Peace in the Cherokee Forest

Plants in the Mist

The plant grows in the mist and under clouds as truly as under sunshine." 

--William Ellery Channing

Like the seed that has lain in the ground all winter, in spring it will begin its springtime dance into new life.  One who is higher than I leads me through this dark land.  I am moved along in steady and unseen ways into new life.

Healing After Loss

Martha W. Hickman

Rhythm of a flowing River

"But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
By Alfred Tennyson


I am renewed and refresh every time I visit the forest, mountains, rivers, and wildlife.  There is a rhythm of hope in every sound of nature. Nature's rhythm is music to my heart.

The Trees

The Trees


by Phillip Larkin


The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.


Is it that they are born again
And we grow old?  No, they de too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.


Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Mary Lee Smith-Brown with her granddaughter Angela in Cherokee County, Ga.  She loved the Smoky Mountains.  She had Cherokee Indian ancestors, Augusta Cole and Mourning Brown who lived in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina.

Shaconage My Ancestral Home

Mingus Gist Mill

 

Laurel Creek

A Foggy Morning Mountain Valley

A Smoky Mountain Winter Wonderland

Smoky Mountains Early Snowfall

It was cold, windy, raining and then the snow started falling.  It was a beautiful scene with snow on the treetops falling on colorful leaves.  Fall meets Winter Wonderland.

"Jewelled Arc of the Waterfall"

Waterfall

I do not ask for youth, nor for delay

in the rising of time's irreversible river

that takes the jewelled arc of the waterfall

in which I glimpse, minute by glinting minute,

all that I have and all I am always losing

as sunlight lights each drop fast, fast falling.

I do not dream that you, young again,

might come to me darkly in love's green darkness

where the dust of the bracken spices the air

moss, crushed, gives out an astringent sweetness

and water holds our reflections

motionless, as if for ever.

It is enough now to come into a room

and find the kindness we have for each other

-- calling it love -- in eyes that are shrewd

but trustful still, face chastened by years

of careful judgement; to sit in the afternoons

in mild conversation, without nostalgia.

But when you leave me, with your jauntiness

sinewed by resolution more than strength

-- suddenly then I love you with a quick

intensity, remembering that water,

however luminous and grand, falls fast

and only once to the dark pool below.                       

                                               

By Lauris Dorothy Edmond (1924-2000)

The Sound of Trees

The Sound of the Trees

by Robert Frost

I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.

"Miles To Go Before I Sleep"

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, 1923
by Robert Frost (26 March 1874 – 29 January 1963)