“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
Virginia Woolf
Category Archives: Roan Mountain
Understand More
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
Marie Curie
Letting Go
Cloudy evening on Round Bald, Roan Mountain
“Nothing has taught me dependence on God like letting go of people.”
Connally Gilliam
“Revelations of a Single Woman”
Presence
“Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit.”
(Bidden or unbidden, God is here.)
Carl Jung, 1875-1961
Swiss psychiatrist
Patience
Doe River near Roan Mountain State Park, TN
“Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains,
losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and
we shall soon see them in their proper figures.”
Joseph Addison, 1672-1719
English poet and dramatist
Outside Good for the Inside
View from Round Bald, Roan Mountain, TN
“Truly it may be said that the outside of a mountain is good for the inside of a man.”
George Wherry, 1852-1928
Alpine Notes and the Climbing Foot
Open the Door
Doe River near Roan Mountain State Park, TN
“As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest,
or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream,
the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.”
Stephen Graham, 1884-1975, The Gentle Art of Tramping
English novelist and travel writer
This Side
“The grass is greener on this side.”
Be Done With It
AT crossing Roan balds
“Finish each day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities have crept in;
forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day.
You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit
to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
Emerson
Solace & Inspiration
View from Roan Highlands
“Nature has been for me, for as long as I remember,
a source of solace, inspiration, adventure, and delight;
a home, a teacher, a companion.”
Lorraine Anderson
Create Leaders
Appalachian Trail, Roan Mountain
“Leaders don’t create followers,
they create more leaders.”
Tom Peters
Right Light
Doe River, Roan Mountain
“In the right light,
at the right time,
everything is extraordinary.”
Aaron Rose
Give Books
Roan Mountain
“Do give books — religious or otherwise — for Christmas.
They’re never fattening, seldom sinful,
and permanently personal.”
Lenore Hershey
Integrity
“When you lose your integrity
you lose your right to lead.”
D. Gyertson
Silence
Rime ice on Roan Highlands
“Spiteful words can hurt your feelings
but silence breaks your heart.”
C.S Lewis
Laughter
Appalachian Trail looking toward Grassy Ridge and Hump Mountain near Roan
“Among those whom I like or admire,
I can find no common denominator,
but among those whom I love, I can:
all of them make me laugh.”
W. H. Auden, 1907-1973
Serenity
Roan Mountain
“The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-1882
Committee Work
Roan Mountain homestead
“There is no monument dedicated
to the memory of a committee.”
Lester J. Pourciau
Deadlines
Roan Mountain viewed from NC
“I love deadlines.
I like the whooshing sound
they make as they fly by.”
Douglas Adams, 1952-2001
Moving Ends
View of Roan Mountain and Unaka Mountain over town of Unicoi
About the time we think we can make ends meet,
somebody moves the ends.
Herbert Hoover, 1874-1964
Wedded To It
Roan Mountain
“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive autumns.”
George Eliot
Precarious
“All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem
brings us face to face with another problem.”
Martin Luther King Jr., 1929-1968
‘Strength to Love,’ 1963
Stop, Cease, Look
“In the name of God, stop a moment,
cease your work, look around you.”
Leo Tolstoy, 1828-1910
Good Lives
Roan Mountain
“There is no shortage of good days.
It is good lives that are hard to come by.”
Annie Dillard, ‘The Writing Life’
No Force
“It’s interesting to me
that Jesus never forced anyone
to agree with Him.”
Donald Miller
