
Bloodroot
“Taking joy in living is a woman’s best cosmetic.”
Rosalind Russel, 1907-1976
Actress

Rocky Fork, Unicoi County
“We do not find happiness by being assertive.
We don’t find happiness by running over people
because we see what we want and they are in the way
of that happiness so we either abandon them or we smash them.
The Scriptures don’t teach us to be assertive.
The Scriptures teach us–and this is remarkable–
the Scriptures teach us to be submissive. This is not a popular idea.”
Rich Mullins, 1955-1997
Christian singer and songwriter

“If you’ve ever known the love of God, you know it’s nothing but
reckless and it’s nothing but raging. Sometimes it hurts to be loved,
and if it doesn’t hurt it’s probably not love, may be infatuation.
I think a lot of American people are infatuated with God,
but we don’t really love Him, and they don’t really let Him love them.
Being loved by God is one of the most painful things in the world,
it’s also the only thing that can bring us salvation
and it’s like everything else that is really wonderful,
there’s a little bit of pain in it, little bit of hurt.”
Rich Mullins, 1955-1997
Christian singer and songwriter

Dutchman’s Breeches peeking out of the cold, damp earth
“Poor, dear, silly Spring,
preparing her annual surprise!”
Wallace Stevens, 1879-1955
Modernist poet

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves,
and not to twist them to fit our own image.
Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
Thomas Merton, 1915-1968
A Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky

View from Blue Ridge Parkway, near Grandfather Mountain, NC
“There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955
Winner of 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics

Crabtree Falls, Blue Ridge Parkway m. 339.5 near Mt. Mitchell, NC
“The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion,
who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement,
who can tolerate not knowing… not healing, not curing…
that is a friend who cares.”
Henri Nouwen, 1932-1996

Wild Columbine, Roan Mountain
“Flowers really do intoxicate me.”
Vita Sackville-West, 1892-1962
English author and poet

Sill Branch Falls, Unicoi County
“Every time you meet a situation, though you think at the time
it is an impossibility and you go through the torture of the damned,
once you have met it and lived through it,
you find that forever after you are freer than you were before.”
Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884-1962
American political leader, Civil Rights advocate,
and First Lady from 1933-1945