Last Saturday, an odd idea struck me (for a college student, that is). See, unlike most students (it seems, but I'm sure my impression could be completely wrong), no matter how late I've stayed up the night before, I love mornings. I love waking up extra early just so I can sit, eat my breakfast, and read a book while sipping a warm cup of coffee. I love a morning's lazy drowsiness, the cool, refreshing air, and the feeling that for a few minutes, the world is mine to behold.
So, I woke up a few minutes before the dawn (that makes it sound much more impressive than it was), threw some warm clothes on, grabbed my camera, my iPod, and my car keys, and dashed out the door. After buying a deliciously warm mocha (it really is happiness in a cup), I got in my car and drove north. Along the way, I listened to my Harry Potter audiobooks (What can I say? The narrator has an extremely soothing British accent.) and appreciated the rising sun and how its light started to dance across the mountains.
These are a few of the photos I took along the way of things I simply found interesting and intriguing; my only goal throughout this morning was to stop for what caught my eye, enjoy the peacefulness, to simply escape campus and all of its distractions, and to remember that there is a world out there: one with mountains, winding roads, gurgling brooks, and crunchy, rust-colored leaves.
“We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our
innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.”
--Hermann Hesse
“In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all the exaltations and joys came in the moment of preparation for living. They took place in solitude. But with action came anxiety, and the sense of insuperable effort made to match the dream, and with it came weariness, discouragement, and the flight into solitude again. And then in solitude,
in the opium den of remembrance, the possibility of pleasure again.”
--Anaïs Nin
“We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private:
and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.”
--C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.”
--May Sarton
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