Stream Sketch Quotes

To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure. You have no idea of what is in store for you, but you will, if you are wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown and accept whatever comes in the spirit in which the gods may offer it. For this reason your customary thoughts, all except the rarest of your friends, even most of your luggage - everything, in fact, which belongs to your everyday life, is merely a hindrance. The tourist travels in his own atmosphere like a snail in his shell and stands, as it were, on his own perambulating doorstep to look at the continents of the world. But if you discard all this, and sally forth with a leisurely and blank mind, there is no knowing what may not happen to you.

It has often been said that the New World is deficient in the elements of poetry and romance ; that its bards must of necessity linger over the classic ruins of other lands; and draw their sketches of character from foreign sources, and paint Nature under the soft beauty of an Eastern sky. On the contrary, New England is full of Romance....we have mountains pillaring a sky as blue as that which bends over classic Olympus; streams as bright and beautiful as those of Greece and Italy, and forests richer and nobler than those which of old were haunted by Sylph and Dryad.

He hadn't left any of the stretches that he'd done of me. But he did leave a sketch of my rocking chair. It was perfect. A rocking chair against the bare walls of my room. He'd captured the afternoon light streaming into the room, the way the shadows fell on the chair and gave it depth and made it appear as if it was something more than an inanimate object. There was something sad and solitary about the sketch and I wondered if that's the way he saw the world or if that's the way he saw my world. I starred at the sketch for a long time. It scared me. Because there was something true about it.

But if there was a pleasure in all this while snugly cuddling in the chimney-corner of a chamber that was all of a ruddy glow from the crackling wood-fire, and where, of course, no spectre dared to show its face, it was dearly purchased by the terrors of his subsequent walk homewards. What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night! With what wistful look did be eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window!

Nature journaling doesn’t need to be complicated. You don’t need artistic skills, fancy pens, or expensive journals to get started. All you need is a curious spirit, a pencil, and a notebook. Call them nature journals, field guides, or whatever you like. But go into the fields, walk into the woods, and sit by the streams. Listen, watch, and sketch what you see. Include the date, time, and location. Include lists, quotes, or pressed flowers in your pages if you’d like. And fill them with the observations of your outings. In time, the habit of nature journaling will nurture a love for nature in both you and your children.

There is, perhaps, no class of men on the face of the earth, says Captain Bonneville, who lead a life of more continued exertion, peril, and excitement, and who are more enamored of their occupations, than the free trappers of the West. No tail, no danger, no privation can turn the trapper from his pursuit. His passionate excitement at times resembles mania. In vain may the most vigilant and cruel savages best his path, in vain may rocks and precipices and wintry torrents oppose his progress, let but a single track of a beaver meet his eye, and he forgets all the dangers and defies all difficulties. At times, he may be seen with his traps on his shoulder, buffeting his way across rapid streams, amidst floating blocks of ice: at other times, he is to be found with his traps swung on his back clambering the most rugged mountains, scaling or descending the most frightful precipices, searching, by routes inaccessible to the horse, and never before trodden by white man, for springs and lakes unknown to his comrades, and where he may meet with his favorite game. Such is the mountaineer, the hardy trapper of the West, and such, as we have slightly sketched it, is the wild, Robin Hood kind of life, with all its strange and motley populace, now existing in full vigor among the Rocky Mountains.

The Poetry that Searches Poetry that paints a portrait in words, Poetry that spills the bottled emotions, Gives life to the feelings deep inside, Breaks through all the times wept, To sweep you in a whirling ecstatic delight. The chiseled marble of language, The paint spattered canvas, Where colors flow through words, Where emotions roll on a canvas, And it all begins with you. The canvas that portrays the trembling you, Through the feelings that splash, Through the words that spatter, All over the awaiting canvas. Such is the painting sketched with passion, Colored with the heart's unleashed emotions. The poetry that reads your trembling heart, The poetry that feeds the seed of your dreams, That poetry that reveals light within rain, Takes you to a place where beauty lies in stain. The poetry that whispers- "May you find the stars, in a night so dark, May you find the moon, so rich with silver, May you sip the madness and delight In a night berserk with a wailing agony". Such words that arise from spilling emotions, So recklessly you fall, in love with life again. So, you rise shedding your fears, To chase after your dreams, As you hear thunder in the rain, That carries your pain, Through the painting of words, colored with courage, Splashed with ferocity, amidst the lost battles. Such is the richest color splash in words, Laid down on papers, that stayed so empty, For ages and ages. At times, you may feel lost, Wandering homeless in the woods, But poetry that you write, To drink the moonlight and madness, Poetry that you spill on a canvas with words, Calls you to fall, for life again. The words that evoke the intense emotions, The painting that gives the richest revelation, The insight that deepens in a light so streaming, Is the poetry that reveals the truth and beauty, In a form so elemental, in a way so searching, For a beauty so emotive, Which trembles, With the poetry's deepest digging. The words that take your eyes to sleep, The poetry that stills your raging feelings, Is the portrait of words that carries you, In emotions bottled within, held so deep, For an era so long. Forgotten they seemed, yet they arose, With the word's deepest calling, To the soul sleeping inside. The poetry that traces your emotions with words, Is a poetry that traces your soul with its lips, To speak a language that your heart understands. The Ecstatic Dance of Soul Copyright 2020 Jayita Bhattacharjee

I poked my head through the bushes, and saw that the little bunch I was after had joined a great flock of teal, which was on a sand bar in the middle of the stream. They were all huddled together, some standing on the bar, and others in the water right by it, and I aimed for the thickest part of the flock. At the report they sprang into the air, and I leaped to my feet to give them the second barrel, when, from under the bank right beneath me, two shoveller or spoon-bill ducks rose, with great quacking, and, as they were right in line, I took them instead, knocking both over. When I had fished out the two shovellers, I waded over to the sand bar and picked up eleven teal, making thirteen ducks with the two barrels.

It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day, the sky was clear and serene, and Nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. Streaming files of wild-ducks began to make their appearance high in the air; the bark of the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory nuts, and the pensive whistle of the quail at intervals from the neighboring stubble-field.

Their era was ending when Jim Clyman got to Independence in ’44 and found Bill Sublette, who had first taken wagons up the Platte Valley in 1830, now taking invalids to Brown’s Hole for a summer’s outing. It was twenty-one years since Jim had first gone up the Missouri, forty years since Lewis and Clark wintered at the Mandan villages, thirty-three years since Wilson Hunt led the Astorians westward, twenty years since Clyman with Smith and Fitzpatrick crossed South Pass, eighteen years since Ashley, in the Wasatch Mountains, sold his fur company to Smith, Sublette, and Jackson. Thirty-two years ago Robert McKnight had been imprisoned by the Spanish for taking goods to Santa Fe. Twenty-three years ago William Becknell had defied the prohibition and returned from Santa Fe in triumph. Eighteen years ago the Patties had got to San Diego by the Gila route and Jed Smith had blazed the desert trail to San Bernardino Valley; fourteen years ago Ewing Young, with Kit Carson, had come over the San Bernardino Mountains, making for the San Joaquin. There had been a trading post at the mouth of Laramie Creek for just ten years. Bent’s Fort was fifteen years old. Now the streams were trapped out, and even if beaver should come back, the price of plews would never rise again. There were two or three thousand Americans in Oregon, a couple of hundred in California, and in Independence hundreds of wagons were yoking up. Bill Sublette and Black Harris were guiding movers. Carson and Fitzpatrick were completing the education of John Charles Frémont. Forty years since Lewis and Clark. Think back to that blank paper with some names sketched in, the Wind River peaks, the Tetons, the Picketwire River, the Siskidee, names which, mostly, the mountain men sketched in — something under a million square miles, the fundamental watershed, a thousand mountain men scalped in this wilderness, the deserts crossed, the trails blazed and packed down, the mountains made known, the caravans carrying freight to Santa Fe, Bill Bowen selling his place to go to Oregon, half a dozen wagonwrights setting up at Independence … and, far off, like a fly buzzing against a screen, Joe Meek’s cousin, Mr. Polk, preparing war. Whose country was it? III Pillar of Cloud ALL through February Congress debated the resolution to terminate the joint occupancy of Oregon, and by its deliberation, Polk thought, informed the British that we were irresolute.

From them her hands moved on, random as her passing thoughts. She sketched vagrant airs, or snatches of jigs and reels, slowed and touched with the shadow of an inevitable grief that waited in the hidden darkness of future time. Through them she moved to the ancient tunes that held the timeless pull of the ocean in their cadences; sorrows that drew the heart from the body, or joys that called the soul like the distant glitter of Stardust banners in the summer night. In time John took from its place in a hole by the hearth a tin penny whistle, such as children played in the streets, and joined its thin, bright music to hers, dancing around the shadowed beauty of the harp like a thousand-year-old child. Music answered music, joining into a spell circle that banished, for a time, the strange tangle of fear and grief and dragonfire in Jenny’s heart. Whatever would come to pass, this was what they were and had now. She tossed back the cloudy streams of her hair and caught the bright flicker of Aversin’s eyes behind his thick spectacles, the pennywhistle luring the harp out of its sadness and into dance airs wild as hay-harvest winds.

The scenery that opened before me was composed of shades of black and white, and of trees woven together in lines along the boundaries between the fields. In places where the grass had not been cut, the snow had failed to blanket the fields in a uniform plane of white. Blades of grass were poking through its cover; from a distance it looked as if a large hand had begun to sketch an abstract pattern, by practicing some short strokes, fine and subtle. I could see the beautiful geometric shapes of fields, strips and rectangles, each with a different texture, each with its own shade, sloping at different angles toward the rapid winter Dusk. And our houses, all seven, were scattered here like a part of nature, as if they had sprung up with the field boundaries, and so had the stream and little bridge across it—it all seemed carefully designed and positioned, perhaps by the very same hand that had been sketching.

I have been thinking about stories of place in an effort to understand how the geography of mind adhere to the geography of earth. Each of us carries an inward map on which are inscribed, as on Renaissance charts, the seas and continents known to us. On my own map, the regions where I have lived most attentively are crowded with detail, while regions I have only glimpsed from windows or imagined from heresay are barely sketched, and out at the frontiers of my knowledge the lines dwindle away into blankness. There are certain spots on my map where many lines converge, like roads leading to a capitol, or like rays of energy streaming from a center of power.

She knew that, in her family, Lydia was always the first to gallop off to do something, and rarely, if ever, did any of her sisters run along with her. Even Kitty would follow in a more ladylike fashion. It was just how Lydia was. Exuberance poured from her in streams or, more precisely, like loud, babbling brooks that hopped here and there.

What was the point of accurately rendering sketches, when everyone could draw up the same picture in their minds? What was special about being able to hold an image clearly in his head, rotate it, and see different angles of light reflecting off of it? Thanks to the Stream, everyone could do that now. The Stream robbed him of his artistic skill. Stupid Stream