As I take my walk in the woods…. I am fascinated with the beauty of nature…. its birth…. and its subsequent passing.

Like this shriveling leaf clump.

(I think the tree is…… Poplar. You know….like a Homecoming Queen; admired by all its friends; life of the party….. Poplar. ) OK. So maybe it is UnPoplar.

But gosh darn it…. I am getting off the track AGAIN.

The main thing I wanted to mention this evening are the birthdays which occurred on this date… and now…. these amazing people have passed. (Their leaves shriveled… I guess.) If you will….. the list is off-the-charts-good:

George Washington Carver ?/1864 – 1/5/1943
African-American scientist

Julius Caesar 7/12/c100 BC – 3/15/44BC
Roman imperial general and statesman

Henry David Thoreau 7/12/1817 – 5/6/1862
American essayist, poet and philosopher

George Eastman 7/12/1854 – 3/14/1932
American manufacturer; founded Eastman Kodak Company

Amedeo Modigliani 7/12/1884 – 1/24/1920
Italian painter and sculptor

Buckminster Fuller 7/12/1895 – 7/1/1983
American engineer and architect

Oscar Hammerstein ll 7/12/1895 – 8/23/1960
American lyricist and producer of musical theater

I mean…… just Hammerstein and Thoreau would have been over the top…. for crying out loud.

Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music were some of my very favorites. (…Brown paper packages tied up with strings….These are a few of my favorite things…)

And then….

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
— Henry David Thoreau

Who writes like that? Either one of those guys…. how?   Profoundly Amazing, I’ll tell you.

So… July 12th. A big day for the hearty of mind and spirit.
May we all be mighty of mind, and of spirit, as we take OUR walk in the woods.