An Easter Meditation

Happiness is something we all hope for. May your Easter celebration bring you Peace and Happiness...

Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.
  – Eleanor Roosevelt

It is only immature people who believe, “I am separate; therefore, I can manipulate you, even exploit you, to ensure my own happiness.”

To think that we can pursue joy as a collector pursues butterflies, seeking it here and there, is folly. We can never go after joy because joy has got to come after us.

It’s like the horizon. When you look from the Berkeley hills, the horizon looks as if it is just beyond the Golden Gate. You honestly believe that if you go there, you will reach the horizon. But as you pursue it, it recedes farther and farther, and that is the nature of pleasure. It peeps out from the store, the restaurant, the bank, but when you enter there you will find it recedes farther and farther.

When we begin to seek a higher goal – for the welfare of our family and community – joy slowly tiptoes after us. We don’t have to say to joy, “Excuse me, will you please come to my house?”

Joy will come and put her suitcase down and say, “I am going to be here, whether you like it or not.”

That is how happiness comes.

Source: Blue Mountain Center - Thought for the Day

Mountain Musings

I sometimes feel like I am deceiving folks as they search the web. The theme of this blog being what it is, but the writing being based on my life here in Texas, causes mischief with all of the search engines. So if you end up here looking for North Carolina wildflowers or dirt roads or weather or anything else, I apologize for the misdirection. I also am looking for all of those things in my life on a daily basis. The future will bring them...or not.

But right now, right here you can find beautiful images of the northwestern North Carolina mountains this spring at Marie's Blue Ridge Blog. For images of the southern North Carolina Mountains try Liz's Southern Highlands Camera. A new blog about the Tennessee Mountains with some overlap into NC can be found at Appalachian Treks. Southwestern Virginia is represented (at least in my daily reads) by Fred at Fragments From Floyd and Doug at Blue Ridge Muse. So if you are here looking for some spring in the mountains check out the above blogs, they all put some really nice photos up regularly.

And keep coming back here, while my pictures of the mountains tend to only cover summer, I take enough each trip across the country to keep new ones coming all year long. Plus, someday... somehow, I will make the move and then I'll be posting my own shots year round. Until then you'll just have to put up with the pictures in the body of this blog not matching the ones at the header or footer.

Thanks for stopping by...