Power of the Suggestive

The power of the suggestive is much greater than
the statement of reality.

C.W. Mundy

Kensington Park, Michigan

Beauty in Light and Shadow

All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”
Leo Tolstoy,   Anna Karenina

Summer’s medley, composed of light and shadow.  is now playing at Michigan’s lakes and woods.

Newburgh Lake, Michigan

Dreamer Finding His Way by Moonlight

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Oscar Wilde

Iargo Springs, Huron Nat’l Forest, Michigan

Our Memories, Our Stories

Every person’s memory is their own private literature.

— Aldous Huxley

And I have memories that stretch across several decades of early evenings at Hartwick Pines state park in northern Michigan.

Hartwick Pines, Michigan

 

Silent Awakenings

Sometimes the most profound awakenings come wrapped
in the quietest of moments

Stephen Crane

Hartwick Pines, Michigan

Truly Light the World

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility–I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it–and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country.

John F Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 1961

Melody of Light and Shadow

The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.
–Wolfgang Mozart

The layers of the forest create an ever-changing melody of light and shadow.

near Ann Arbor, Michigan

Grateful for Flowers

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
—Claude Monet

The University of Michigan has a wonderful botanical gardens a short drive away from me.   Always a rewarding visit, especially as summer reaches full bloom.

Matthaei Gardens, Michigan

…so Wonderfully Changes and Renews a weary Spirit

It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air, that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.

___Robert Louis Stevenson

photo taken in a quiet  space for renewal, Kensington Park, just northwest of Detroit, an area of wooded hills and lakes set aside 100 years ago by someone with great foresight.

Southern Michigan forest

 

When Vegetation Rioted on the Earth

Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth.
Joseph Conrad

with a doe skipping lightly through the shallows on a summer afternoon.

Fleming Creek, MIchigan