I find my best creative inspiration in nature.
When I spend time hiking in wild areas nature never ceases to amaze me and fill me with gratitude and wonder. I am endlessly and entirely
Inspired by Nature
You may remember my wild altars series of photographs that I made in 2017 while I spent almost 3 months wandering around in the north woods near Ely, Minnesota. I was inspired by the feelings of reverence I experienced during my daily walks in the woods there. Each day I noticed the amazing beauty of tiny scenes on the woodland floor or on trees beside the paths I wandered. No human could create scenes so full of wholeness and beauty as nature did.
This year I’ve felt the same reverence in my woodland wanderings. I continue to be inspired by nature. While I wasn’t able to spend extended time out hiking until September, once I was able to I headed to the woods as often as I could. Each time I immersed myself in noticing tiny details of my surroundings, looking closely to notice the bend of this leaf, or the softness of that moss.
The series of images in this post are images I made this year. I call this series
Altars
because they feel like sacred places to me and because I feel closer to the source of all things when I observe nature’s altars.
My spirit soars when I feel the fresh breezes on my face and gaze at the cycles of life in the woods and wild places. One always sees life intermingled with death because that is the reality of life on earth. Nothing is immortal. Life cycles endlessly through the eons with species being born and other species dying.
When I consider the way deserts were once oceans and look up at the endless stars in the sky I truly feel that though I am not immortal, I contain the seeds of immortality simply because I am alive. You and I are all made of the same stuff endlessly recycled. We all contain stardust.
Are you inspired by nature too? How does it feel to think that you are made of stardust?
I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite quotes about stardust as well as my Altars series of images today…
May you walk in beauty.
“We are travelers on a cosmic journey,stardust,swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.” — Paulo Coelho
“The atoms of our bodies are traceable to stars that manufactured them in their cores and exploded these enriched ingredients across our galaxy, billions of years ago. For this reason, we are biologically connected to every other living thing in the world. We are chemically connected to all molecules on Earth. And we are atomically connected to all atoms in the universe. We are not figuratively, but literally stardust.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
“I am one of billions. I am stardust gathered fleetingly into form. I will be ungathered. The stardust will go on to be other things someday and I will be free.” — Laini Taylor
“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff” — Carl Sagan
“All life is sacred. Since life is an affirmation of the Creator, I shall live on, even when I am gone. In trailing clouds of glory shall I return to my Creator only to find that I had never really left. I shall walk among the lilies of the field and leave my trail in stardust in the sky.” — John Harricharan
“A philosopher once asked, “Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?” Pointless, really…”Do the stars gaze back?” Now that’s a question.” — Neil Gaiman
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