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Not for sale - captured at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center

Not for sale - captured at the Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center

Not for sale - captured at the Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center

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The Zest of Life by Henry van Dyke

Let me but live my life from year to year,

   With forward face and reluctant soul;

Not morning for the things that disapear

In dim past, nor holding back in fear

   From what the future veils; but with a whole

   And happy heart, that pays its toll

To Youth and Age, and travels on with cheer.

So let the way wind up the hill or down,

   O'er rough or smooth, the journey will be joy;

   Still seeking what I sought when but a boy,

New friendship, high adventure, and a crown,

   My heart will keep the courage of the quest,

   And hope the road's last turn will be the best.

The Wanderer - by Eugene Field

Upon a mountain height, far from the sea,

   I found a shell,

And to my listening ear the lonely thing

Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing,

  Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell.

How come the shell upon the mountain height?

   Ah, who can say

Whether there dropped by some too careless hand,

Or whether there cast when ocean swept the land,

  Ere the Eternal ordained day?

Strange, was it not? Far from its native deep,

   One song it sang, -

Sang of the awful mysteries of the tide,

    Sang of the misty sea,

So do I ever, leagues and leagues away, -

So do I ever, wandering where I may, -

    Sing O my home! sing O my home! of thee.

A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

   Life is but an empty dream! -

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

   And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

   And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

   Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

   Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each tomorrow

   Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

   And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums are beating

   Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,

   In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

   Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!

   Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act - act in the living Present!

   Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

   We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

   Footprints in the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

   Sailing o'er life's solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

   Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

   With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

  Learn to labor and to wait.

"'We become brave by doing brave acts,' observed Aristotle in the Nichomachean Ethics. Dispositions of character, virtues and vices, are progressively fixed in us through practice. Thus 'by becoming habituated to despise things that are terrible and to stand our ground against them we become brave, and it is when we have become so that we shall be most able to stand our ground against them.'...

The mere inclination to do the right thing is not itself enough. We have to know what the right thing to do is. We need wisdom-often the wisdom of a wise leader-to give our courage determinate form, to give it intelligent direction. And we need the will, the motivating power that inspiring leaders can sometimes help us discover within ourselves even when we are unable to find it readily on our own. "
-William J. Bennett, The Book of Virtues

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. " - Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

"You alone created my inner being. You knitted me together inside my mother's womb. I will give thanks to you because I have been so amazingly and miraculously made. Your works are miraculous and my soul is fully aware of this." Psalm 139:13-14 As I watch fresh snow fall and take time to appreciate the uniqueness of each one I cannot help but be amazed by creation. The beauty of the big, and beauty of the small.

In School

(Excerpt from What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge

I used to go to a bright school

Where Youth and Frolic taught in turn;

But idle scholar that I was;

I liked to play, I would not learn;

So the Great Teacher did ordain

That I should try the School of Pain

One of the infant class I am

With little, easy lessons, set

In a great book; the higher class

Have harder ones than I, and yet

I find mine hard, and can't restrain

My tears while studying thus with Pain.

There are two TEachers in the school,

One has a gentle voice and low,

And smiles upon her scholars, as

She softly passes to and fro.

Her name is Love; 'tis very plain

She shuns the sharper teacher, Pain.

Or so I sometimes think; and then,

At other times, they meet and kiss,

And look so strangely like, that I

Am puzzled to tell how it is,

Or whence the change which makes it vain

To guess if it be - Love or Pain.

They tell me if I study well,

And learn my lessons, I shall be

Moved upward to that higher class

Where dear Love teaches constantly;

And I work hard, in hopes to gain

Reward, and get away from Pain.

Yet Pain is sometimes kind, and helps

Me on when I am very dull;

I thank him often in my heart;

But Love is far more beautiful;

Under her tender, gentle reign

I must learn faster than of Pain.

So I will do my very best,

Nor chide the clock, nor call it slow;

That when the Teacher calls me up

To see if I am fit to go,

I may to Love's high class attain,

And bid a sweet good-by to Pain.

"Have you not noticed how human love consists of little things? Well divine love consists of little things...Have you ever stopped to consider the enormous sum that many small amounts can come to?" - St. Josemaria Escriva

As I watch these tiny miracles, each unique and beautiful come together to cover the earth I am reminded of the importance of small. Small acts of kindness, of faith, of love, that combined can cover the earth.

Driving through North Dakota in winter brings to mind so much poetry. The snow blows over the road creating such illusions. At times it feels as one is flying. A familiar landscape can appear unearthly, otherworldly and surreal as the snow repaints its curves and adds movement.

This particular scene brought to mind a famous Emily Dickinson poem contemplating this mysterious affect snow can have on the otherwise familiar landscape.

"The Frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind...Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature Gives it dim sympathies with me who live, Making it a companionable form, whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit By its own moods interprets, every where Echo or mirror seeking of itself, and makes a toy of Thought..." excerpt from "Frost at Midnight" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

God of the Open by Charles Badger

God of the open, though I am simple

Out of the wind I can travel with you,

noons when the hot mesas ripple and dimple,

Nights when the stars glitter cool in the blue.

Too far you stand for the reach of my hand,

Yet I can feel you big heart as it beats

Friendly and warm in the sun or the storm.

Are you the same God of the streets?

Yours is the sunny blue roof I ride under;

Mountain and plain are the house you have made.

Sometimes it roars with the wind and the thunder

But in your house I am never afraid.

He? Oh they give him license to live,

Aim in their ledgers, to pay him his due,

Gather by herds to present him with words-

Words! What are words when my heart talks with you?

God of the open, forgive an old ranger

Penned among walls where he never sees

through.

Well do I know, though their God seems a stranger,

Earth has no room for another like you.

Shut out the roll of the wheels from my soul;

Send me a wind that is singing and sweet

Into this place where the smoke dims your face.

Help me see you in the God of the street.

I Must Come Back by Charles Badger

I dread the break when I shall die-

Not from my human friends, for they

Are shifting shadows such as I

And soon must follow me away-

But from my earth that still must swing

From day to dusk, from dark to dawn,

Slow shimmering on from spring to spring

Through all the years when I am gone.

How many loving clouds will fold

The piney peaks in tender mist,

What sunsets turn the sky to gold

And distant plains to amethyst,

What sparking winter days will loose

The chuckle of the chickadee

Among the silent, snowy spruce-

And I shall not be here to see!

An old street dweller’s soul may call

For that fair City of No Night,

Boxed in four-square echoing wall

Of jasper, beryl and chrysolite,

But I should wish the endless song

Of crashing choirs were just the lark,

And close light-weary eyes and long

For starry, summer-scented dark.

No, when the waning heartbeat fails

I ask no heaven but leave to wend,

Unseen but seeing, my old trails,

With deathless years to comprehend,

My Earth, the loveliness of you,

From all your gorgeous zodiac

Down to a glistening drop of dew.

Ii must come back! I must come back!

The Yellow Stuff by Charles Badger

By the rim rocks on the hill

The canyon side is rifted

Where Grasping Gabe, with pick and drill.

Once mucked and shot and drifted.

His hairy arms were never still;

His eyes were never lifted.

The yellow stuff! The yellow stuff!

All day his steel would tinkle

And when the blast roared out at last

He scanned each rocky wrinkle.

That tunnel’s face was life to him,

And joy and kids and wife to him

Its thread of yellow twinkle.

By the rim rocks, where he wrought

A wall that looked eternal

Caved in one day and Gabe was caught

Snug as walnut kernel,

Shut up with hunger, thirst and thought

In dark that was infernal.

The yellow stuff! The yellow stuff!

Then Gabe forgot its uses,

And all the gold the hills could hold

Looked like pair of deuces.

No joy was dust and ore to him;

The gold outside was more to him

That slanted through the spruces.

By the rim rocks, far away

From helpers or beholders,

Gabe worked a lifetime in a day,

Then shoved out head and shoulders

And cried and kissed the light that lay

Upon the sunny boulders.

The yellow stuff! The yellow stuff!

He blessed the sunset shining,

Too high in grade to be assayed

And pure beyond refining.

What scum his work had doled to him,

When God would give such gold to him

Without a lick of mining!

The Buffalo Trail by Charles Badger

Deeply the buffalo trod it

Beating it barren as brass;

Now the soft rain-fingers sod it,

Green to the crest of the pass.

Backward it slopes into history;

Forward it lifts into mystery.

Here is but wind in the grass.

Backward the millions assemble,

Bannered with dust overhead,

Setting the prairie a-tremble

Under the might of their tread.

Forward the sky-line is glistening

And to the reach of our listening

Drifts not a sound from the dead.

Quick, or the swift seasons fade it!

Look on his works while they show.

This is the bison. He made it.

Thus say the old ones who know.

This is the bison- a pondering

Vague as the prairie wind wandering

Over the green or the snow.

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Patient Trust by Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

“Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are quite naturally impatient in everything

to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to some-

thing unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of progress

that it is made by passing through

some stages of instability-

and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;

your ideas mature gradually-let them grow,

let them shape themselves, without undue haste.

Do't try to force them on,

as though you could be today what time

(that is to say, grace and circumstances

acting on your own good will)

will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit

gradually forming within you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing

that his hand is leading you,

and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

in suspense and incomplete.”

"The Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and dim and the dark cloths of night and light and half-light;
I would spread cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. "

-W.B. Yeats

"A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul."

by Walt Whitman

Water, tree, humans

Noises, yellow rocks, blue, green

Waterfall people

(John, age 6)

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