There was so much of beauty here: the neat, small tracks of a foraging creature, stoat or marten; the inticate tracery of a skeleton leaf, still clinging vainly to its parent tree as, little by little, time stripped it of its substance, leaving only the delicate remembrance of what it had been.

I thought of betrayal and how it came so easily - in a word, a glance, a gesture.

How can he do this? If you were mine, I would fight to keep you. I would die, before I let you go.

We draw our strength from the great oaks of the forest. As they take their nourishment from the soil, and from the rains that feed the soil, so we find our courage in the pattern of living things around us. They stand through storm and tempest. They grow and renew themselves. Like a grove of young oaks, we remain strong.

Water and stone Flesh and bone Night and morn Rose and thorn Tree and wind Heart and mind

What I do . . . the path I tread . . . it brings some choices that test me hard.

Hope is such a tenuous quality. To feel it and then to be denied what one most longs for ... Better, surely, not to hope at all, than to open the heart to a hope that is impossible.