Not a cloud in the sky usually sounds like the perfect summer day. Not for this photographer. Skies are much more photogenic with some nice puffies floating around. So just a blue sky, but there is a peacefulness to this scene that brought me pleasure of the moment.
Someone shared this Wendell Berry poem on Facebook which I liked, shared and want to share here as well.
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Stephen Gingold Nature Photography Blog 
Sometimes WP drives me up a wall. First it would not let me put a space between the poem and my following text. Now I see that it blew that following text up to a ridiculous size in the email notification. Grrrr….
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WordPress has occasionally frustrated my attempts to add a blank line. Sometimes I’ve succeeded and other times not, but I don’t know what the difference has been.
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Me either, Steve. I double and triple spaced, but the text still was crowded together.
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The first thing that jumped out at me before reading any of your text was the central alignment of the two rocks with the two hills and their reflections. I think your viewers will be fine with a peaceful sky minus any puffies.
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Kind of a basic and obvious compositional ploy, I guess. Yeah, the missing clouds don’t seem to be missed.
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Instead of reading your post on your blog site, I did so via the WP reader. I am using my desktop computer, not a mobile device. This is what it presented. The entire poem is missing.
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The Reader continues to get in the way of accurate expression by those of us who use it. Not acceptable.
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ugh
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Funny…after I saw the email version I went to WP and it looked fine to me. Sometimes “free” isn’t all we might wish it to be. So inconsistent.
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btw…I thought the poem was great and it seems to speak well for you.
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Thanks. I may do more of that at times.
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Gorgeous capture, Steve. And the poem is perfect. Exactly how I feel about nature, as well. Whenever I find myself feeling antsy or stressed I know it’s time for a trip through the forest.
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Set aside lands for peaceful recreational use are a blessing for sure, Intricate Knot. I am glad you enjoyed both. Getting away was a great way to unwind form the worldly stresses…if only I had enough brains to not look at my phone. 🙂
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Wow! I don’t miss the puffies
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Thanks, Rod. I’m sure you mean the clouds and not these…
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Well…I guess so
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No need for puffies with light like this. Beautiful photograph, Steve. And no problem reading the poem…
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Thanks, Tom. When I first got there, the light was dismal, but things got better. That’s New England weather…or light…for you.
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Who said you need clouds when you come upon a scene like this? Stunning photo. A great “positioning of the boulders” in perfect alignment with the hills. Did you have a Paul Bunyan helping you? Of course I’m 100% sure that you are joking, no? 🙂
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Well, I did “position” them by where I placed the tripod, Yvonne. 🙂 No, I don’t move stuff except the occasional stray leaf or trash. It works well, but a nice cloud or two would have been welcome too.
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Yep, clouds break up the monotony of an all blue sky. Interesting thing about the photo is the simplicity of the scene with little to interrupt the colors of the water and the hills/mountains in background. Of course I love those rocks so I could not miss an opportunity to joke about you moving them with a Paul Bunyan type fellow. 🙂
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A couple of notes about appearance. If you want extra space between sections of your blog, the easiest way to do it is with “padding” — adding extra pixels above or below a section of text. If you look at my blog, you’ll see that my “Comments are welcome” note is down the page a bit. I get that by adding `padding-top: 60px;` to the html in the text editor. Of course you can designate any number of pixels, as well as adding them left, right, or bottom.
And, if you copied and pasted the poem, that may be what caused the font size anomalies and spacing problems. Anythng copied and pasted that was created in Word can be wonky, because its html is strange and isn’t always accepted by WP. Other copy-and-pastes can cause similar problems. If you want to C&P, use the “paste as text” button in the toolbar, or add the text, highlight, and then click the “clear formatting” button. I went in and looked at the html (right click page, then click “Inspect element”) and it looks like that’s what happened. Even if you double or triple spaced, the imported formatting of the poem would override what you did.
Maybe that’s why your lovely photo has no clouds — someone clicked the cosmic “clear flormatting” button!
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And by the way — Berry’s one of my favorites, too. There are some of his poems I don’t respond to at all, but many I return to time and again. This is a good one.
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My addled brain simply does not retain much of what I read now much less what I read years ago. So I am rereading Berry…a book of poems on my Kindle and I purchased a paper copy of some essays. Even if I did remember past readings, no doubt I will take more away from the writing all these years later.
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I did copy and paste, so that must have been the issue…plus I fiddled with the paragraph font too. I’ll try to remember what you described above if I run into the problem again, thanks.
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We’re a funny lot aren’t we…complaining about blue skies when we’re out in the morning or evening with our cameras. Even with the blue sky you had some lovely golden light, and Alpine Glow on the hills. Or mountains. I think because they’re rounded I thought hills rather than mountains.
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They are called the Bubble Mountains, Deborah. But they do seem more “hilled over” than craggy. The lighting was rather mixed, but works well. I was lucky. When I arrived things were looking rather flat and lifeless.
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I was admiring your careful placement of those rocks~ that gives weight lifting a whole new meaning! 🙂
Love the image and the poem.
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Moving my feet…and the tripod’s…seems a better way to get things where I want them. 🙂
I’m glad you enjoyed the two, Melissa.
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Just gorgeous. I love Jordan Pond in the early morning – a truly meditative experience.
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Thank you. It is a magical place as is most of Acadia.
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