The contemplative man always lives alone, regardless of who may reside in his home, his is a solitary world.

If you have not touched the rocky wall of a canyon. If you have not heard a rushing river pound over cobblestones. If you have not seen a native trout rise in a crystalline pool beneath a shattering riffle, or a golden eagle spread its wings and cover you in shadow. If you have not seen the tree line recede to the top of a bare crested mountain. If you have not looked into a pair of wild eyes and seen your own reflection. Please, for the good of your soul, travel west.

There is happiness here that others have found, though it must be floating on the dreams they’ve drowned. I shall live my life with buoyancy. My hopes and dreams wait ahead of me.

If happiness required me to ignore my thoughts and questions, then I hoped to never be happy.

Every man should wake up alone and spend thirty minutes outside. He should spend thirty minutes with the rising sun listening for birds while pacing back and forth in ponderous thought, with a cool breeze on his nose and his arms stretched into the open air. He should spend thirty minutes alone with whatever view is available. Then he should go back to sleep.

My hands are flowing like sunlight. The shapes and colors are astounding. I don't understand these images that are empowering me. My brush touches the canvas like photons to the earth, and a new world develops, free from my control, yet intrinsically dependent upon me. I am sweating with elation. I have no idea what I am doing, or what it is my hands are trying to see. There is so much strength in this clarity I am overpowered by the independence of it.

Only lost photographs that were never taken know what my mind speaks of when we are alone together.

There are places which exist in this world beyond the reach of imagination.

As the saturating colors of sun-life fade from sight, the ominous moon reaches out its long arm and applies the dark dyes of night.