Forest wilderness

 

 

 

 

 

The clearest way

into the Universe

is through a forest wilderness.

John Muir

 

 

Earth

 

 

‘Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.’

Ancient Indian Proverb

 

 

 

 

 

 

Silence of nature

 

 

 

 

 

The silence of nature is very real.

It surrounds you, you can feel it,’

Ted Trueblood

The perfect Palette

 

 

 

Colors are the smiles of nature!

Connection

In Nature we never see anything isolated,

 but everything in connection with something else

 which is before it, beside it, under it, and over it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Beautiful thoughts

FOUR Beautiful THOUGHTS of Life :

Look back & get EXPERIENCE

Look forward & see HOPE

Look around & find REALITY

Look within & find YOUR SELF

 

 

 

Mafra's Baroque royal palace

The words "massive," "monumental," "gigantic," "colossal," and "vast" fail to describe the scale of Mafra's Baroque royal palace. The grandiose monument was built in 1717 to celebrate the birth of a daughter to King João V and includes a convent and a basilica.

The extravagant king wanted the palace and basilica to compete in magnificence and grandeur with Spain's Escorial and St. Peter's in Rome, and at the time it seemed that such a huge project would never be completed. At one point there were 45,000 men working on it, and several artists came from abroad, with 7,000 soldiers overseeing the workforce. They ended up creating 5,200 doorways, 2,500 windows, 880 halls and rooms, 154 staircases, 29 courtyards, and two bell towers boasting the world's largest collection of bells (57 in each) that can be heard for 24km (15 miles) when they're played on Sunday.

In 1720 the French ambassador reported to his king that all the money in Iberia would be insufficient to pay for it, but the gold that flowed in from the rich mines of Brazil made it possible in 1735.