Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn. – John Muir (1838 – 1914)
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A quick update on OjaiNews.com – we’ve added News Off The Press, which is a great SB/Ventura media aggregator. Much more to come in the near future.
great photo, Tyler! i enjoy the open threads as much for your great images as for the commentary that follows!
So beautiful! I want to jump into the computer and lay down in the sunny grass…
What a beautiful photo! Most evenings, after our work day, my husband and I go for a walk in the Ojai Meadow Preserve.
This photo reminds me of the simple pleasure of being able to sit in nature and allow “nature’s peace to flow into you”.
I grew up in the north end of the San Fernando Valley in the 1960′s. At that time there were orange groves and fields to hike in behind our house. As I grew up, I watched as every meadow, hillside, blade of native grass and orange grove was paved over, subdivided and landscaped.
My grandparents lived in Ojai in the late 60′s and we would come here to visit, driving through what was then lovely farm land in Camarillo, Oxnard and Ventura.
When I came back to Ojai 30 years later, I saw a lot of change. But I also saw, meadows and oak trees like the one in your lovely photo. Compared to the nightmare of over development,urban and suburban sprawl that have gobbled up those other communities, Ojai is an oasis!
I am grateful to all of the people who fought so hard in the 1970′s to keep the 33 from becoming a freeway, to the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy for it’s amazing stewardship of our open space and to our activist community in the Ojai Valley that continues to fight to keep the Ojai Valley a model of open space and sustainable, sane living. We live in an awesome and rare place.
The phrase “in nature” always pokes at me. Dianne, I don’t want to pick on you here – someone else said it to me yesterday and it got me thinking.
I think what bugs me about it is the idea that nature is somehow stored in a specific place – up the mountain, by the creek, in the part of the backyard where the most flowers grow. Nature is everywhere. We are a part of it. The weeds in the cracks in the driveway is Nature asserting itself. What we have created, buildings, highways, greenhouse gasses, are temporary. They will, eventually, be swallowed up by “Nature.” It may be too late for us, and we may have changed the course of that “Nature,” but we are always “in Nature.”
So what are you suggesting Heather, just give up because it’s “…too late for us”. It sounds like Dianne went hiking and sat and allowed “nature’s peace to flow” over her, or in other words she found that sense of awe that is so easily provoked in an area that has not been built up and mostly subjugated our urban sprawl. Perhaps you find it easy to access that sense of awe at nature anywhere you happen to be, even indoors in a room lit by florescents with ac and piped in “easy listening” music, but most people need to get a little closer to the wilds. I think you may have missed the whole point of Dianne’s comment.
thank you spk
I was referring directly to the John Muir quote in Tylers open thread.
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn. – John Muir (1838 – 1914)
oops, forgot to type my name on that last post.
Once again, a reminder that text online doesn’t always come across as intended. I didn’t even really mean to be commenting on Dianne’s experience….just writing off the cuff about a language question that was niggling at me. I too gather strength and quiet when I am in an un-built area, and I treasure my favorite outdoor places around Ojai. I’m always surprised there aren’t more people out on the trails and in the parks.