Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul."  ~ John Muir

When I was about four years old, I was given a Little Golden Book about God written by Jane Werner Watson and Eloise Wilkins did the illustrations. It was my very favorite book and I still have it.

Let me give you a snippet...

"Look at the stars in the evening sky, so many millions of miles away that the light you see shining left its star long, long years before you were born. Yet beyond the farthest star, God knows the way."

And...

"Bend down to touch the smallest flower. Watch the busy ant tugging at his load. See the flash of jewels on the insect's back. This tiny would your two hands could span, like the oceans and mountains and far off stars, God planned."

 

I remember the dark skies above the mountain lit with trillions of pinpoints of light and how tiny they made me feel. I remember crackling bonfires made from dead pine knots and roasting hotdogs and marshmallows. When evening became cold and damp we would snuggle beneath one of my grandmother's quilts. Lying there we would watch the tiny sparks travel skyward as if trying to imitate the stars above. I remember long exploring walks in the woods and my excitement over each little vignette of beautiful natural things. I remember feeling that God designed them each for me. I would love a long walk on the mountain of my childhood, but it is nearly winter and so many lovely things rest beneath the snow and ice till spring's reawakening. The scripture says in Genesis 8:22 As long as the world exists, there will be a time for planting and a time for harvest. There will always be cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.”

 

While some things are so small I could easily hold them in my hand, there are other things so far away I can't even wrap my mind around them. Yet God knows and He planned the way.

It was an honor to know him!

This was the last time I saw my father before his passing in 2008. He was 89 years old and used up every once of strength he had and then silently flew away. I visited with him about 5 weeks before he died. What a precious and godly man he was! No daughter could even have had better!


One of my all time favorite movies is "The Silence of the North" from 1981. Ellen Burstyn plays the lead roll. It is hard to find now in anything but VHS but it is the true story of Olive Frederickson, a woman who braved the northern wilds of the beautiful Canadian wilderness in about 1920 with a wandering trapper husband. I won't tell you the whole story but in one part her small son dies of meningitis. She is grieving so deeply when one of her young daughters, breaks through the darkness of her mourning when she said this to her mother, "it was an honor to know him".
I feel that way about my father. It was a honor to know him!

Neil Young wrote the song that is on the movie. It was sung by Lacy J. Dalton. Here are part of the lyrics:

...You and I, we were captured
We took our souls and we flew away
We were right, we were giving
And that's how we kept what we gave away

Oh, this old world keeps spinning round
It's a wonder tall trees ain't layin' down
There comes a time

Comes a time...

My daddy loved Nature as well as it's Creator God. And I love reading the writings of John Muir. Here is an appropriate quote that makes me think of my daddy, his life, and his loves.

"Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest! Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God. Nevermore, however weary, should one faint by the way who gains the blessings of one mountain day; whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever.   
 ~ "My First Summer in the Sierra", John Muir (1911)

Photo taken by my niece of the mountain where my parents lived and we grew up in Western North Carolina.