Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest.
When despair for the world grows in me I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry·1942Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.
Wang Wei·750 ADEmpty mountain — no one in sight, / yet voices of men are heard. / Sun's reflected light enters the deep wood, / shining once more upon green moss.
Henry Beston·1928Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night. With lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars? Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night?
