Main Body
August
August 1
He taught me to care more for doing what was right than for whatever blessings, consequences, or honors it might bring me. He taught me I had no right to believe that the good I might do in the world, in the end, had any more to do with me than with others. We are interdependent with each other and with God, and a principled life of integrity lived on behalf of others is the only possession we can obtain in life. Everything else, it seems, is dross.
— George Handley, writing about Lowell Bennion
August 2
Do what is right; the shackles are falling.
Chains of the bondsmen no longer are bright;
Lightened by hope, soon they’ll cease to be galling.
Truth goeth onward; then do what is right!
Do what is right; let the consequence follow.
Battle for freedom in spirit and might;
And with stout hearts look ye forth till tomorrow.
God will protect you; then do what is right!
Do what is right; be faithful and fearless.
Onward, press onward, the goal is in sight.
Eyes that are wet now, ere long will be tearless.
Blessings await you in doing what’s right!
— Anonymous hymn, “Do What is Right”
August 3
Anywhere is the center of the world.
— Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks
August 4
This is the sense of the desert hills, that there is room enough and time enough. Trees grow to consummate domes; every plant has its perfect work. Noxious weeds such as come up thickly in crowded fields do not flourish in the free spaces. Live long enough with an Indian, and he or the wild things will show you a use for everything that grows in these borders. The manner of the country makes the usage of life there, and the land will not be lived in except in its own fashion.
… The beginning of spring in Shoshone Land — oh the soft wonder of it! — is a mistiness as of incense smoke, a veil of greenness over the whitish stubby shrubs, a web of color on the silver sanded soil. …
To understand the fashion of any life, one must know the land it is lived in and the procession of the year
— Mary Austin, The Land of Little Rain
August 5
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. I feel as if this tree knows everything I ever think of when I sit here. When I come back to it, I never have to remind it of anything; I begin just where I left off.
— Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
August 6
Their eyes were held upon some vision out of range, something away in the end of distance, some reality that she did not know, or even suspect. What was it that they saw? Probably they saw nothing after all, nothing at all. But that was the trick, wasn’t it? To see nothing at all, nothing in the absolute. To see beyond the landscape, beyond every shape and shadow and color, that was to see nothing. That was to be free and finished, complete, spiritual. To see nothing slowly and by degrees, at last; to see first the pure, bright colors of near things, then all pollutions of color, all things blended and vague and dim in the distance, to see fina