thanks

Thanksgiving is a time to stop and appreciate the basic things that I sometimes take for granted -- family and friends, good health, enough to eat, a warm safe place to sleep.  But there's something else I’m especially grateful for too -- all those extra special things that Nature provides -- like beauty, fascination, awe, mystery, always something around the corner, something new, something different, or a different way of looking at familiar things.

Bur oak leaves cover the trail.

Contemplation of nature makes my life so much richer and enjoyable ... and is even a source of sanity at times.

Young ponderosa pine dusted with snow and sunshine.

“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains."  Walt Whitman

Ponderosa pine on Dakota sandstone.

"And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything."  William Shakespeare

Late fall in the northern Black Hills.

Devils Tower on Thanksgiving day.