Quotes & Sayings About Hills And Nature

My loyalties will not be bound by national borders, or confined in time by one nation's history, or limited in the spiritual dimension by one language and culture. I pledge my allegiance to the damned human race, and my everlasting love to the green hills of Earth, and my intimations of glory to the singing stars, to the very end of space and time. — Edward Abbey

But if God is the flowers and the trees
And the hills and the sun and the moonlight,
Then I believe in him,
Then I believe in him all the time,
And my whole life is an oration and a mass,
And a communion with my eyes and through my ears. — Alberto Caeiro

It is odd that we have so little relationship with nature, with the insects and the leaping frog and the owl that hoots among the hills calling for its mate. We never seem to have a feeling for all living things on the earth. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I pray. I try to find space to process with a walk on the beach, a hike in the hills. Nature is restorative. I also try not to overreact. I grew up in Ireland, and we are big tea drinkers, and I think it's less about the tea itself and more about the ritual and the moment to prepare. — Roma Downey

Sleeper in the Valley
The river sings and cuts a hole in the meadow,
madly hooking white tatters on the rushes.
light escalades the strong hills. The small
valley bubbles with sunbeams like a beerglass.
The young conscript bareheaded and open-mouthed,
his neck cooling in the blue watercress;
he's sleeping. The grass soothes his heaviness,
the sunlight is raining in his green bed,
baking away the aches of his body. He smiles,
as a sick child might smile himself asleep.
O Nature, rock him warmly, he is cold.
The fields no longer make his hot eyes weep.
He sleeps in the sun, a hand on his breast lies open,
at peace. He has two red holes in his left side. — Robert Lowell

I have a nice car, a Mercedes. And then I have an old El Camino truck that I'm crazy about. I like to get in that truck and go up in the hills near where I live, in Vegas, and take my camera. That, to me, is Heaven, being out in nature, taking pictures of the wildlife. — B.B. King

The thing one resents about winter is its inactivity; the perpetual sameness of ice-armored hills and snow-blanketed woods. Great things, of course, may be going on underneath; but nature wears a mask, is icily non-committal. — Anne Bosworth Greene

To me the mountain mass lies nobly mute,
The whences and the whys I don't dispute.
When Nature by and in herself was founded,
In purity the earthen sphere she rounded.
In summit and in gorge did pleasure seek,
And threaded cliff to cliff and peak to peak;
Then did she fashion sloping hills at peace
And gently down into the vale release.
All greens and grows, and to her gay abundance
Your swirling lunacies are sheer redundance. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

There is a mystical quality to the place where sea meets land, the clashing of two very different worlds. Yet continuity remains between them. The oceans reclaim the earth with their wind and water. The earth soaks up the sea to be carried off by the rain. They are always in flux. Each has their specific creatures, breathing in their own given ways, but dying in the same way, caught in a constant battle to survive. They swim and run and fly in tranquil spaces, among rolling hills and waves, great blue and green expanses, mountains both below the surface and above. And there is violence in their worlds. — F.G. Capitanio

This song of the waters is audible to every ear, but there is other music in these hills, by no means audible to all ... On a still night, when the campfire is low and the Pleiades have climbed over rimrocks, sit quietly and listen ... and think hard of everything you have seen and tried to understand. Then you may hear it - a vast pulsing harmony - its score inscribed on a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plants and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the centuries. — Aldo Leopold

Most people have lost that relationship with Nature; they look at all those mountains, valleys, the streams and the thousand trees as they pass by in their cars or walk up the hills chattering, but they are too absorbed in their own problems to look and be quiet. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

What, in nature," Kit asked, "is the most beautiful thing you've seen? Or the most terrible?"
"The Dismals," Giles answered promptly. "A beautiful aberration in the lay of the land
North Alabama. A section mysteriously lowered, strewn with boulders, ferny, mossy, cooler
the vegetation, they say, typical of Canada. There the creek runs clear, but all other Alabama rivers and waterways are muddy with sediment. I even like the name
the Dismals. An eternal place, disjunct with the climate, the time, and its location."
"You think being dismal is an attractive association with eternity?" I asked.
"It is a cool Eden in the Southern summer heat. What's yours, Una?"
"The Kentucky hills in spring. Layers of pink and white
redbud and dogwood."
"And you?" Giles asked Kit.
"Stars," he said. That was all. — Sena Jeter Naslund

The heat is searing and superb. The paddocks surrounding the town are bleached blond. The distant ring-barked gums, mile after mile, wriggle in the heat-waves, and seem to melt like the bristles of a melting hairbrush. The hills turn powder-blue and gauzy. Mirages resembling pools of mica and shallows of crystal water appear at the far ends of streets and roads. Punctually at eleven every burning morning, the cicadas begin to drill the air, to drill themselves also, ceaselessly and relentlessly, to death in one short day after seven long years underground. — Hal Porter

If thou art worn and hard beset,
With sorrows, that thou wouldst forget;
If thou wouldst read a lesson, that will keep
Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep,
Go to the woods and hills! No tears
Dim the sweet look that Nature wears. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I don't know of any other city where you can walk through so many culturally diverse neighborhoods, and you're never out of sight of the wild hills. Nature is very close here. — Gary Snyder

That quotation about not having time to stand and stare has never applied to me. I seem to have spent a good part of my life - probably too much - in just standing and staring and I was at it again this morning. — James Herriot

It seemed as if the valley were not always girded by woods, growing on the surrounding hills and facing away from the horizon, but the trees had only taken up their places now, rising out of the ground to offer their condolences. He almost waved away the tangible beauty of the hour like a crowd of persistent friends, almost said to the lingering afterglow, 'thank you, thank you, I'll be all right.' — Boris Pasternak

Jesus took care of himself. He ate healthy food. He rested when he was weary. He sought time alone when he needed to recharge. He laughed with his friends. He wept when he was sad. He walked long distances and climbed hills and moved. From barren wilderness to unpredictable waters, he spent the majority of his time outside in nature. He loved wholeheartedly. He served others. He cooked. He studied and learned and grew in wisdom. Jesus cared for himself physically, mentally and spiritually.
To be aligned with him, we must do no less. — Toni Sorenson

The coast at the point at which he reached it seemed specially designed by nature for his favorable and auspicious reception. There lay before him what seemed the estuary of a large and beautiful river, free from rocks or other impediments, and with a very gentle current. It had an ample depth of water for his vessels, and was sufficiently broad, even at a considerable distance inland, for them to beat about in. It was encircled by lofty and picturesque hills, the aspect of which reminded him of the "Pena de los Enamorados" near Granada, in Spain; and upon the summit of one of them was what he described as another little hill, shaped like a graceful mosque. — Willis Fletcher Johnson

Meanwhile, spring came, and with it the outpourings of Nature. The hills were soon splashed with wild flowers; the grass became an altogether new and richer shade of green; and the air became scented with fresh and surprising smells
of jasmine, honeysuckle, and lavender. — Dalai Lama XIV

It may be laid down as a general rule that if a man begins to sing, no one will take any notice of his song except his fellow human beings. This is true even if his song is surpassingly beautiful. Other men may be in raptures at his skill, but the rest of creation is, by and large, unmoved. Perhaps a cat or a dog may look at him; his horse, if it is an exceptionally intelligent beast, may pause in cropping the grass, but that is the extent of it. But when the fairy sang, the whole world listened to him. Stephen felt clouds pause in their passing; he felt sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt cold mists dance. He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands. In the fairy's song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself. — Susanna Clarke

I send thee, love, this upland flower I found
While wandering lonely with o'erclouded heart,
Hid in a grey recess of rocky ground
Among the misty mountains far apart;
And then I heard the wild wind's luring sound
Which whoso trusts, is healed of earthborn care,
And watched the lofty ridges loom around,
Yet yearned in vain their secret faith to share.
When lo! the sudden sunlight, sparkling keen,
Poured full upon the vales this glorious day,
And bared the abiding mountain-tops serene,
And swept the shifting vapour-wreaths away:
Then with the hills' true heart my heart beat true,
Heavens opened, cloud-thoughts vanished, and I knew. — Henry Stephens Salt

There was no portion of land in the world with so contradictory a nature as the Highlands. Now it was a land of sunlit moors stained red with heather, knowing only the peace of the quiet sky and the heart-shaking beauty of the blue hills; now it was a harsh and awesome place where silent mists obscured the peaks and a bitter relentless rain came down from bitter skies, where an angry sea washed against the shore, and sullen clouds reflected in sullen gray lochs.
Scotland in the sun and Scotland in the rain ... — Jan Cox Speas

And Fall, with her yeller harvest moon and the hills growin' brown and golden under a sinkin' sun. — Roy Bean

And as for the vague something
was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression?
that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver, and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare
to divine it; and I thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their nature. — Charlotte Bronte

Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame. To all who love her, who open to her the doors of their veins, she gives of her strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places. For the gifts of life are the earth's and they are given to all, and they are the songs of birds at daybreak, Orion and the Bear, and dawn seen over ocean from the beach. — Henry Beston

I thought it was going to be a hut in Topanga and Janis Joplin was going to come out, but it's a real doctor ... I went to Beverly Hills to meet this midwife; you'd think they'd be in nature. — Simon Helberg

We would have known nothing of the nature and reach of her sorrow if she had come back. But she left us and broke the family and the sorrow was released and we saw its wings and saw it fly a thousand ways into the hills, and sometimes I think sorrow is a predatory thing because birds scream at dawn with a marvelous terror, and there is, as I have said before, a deathly bitterness in the smell of ponds and ditches. When we were children and frightened of the dark, my grandmother used to say if we kept our eyes closed we would not see it. That was when I noticed the correspondence between the space within the circle of my skull and the space around me. I saw just the same figure against the lid of my eye or the wall of my room, or in the trees beyond my window. Even the illusion of perimeters fails when families are separated. — Marilynne Robinson

Nancy grabbed Plum's hand and together they ran around the last curve and then they were leaning against the old stone wall that marked Lookout Hill. Far, far down below them, a river was trying to wriggle its way out of a steep canyon. Over to the right, thick green hills crowded close to each other to share one filmy white cloud. To the left, as far as they could see the land flowed into valleys that shaded from a pale watery green, through lime, emerald, jade, leaf, forest to a dark, dark, bluish-green, almost black. The rivers were like inky lines, the ponds like ink blots. — Betty MacDonald

And he feels hurt when he hears about wars,
And commerce, and the ships leaving
Their smoke on the high seas.
Because he knows all of this lacks the truth
A flower has in its blooming
And which moves with the sunlight
Changing the hills and valleys — Alberto Caeiro

Song of the rain
iam dotted silverthreads dropped from heaven by the gods ,nature then takes me to adornher fields and valleys
iam beautiful pears plucked from the crown of ishtar by the daugter of down to embellish the garden
when icry the hills laugh when i humble my self the flower rejoice when i bow all the things are elated — Kahlil Gibran

When there is this simple, clear watching and listening, then there is an awareness - awareness of the colour of those flowers, red, yellow, white, of the spring leaves, the stems, so tender, so delicate, awareness of the heavens, the earth and those people who are passing by. They have been chattering along that long road, never looking at the trees, at the flowers, at the skies and the marvellous hills. They are not even aware of what is going on around them. They talk a great deal about the environment, how we must protect nature and so on, but it seems they are not aware of the beauty and the silence of the hills and the dignity of a marvellous old tree. They are not even aware of their own thoughts, their own reactions, nor are they aware of the way they walk, of their clothes. It does not mean that they are to be selfcentred in their watching, in their awareness, but just be aware. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

New York always feels more like my hometown than the places where I actually grew up (which weren't far from New York), perhaps because I did my artistic "growing up" while working in this crazy, wonderful city back in my twenties. Although I love the quieter, slower, nature-rich life I live now in the sheep-dotted hills of Devon, there are ways in which I still feel more truly myself here in New York, more than anywhere else. Even after all this time in the desert and on Dartmoor. Strange, isn't it? — Terri Windling

SCHOOL BEGINS IN August this year. I live nearby, and so I walk and skip the bus. I read while I walk to school up the two hills, one sidewalk, a more or less straight line. I pretend the streets I pass through are empty. I have been reading about the Neutron Bomb. I want to be like that, radiant and deadly, a ghost of an impact, to pass through walls, to kill everyone, in flight among the empty houses, punching through molecules like a knife through a paper bag. See me. I am five feet and two inches tall. I am still thin, freckled, large eyes, small nose. My hair waves and grows long, to my neck. I pick flowers for my mother as I walk. The neighborhood kids call me Nature Boy. I want to die. Help — Alexander Chee

Why are we such tortured human beings, with tears in our eyes and false laughter on our lips? If you could walk alone among those hills or in the woods or along the long, white, bleached sands, in that solitude you would know what meditation is. The ecstasy of solitude comes when you are not frightened to be alone no longer belonging to the world or attached to anything. Then, like that dawn that came up this morning, it comes silently, and makes a golden path in the very stillness, which was at the beginning, which is now, and which will be always there. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Nowhere in this country, from sea to sea, does nature comfort us with such assurance of plenty, such rich and tranquil beauty as in those unsung, unpainted hills of Pennsylvania. — Rebecca Harding Davis

Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair. — George Eliot

Harp of the North, farewell! The hills grow dark,
On purple peaks a deeper shade descending;
In twilight copse the glow-worm lights her spark,
The deer, half seen, are to the covert wending.
Resume thy wizard elm! the fountain lending,
And the wild breeze, thy wilder minstrelsy;
Thy numbers sweet with nature's vespers blending,
With distant echo from the fold and lea,
And herd-boy's evening pipe, and hum of housing bee. — Walter Scott

No man is as wise as Mother Earth. She has witnessed every human day, every human struggle, every human pain, and every human joy. For maladies of both body and spirit, the wise ones of old pointed man to the hills. For man too is of the dust and Mother Earth stands ready to nurture and heal her children. — Anasazi Foundation

At eighteen the true narrative of life is yet to be
commenced. Before that time we sit listening to a tale, a marvelous fiction, delightful sometimes, and sad sometimes, almost always unreal. Before that time our world is heroic, its inhabitants half-divine or semi-demon; its scenes are dreamscenes; darker woods and stranger hills, brighter skies, more dangerous waters, sweeter flowers, more tempting fruits, wider plains, drearier deserts, sunnier fields than are found in nature, overspread our enchanted globe. What a moon we gaze on before that time! How the trembling of our hearts at her aspect bears
witness to its unutterable beauty! — Charlotte Bronte

A step lower and strangeness creeps in: perceiving that the world is "dense", sensing to what a degree a stone is foreign and irreducible to us, with what intensity nature or a landscape can negate us. At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise. The primitive hostility of the world rises up to face us across millenia. — Albert Camus

The evolution of higher and of lower forms of life is as well and as soundly established as the eternal hills. It has long since ceased to be a theory; it is a law of Nature as universal in living things as is the law of gravitation in material things and in the motions of the heavenly spheres. — Henry Fairfield Osborn

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd
A host of golden daffodils
Beside the lake beneath the trees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. — William Wordsworth

But the healing of the mind is something totally different. That healing gradually takes place if you are with nature, with that orange on the tree, and the blade of grass that pushes through the cement, and the hills covered, hidden, by the clouds. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Prize the natural spaces and shorelines most of all, because once they're gone, with rare exceptions they're gone forever. In our bones we need the natural curves of hills, the scent of chapparal, the whisper of pines, the possibility of wildness. We require these patches of nature for our mental health and our spiritual resilience. — Richard Louv

We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills and the winding streams with tangled growth, as 'wild'. Only to the white man was nature a 'wilderness' and only to him was the land 'infested' with 'wild' animals and 'savage' people. To us it was home. Earth was beautiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. - Chief Standing River of the Lakota — Paul Goble

In the course of all of the compass-spinning twists, roller coaster hills, and sphincter-contracting turns, I hadn't noticed that we had stopped at the top of a very large ridge. The beginning of the trail was not pleasant, inviting, or even remotely civil; it was recreational molestation at its best. — Michael Gurnow

With a bound, the sun of a molten fiery red cam above the horizon, and immediately thousands of little birds sang out for joy, and a soft chorus of mysterious, glad murmurs came forth from the earth; the low whispering wind left its hiding-place among the clefts and hollows of the hills, and wandered among the rustling herbs and trees, waking the flower-buds to the life of another day. — Elizabeth Gaskell

A location can really enhance exercise enjoyment. Getting out in nature - whether it's a beach, lake, river, forest, hills or even an urban park - can do wonders for our mood and stress levels. — Michael Klim

Beautifully Bleak. I likened the hills encircling Canberra to the sea. They, like the sea, could be a sunny beguiling blue, or deep and inky. They could be distant and mysterious, or beautifully bleak as the wind tore across the plains from their snowy peaks. The hills were ever changing like the sea. — Hazel Hawke

An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome. — John Ruskin

Everything in the world reminded him of her. The beauty of the loved woman exists in the beauties of Nature. The swelling outlines of the hills, the curves of a coast, the free sinuosities of a river are less suave than the harmonious lines of her body, and when she moves, gliding lightly, the grace of her progress suggests the power of occult forces which rule the fascinating aspects of the visible world. — Joseph Conrad

The trees were tinted exquisitely to an uncertain glory as the great red sinking sun flashed its rays on their crystal mantle. The vale of Aylesbury was drowsing beneath a slowly deepening shroud of mist. Above it the hills, their crests rounded and shaded by silver and rose coppices, seemed to have set in them great smoky eyes of flame where the last rays burned in them.
'It is like some dream world,' thought Mr. Cort. 'It is curious how, wherever the sun strikes, it seems to make an eye, and each one fixed on me; those hills, even those windows. But, judging from that mist, I shall have a slow journey home ...
("Blind Man's Bluff") — H.R. Wakefield

There is new life in the soil for every man. There is healing in the trees for tired minds and for our overburdened spirits, there is strength in the hills, if only we will lift up our eyes. Remember that nature is your great restorer. — Calvin Coolidge

And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

If tonight is my last, I would run towards the sea, wildly swim the tides, the jump up the hills, flounder the cliffs and take all big strides, for I am a wanderer, awed by nature's charm who would love to breathe his last in its embracing arms. — Arvind Parashar

I see an America whose rivers and valleys and lakes hills and streams and plains the mountains over our land and nature's wealth deep under the earth are protected as the rightful heritage of all the people. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

If time could run backward, like a film in reverse, we would see this mess reassemble itself into lush green hills and moss-covered ledges of limestone. The streams would run back up the hills to the springs and the salt would stay glittering in underground rooms. — Robin Wall Kimmerer

This whole effort to rebuild and stabilize a countryside is not without its disappointments and mistakes ... What matter though these temporary growing pains when one can cast his eye upon the hills and see hard-boiled farmers who have spent their lives destroying land now carrying water by hand to their new plantations — Aldo Leopold

The great mountains of the world are a great remedy if men but did know it against our modern discontent and ambitions. In the hills is wisdom's fount. They are deep in time. — Eric Rucker Eddison

There are some delightful places in this world which have a sensual charm for the eyes. One loves them with a physical love. We people who are attracted by the countryside cherish fond memories of certain springs, certain woods, certain ponds, certain hills, which have become familiar sights and can touch our hearts like happy events.
Sometimes indeed the memory goes back towards a forest glade, or a spot on a river bank or an orchard in blossom, glimpsed only once on a happy day, but preserved in our heart. — Guy De Maupassant

These days I live in a magical little village on Dartmoor in Devon, England, and my "special spot" is a moss-covered rock in a circle of trees in the woods behind my house.
I often go into the woods, or walk through the fields and hills nearby, when I need inspiration, or to work out a plot problem, or come up with an idea. I think better on my feet, particularly when there is beautiful countryside around me and a dog at my side.
When I was younger and lived in big cities, I had special places there too. There's magic everywhere, if you look. — Terri Windling

Now, an hour later, Ethan stood at a window, gazing at the rain, like threads of seed pearls, accessorizing the hills of Bel Air.
Watching weather clarified his thinking.
Sometimes only nature felt real, while all human monuments and actions seemed to be the settings and the plots of dreams. — Dean Koontz

I saw that there is no Nature,
That Nature doesn't exist,
That there are hills, valleys, plains,
That there are trees, flowers, weeds,
That there are rivers and stones,
But there is not a whole these belong to,
That a real and true wholeness
Is a sickness of our ideas. — Alberto Caeiro

The river itself portrays humanity precisely, with its tortuous windings, its accumulation of driftwood, its unsuspected depths, and its crystalline shallows, singing in the Summer sun. Barriers may be built across its path, but they bring only power, as the conquering of an obstacle is always sure to do. Sometimes when the rocks and stone-clad hills loom large ahead, and eternity itself would be needed to carve a passage, there is an easy way around. The discovery of it makes the river sing with gladness and turns the murmurous deeps to living water, bright with ripples and foam. — Myrtle Reed

A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows. — Henry David Thoreau

RUSTY watched the dawn blossom into light. At first everything was dark, then gradually objects began to take shape - the desk and chair, the walls of the room - and the darkness lifted like the raising of a veil, and over the tree-tops the sky was streaked with crimson. It was like this for some time, while everything became clearer and more distinguishable; and then, when nature was ready, the sun reached up over the trees and hills, and sent one tentative beam of warm light through the window. Along the wall crept the sun, across to the bed, and up the boy's bare legs, until it was caressing his entire body and whispering to him to get up, get up, it is time to get up ... — Ruskin Bond

There were mountains; there were valleys; there were streams. She climbed the mountains; roamed the valleys; sat on the banks of streams ... when, from the mountain-top, she beheld, far off, across the Sea of Marmara the plains of Greece, and made out (her eyes were admirable) the Acropolis with a white streak or two which must, she thought, be the Parthenon, her soul expanded with her eyeballs, and she prayed she might share the majesty of the hills, know the serenity of the plains, etc. etc., as all such believers do. — Virginia Woolf

I've been actively engaged with mythic imagery ever since I picked up that Rackham book, but it really came into focus for me when I moved from London to the country. As I walked the extraordinary landscape of Dartmoor, I looked at the trees and the rocks and the hills and I could see the personality in those forms ... then they metamorphosed under my pencil into faeries, goblins and trolls. After Alan and I published "Faeries", he moved on from the subject of faery folklore to illustrate Tolkien and other literary works ... while I discovered that my own exploration of Faerieland had only just begun. In the countryside, the old stories seemed to come alive around me; the faeries were a tangible aspect of the landscape, pulses of spirit, emotion, and light. They "insisted" on taking form under my pencil, emerging on the page before me cloaked in archetypal shapes drawn from nature and myth. I'd attracted their attention, you see, and they hadn't finished with me yet. — Brian Froud

In the Universe all things have their owner; and if it does not belong to me, not a tiny speck can I take. Encounter fresh breeze on the river or bright moon between the hills, any ears can take as music and eyes as sights; nothing prohibits anyone from taking and it will never be depleted with consumption, they are Creator's infinite treasures delighting both you and I. (from Red Cliff Rhapsody by Su Shih) — Sung Yee Poon

They were relaxing at the top of a waterfall, in a small, still pool where the mountain waters hit an upward slope of folded granite. It was sort of a rounded bathtub, carved out of the rock throughout the centuries by the rushing river, a river so hidden that it was without a name. Just below were the falls, about a 30-foot drop into another, much larger pool of clearest water that was gathered for a respite, a compromise in the river's relentless schedule downward, between split-level decks of flat rock. Further on, the river reanimated and released into a sharp ravine, pulling westward, down through the rugged mountains and faceless forest
the Black Hills National Forest
gaining force until it joined with the rush of the Castle River, near the old Custer Trail, and was swallowed into the Deerfield Reservoir to collect and prepare for the touch of man. — Ron Parsons

They preferred writing about great men to writing about great hills; but they sat on the great hills to write it. They gave out much less about Nature, but they drank in, perhaps, much more. They painted the white robes of their holy virgins with the blinding snow, at which they had stared all day. They blazoned the shields of their paladins with the purple and gold of many heraldic sunsets. The greenness of a thousand green leaves clustered into the live green figure of Robin Hood. The blueness of a score of forgotten skies became the blue robes of the Virgin. The inspiration went in like sunbeams and came out like Apollo. — G.K. Chesterton

Summer on the high plateau can be delectable as honey; it can also be a roaring scourge. To those who love the place, both are good, since both are part of its essential nature. And it is to know its essential nature that I am seeking here. To know, that is, with the knowledge that is a process of living. This is not done easily nor in an hour. It is a tale too slow for the impatience of our age, not of immediate enough import for its desperate problems. Yet it has its own rare value. It is, for one thing, a corrective of glib assessment: one never quite knows the mountain, nor oneself in relation to it. However often I walk on them, these hills hold astonishment for me. There is no getting accustomed to them. — Nan Shepherd