Vintage Art Appreciation: Natural History Studio at RCA by Richard Bell

Natural History Studio at RCA
by Richard Bell (Image source: here)
Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
— John Muir, Our National Parks

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
― Albert Einstein

The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need, if only we had the eyes to see.
― Edward Abbey

Vintage Art Appreciation: Untitled Landscape by Richard Heintz

Untitled Landscape
by Richard Heintz (1871 – 1929)
Distance changes utterly when you take the world on foot. A mile becomes a long way, two miles literally considerable, ten miles whopping, fifty miles at the very limits of conception. The world, you realize, is enormous in a way that only you and a small community of fellow hikers know. Planetary scale is your little secret.

Life takes on a neat simplicity, too. Time ceases to have any meaning. When it is dark, you go to bed, and when it is light again you get up, and everything in between is just in between. It’s quite wonderful, really.

You have no engagements, commitments, obligations, or duties; no special ambitions and only the smallest, least complicated of wants; you exist in a tranquil tedium, serenely beyond the reach of exasperation, “far removed from the seats of strife,” as the early explorer and botanist William Bartram put it. All that is required of you is a willingness to trudge.

There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going anywhere. However far or long you plod, you are always in the same place: in the woods. It’s where you were yesterday, where you will be tomorrow. The woods is one boundless singularity. Every bend in the path presents a prospect indistinguishable from every other, every glimpse into the trees the same tangled mass. For all you know, your route could describe a very large, pointless circle. In a way, it would hardly matter.

At times, you become almost certain that you slabbed this hillside three days ago, crossed this stream yesterday, clambered over this fallen tree at least twice today already. But most of the time you don’t think. No point. Instead, you exist in a kind of mobile Zen mode, your brain like a balloon tethered with string, accompanying but not actually part of the body below. Walking for hours and miles becomes as automatic, as unremarkable, as breathing. At the end of the day you don’t think, “Hey, I did sixteen miles today,” any more than you think, “Hey, I took eight-thousand breaths today.” It’s just what you do.
― Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

Free Garden-Themed Templates: Vintage Happy Garden Days Journal Cards

Growing apart doesn't change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side;
our roots will always be tangled. I'm glad for that.
― Ally Condie, Matched
Two filler cards and two lined journaling cards featuring vintage illustrations of children and garden elements from c1900, set against a lightly patterned paper with subtle textures. Use all four together in a pre-made album or stitch into a handmade journal; you can also use these cards separately for personal or garden notes. You can download the high-res 4" x 6" @ 300 ppi JPEGs without a watermark here.


All pre-made templates by FieldandGarden.com are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Please credit and link back to FieldandGarden.com as your source if you use or share this work.

Free Vintage Tag for Gift Giving, Journaling or Scrapbooking: Fantastic Phoenix with Pink Rose Blank Calling Card

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.”
― Albert Einstein
This was originally a Victorian calling card from the 1880s. It shows an illustration of a fantastical bird with a bright orange tail (perhaps the legendary phoenix) flying towards a pink rose, and there is a blank scroll in the centre of the card for your own greeting or a personal message. I thought this would make a lovely gift tag but you can also use it as a place card or to embellish journaling and scrapbooking projects. You can download the high-res 3" x 5.25" @ 300 ppi JPEG without a watermark here.


All pre-made templates by FieldandGarden.com are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Please credit and link back to FieldandGarden.com as your source if you use or share this work.