Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

-Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road


Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet
and the winds long to play with your hair.

-Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

Flight (Yosemite)

No bird soars too high,
if he soars with his own wings.

-William Blake,
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Gratitude (King's Canyon)

It is a day of miracles;
a day when our dreams seem
a little closer; a time of retrospection
for what has been
and anticipation of all that will be.

-Anna Marie Edwards


Gratitude is the memory of the heart.

-J. B. Massieu, Letter to the Abbe Sicard

Secret (Emigrant)

Art attracts us only by what it
reveals of our most secret self.

-Jean-Luc Godard,
Les Amis du Cinema

Quest (Emigrant)

Where are the snows of yesteryear?
(Ou sont les neiges d'antan?)

-Villon,
Ballade des dames du temp jadis

Wanderer (Death Valley)

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
A Psalm of Life

Destiny (Death Valley)

Ca ira. (It will go its own way.)

-Benjamin Franklin,
Said about the American Revolution
while in Paris 1776-1777

Tomorrow (Big Sur)

I never think of the future.
It comes soon enough.

-Albert Einstein,
Interview, Dec., 1930

Friendship (Whitney)

At times it will be sweet and magnificent,
Others rough and prickly.
We will grow through triumph and struggle.
Our care will blossom this rose.
Separate we are just wilted petals,
Together we pull together to create the best thing on earth.
We need the constant care we share,
Without it we wilt and die.

-Becky Trochmann, Our friendship is like a rose


At times we have bathed in sun shine and star light,
Others thunder and lightening.
We will grow side by side,
Our affection will melt the winter ice.
In fog we searched for each other in silence,
Together we soar high into the blue sky.
We cultivate the common ground on which we share our daily lives,
Without it we crumble and die.

-Randy Wang, Our friendship is like the twin peaks

Journey (Eagle Mountain)

Life, as the most ancient of all metaphors insists,
is a journey; and the travel book, in its deceptive
simulation of the journey's fits and starts, rehearses
life's own fragmentation. More even than the novel,
it embraces the contingency of things.

-Jonathan Raban, For Love and Money

Voyage (Royal Gorge)

Light (Point Reyes)

Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!

-John Henry Newman, Pillar of the Cloud

Invitation (Hope Valley)

Memory (Yosemite)

Long, long be my heart with such memories fill'd!
Like the vase in which roses have once been distill'd:
You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.

-Thomas Moore, Farewell! But Whenever...

Pilgrimage (Royal Gorge)

Had sigh'd to many, though he loved but one.

-Childe Harold, Pilgrimage