It's A Dangerous Business, Frodo, Going Out Your Door. You Step Onto The Road, And If You Don't Keep

The summer solstice speaks of love and light, of freedom and generosity of spirit. It is the time of the year where vibrant flowers whisper to us with scented breath, forests and woodlands hang heavy in the summer’s heat and our souls become enchanted with midsummer magic.

Happy Summer Solstice!

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring 

Cranes... bid farewell to them always touches me deep in my heart.

So many feelings.

Pure joy, to hear their striking, distinctive call.

Melancholy, to see them moving away again.

Hope, to see them again next year.

Desire, to go with them.

Humbleness, for the creation of Mother Nature.

Love, because these creatures are simply magnificent.

So many thoughts.

Inseparably connected with their migration in autumn is that winter is coming, as well as their return in spring is carrying the promise of summer.

The Wheel of time.

Endings and new beginnings. 

Life.

How do you feel about?

Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Let their spirit ignite a fire within you to leave this world better than when you found it...

If you were born without wings, do nothing to prevent them from growing.

Coco Chanel

What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.

Chris Maser, Forest Primeval

Side? I am on nobody's side, because nobody is on my side, little orc.

You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two.

Hayao Miyazaki

“Mushrooms were the roses in the garden of that unseen world....”

But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you