Characterful Pine, Rothiemurchus woods, near Aviemore.
One from the last fortnight when the snow was still fresh and beautiful! The slow thaw continues, but we still have some deep snow in the woods making it very difficult to walk anywhere. Footpaths are icy and treacherous, off the paths there is still deep and heavy snow.
“One morning I woke up and decided to look out the window, to see where we were. We were flying over America and suddenly I saw snow, the first ever we saw from orbit. Light and powdery, it blended with the contours of the land, with veins of rivers. I thought—autumn, snow—people are getting ready for winter. A few minutes later, we were flying over the Atlantic, then Europe, and then Russia. I have never visited America, but imagined that the arrival of autumn and winter is the same there as in other places, and the process of getting ready for them is the same. And then it struck me that we are all children of our Earth. It does not matter what country you look at. We are all Earth’s children, and we should treat her as our Mother.”
– Soviet Cosmonaut Aleksandr Alecsandrov in ‘The Home Planet’ as quoted in Stanislav and Christina Grof’s book ‘Spiritual Emergency’.