looking through me

Tag: nature

April 9, 2015

sunrise

Magenta, lilac and tangerine flames danced atop the violet mountains. Each time I memorized the hues they shimmied into a new sheath of brilliance. The feathered clouds tried on the full range of bold pinks and purples before slipping into a perfect white peach number—a creamy, pale bodice trimmed with deep reddish-pink.

The sun buttered wisps of cloud in a thick layer of golden splendor before it soaked in and mellowed to heather gray. The western clouds blushed at the eastern sky’s fading exuberance.

I drank in the sunrise with one question . . . Why?

Not why do I see the colors I see; I understand the science of the sunrise and the sunset. I grasp the how. I do, and I love it: the distance the light travels and the electromagnetic radiation and ultraviolet spectrum visible to the naked eye and the bending and refracting of the wavelengths as they encounter chemicals and particles and molecules—a marvelous confluence of physics and meteorology. I delight in knowing the colors scattering out of the same ray of light make the sky appear blue over the Rocky Mountains and red over the coast of North Carolina at the same moment. I can’t get enough of the technicalities. I can’t.

But why is the sky so majestic? What purpose does the audacious resplendence serve?

I watch the sunrise and I see art. Art unable to be divorced from science, yes, but undeniable art. The beauty is powerful enough to stop me in my tracks—to make me forget I was walking at all and leave me rooted in place, gaping at the glory. Beautiful enough to stop the unconscious rhythm of my breath in mid-inhalation—why? Why is it beautiful?

Perhaps it is to point me back to the One who hung the star and bends its light around the horizons of this spinning orb. Perhaps—as art so often does—it is to present Truth that I might be able to take it in. Or perhaps it is the Artist’s daily gift to any who wish to receive it.

 

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March 26, 2015

tree rings

Cells haul life from root to crown. Xylem cell upon xylem cell upon xylem cell carry water and minerals from the deepest root to the farthest leaf, a microscopic bucket brigade. And the tree grows year by year: ring upon ring upon ring of cells. The inner rings—the strong, dead core of heartwood—encased by years of expansion unaware how active the new, young layers are. The outer rings—the vital sapwood—unaware how their growth is shaped by the rings from which they spring.

Like family. Generations upon generations are shaped by those before them. I stand because they stood. They support me as I will support those yet to come.

Even in my prime—my generation pulsing with possibility—I’m no longer in the youngest, outermost layer. A new ring rises. Pressed from both sides, confined by the rigid walls of the generations, soon my ring will be entombed deep in the heart of the tree.

And like the xylem cell passing the bucket of sustenance to the next xylem cell—not worried about the rings deeper in the tree—I look out more than I look in. But as the years pass each bucket grows heavier, weighted down with water and nitrogen and potassium and memories. I long to hear the rings falling silent behind me speak again, to tap into their trove of memories.

So I call back into the heartwood and listen. I add as much as I can carry from their worn buckets to my own. I murmur the story of our tree—the generations’ mingled memories—into the sapwood before me that they might carry it from root to crown, xylem cell upon xylem cell upon xylem cell, ring upon ring upon ring.

 

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