Charles W. Ward Reservation, Andover, Massachusetts
How beautiful,
when a whole tree is like one great scarlet fruit full of ripe juices,
every leaf, from lowest limb to topmost spire, all aglow,
especially if you look toward the sun!
What more remarkable object can there be in the landscape?...
If such a phenomenon occurred but once,
it would be handed down by tradition to posterity, and get into the mythology at last...
HENRY D. THOREAU, Autumnal Tints
Cliff Pond, Nickerson State Park, Cape Cod, Massachusetts
I love Mallards...
For them, the life looks to be much more than plain survival.
Enjoying the beach, immersed in grooming,
must-do work and pleasure come hand in hand.
And then the views,
playing with the water in full grasp of the moment,
in perfect fusion with the spirit of the place...
Cliff Trail, Nickerson State Park, Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Kettle ponds, an accident created by the retreat of glaciers,
sparkle in the silence,
not that far from the roaring ocean...
Walking the trails around the ponds makes me feel the trees and lichens on these sandy grounds.
Many of them pioneers, survivors and, today, the happy crowds. Or so it seems.
Happy crowds!
The words usually assigned by humans to humans.
But what does this really mean?
Well...
These crowds are shaping, coloring, energizing and I find myself in the midst of IT.
So, I guess, it is about me... but it is also about them...
Nauset Light Beach, Cape Cod, Massachusetts
... in the endless rhythmic motions and sounds of waves...
Nauset Light Beach, Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Somewhere in ocean, perhaps a thousand miles and more from this beach,
the pulse beat of earth liberates a vibration, an ocean wave...
Once created, the wave...begins its journey through the sea...
It approaches the continent...courses ashore, breaks, dissolves, is gone.
The innermost waters it last inhabited
flow back in marbly foam to become a body to another beat...
So it goes night and day,
and will go till the secret heart of earth strikes out its last slow beat,
and the last wave dissolves upon the last forsaken shore...
HENRY BESTON, The Outermost House
