
Neil
Bill, we had such a late spring, the fireweed hasn't begun yet. (Yeah!)
Buri, our capabilities astonish me.
Okay really. These photos were taken along the Skyline trail in the Chugach mountains (Kenai Peninsula, AK). The intermittent trail ascends to a horseshoe-shaped ridge and traces nine peaks over twelve miles.
You can see some of the mining from the roads but you don't get the real picture. Once you get up into it though and look where you can't see from roads you can see, and it looks like your pictures. Only grasses and scrub brush, because there's no topsoil. In the 70s there was a huge movement to get them to stop a certain kind of it at least, which was fairly successful. The impetus came mostly from outside, since the average kentuckian in the area was too deprived to have any idea what was happening much less what to do about it (read Night Comes to the Cumberlands). In the latest maps they don't show it. They treat it as if the contours are original. Not a good idea.
This entry has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.
Violinist.com is made possible by...
Dimitri Musafia, Master Maker of Violin and Viola Cases
Violinist.com Business Directory
Violinist.com Guide to Online Learning
ARIA International Summer Academy
Johnson String Instrument and Carriage House Violins
Discover the best of Violinist.com in these collections of editor Laurie Niles' exclusive interviews.
Violinist.com Interviews Volume 1, with introduction by Hilary Hahn
Violinist.com Interviews Volume 2, with introduction by Rachel Barton Pine