Recently, I sent out the following note: 

Many of you are familiar with the quote I use in my e-mail signature. 

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. ~Crowfoot

I found and pulled other quotes that will end up in my next Pearls of Wisdom update and gave thought to using one or another as a new signature.  But, -- I don't have the heart to change them out.  I quite simply love Crowfoot's words.  And since hiking is somewhat a painful thought these days, they serve as a reminder of what I so love; Nature and the world we too easily take for granted. 

 

I understand not everyone is witness to a buffalo's breath trailing along the winter wind, or are too caught up in their own struggles to notice a shadow disappearing into the light of an evening sun.  But.  With all that we know of this world's suffering, I believe we are now, more than ever, obliged to consider its needs.  Were we all to consider our Earth a living and sacred entity, how would you answer?  What is life?

here and there

 

far from the world

   we know as nine to five

      lost to the concepts of Time

I stood in a sun-speckled chasm

   at the foot of a cascade

      of moss-covered stones

and found at water’s edge

   the breath of creation

      the essence of energy

and savored the knowledge that

   here, there is Life

      there, it is only Power

                                    by L.L. Abbott, copyright EarthVerse, 1998-2008

     here and there

 

in the silence

of a sun-speckled chasm

at the foot of a cascade

of moss-covered stones

one finds at water's edge

that here

there is energy

not that as harnessed by man

for his world of nine to five

here

there is life

there

it is only power

                                  by L.L. Abbott, copyright 1998-2008 EarthVerse