"The world is mud-luscious and puddle wonderful" - e.e. cummings

BEFORE the RAIN by Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907)

We knew it would rain, for all the morn

(Nom Nom looking in door every morning)

A spirit on slender ropes of mist

Was lowering its golden buckets down 

Into the vapory amethyst.

Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens

                                                                                          (*a "fen" is a wasteland ecosystem)

Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers

Dipping the jewels out of the sea

To sprinkle them over the land in showers.

We knew it would rain

For the Poplars showed the white of their leaves

The amber grain shrunk in the wind

And the lightning now...........

Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain................

                                     ".....Learning to dance in the rain..." -Vivian Greene

"The world is mud-luscious and puddle wonderful...." - e.e. cummings

Photographs 2025 

 *Thomas Bailey Aldrich was an American editor of the Atlantic monthly,  writer, poet and critic.

MARCH in the NORTH ISLAND....

ON A MARCH DAY (1918) by Sara Teasdale 

( Reflection from post WW 1, appreciation of life and nature, and the hope of spring and new life...)

Here in the teeth of this triumphant wind

That shakes the naked shadows on the ground

Making a keyboard of the earth to strike

From clattering tree and hedge a separate sound

Bear witness to me that I love my life

All things that hurt me and all things that healed

And that I swore it this day in March

Here at the edge ...

of this new-broken field

 You only knew me

...tell them I was glad

For every hour 

since my birth....

And that I ceased to fear

................as once I feared

The last complete reunion with earth.....

    "Spring shows what God can do with a drab and dirty world.." 

                                                                  -Virgil A. Kraft

Photographs 2025.  Campbell River, BC, Canada

 

Mt. WASHINGTON RANGE MAR 17, 2025

"Wherever we go in the mountains, we find more than we seek..." 

                                                                            -John Muir

"What we get from this adventure is sheer joy...." -George Leigh Mallory

"Happiness is like the mountain summit.  It is sometimes hidden by  clouds, but we know it is there.." - Helen Keller

"I gave my heart to the mountains...."- Wallace Stegnor

"When the sun is shining, I can do anything. No mountain is too high. No trouble too difficult to overcome..." -Wilma Rudolph

Mount Washington Range from  our house on the hill.......

"It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out; it's the grain of sand in your shoe.." -Robert Service

"The water which rises in the mountains, is the blood that keeps the mountain in life..." - Leonardo da Vinci

"These mountains, which have seen untold sunrises, long to thunder praise but stand reverent. Silent, so that our weak praise should be given God's attention..." - Donald Miller

"Oh God! that one might read the book of fate, And see the revolution of the times Make mountains level, and the continent, Weary of solid firmness, melt itself Into the sea..." -Shakespeare

"Range after range of mountains. Year after year. I am still in love with them...." -Gary Snyder

"Oh, hear Him within you speaking this infinite love, lifting the sky of the soul......spreading the mountains with flame, filling the hollows with Heaven..." - Jessica Powers

                       "A mountain ..." -Walter Bonatti

                                          "And the wilderness of it all.. " -Deny King

"One may walk over the highest mountain, one step at a time..." 

                                                                                                                 - John Wanamaker

"So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind's roar, But bind him to his native mountains more..." -Oliver Goldsmith

"This faith can move mountains...." -Norman Vincent Peale

"Let the wind course over us till we become beautiful..." -Mian Mian

 Photographs 2025  Vancouver Island ranges,Mt Washington Range,  B.C.as seen from Campbell River, B.C.