June 23rd, 2017

I've been working with a new laptop which I will need in Santa Fe.  That  has led to my looking more deeply into one of my processing tools (Lightroom), and I've discovered new ways to tweak images.  The image above is from an earlier trip to Bar Harbor.

Gary Snyder:  "The point is to make intimate contact with the real world, real self.  Sacred refers to that which helps take us (not only human beings) out of our little selves into the whole mountains-and-rivers mandala universe.  Inspiration, exaltation, and insight do not end when one steps outside the doors of the church.  The wilderness as a temple is only a beginning.  One should not dwell in the specialness of the  extraordinary experience nor hope to leave the political quagg (sic) behind to enter a perpetual state of heightened insight.  The best purpose of such studies and hikes is to be able to come back to the lowlands and see all the land about us, agricultural, suburban, urban, as part of the same territory—never totally ruined, never completely unnatural . . .  Great Brown Bear is walking with us, Salmon swimming upstream with us, as we stroll a city street."