For example, take the natural world. It’s stuffed with weighty and complex chaos. But, some of our education has brain washed us. Made it seem rational to sum up what is full of amazingness, by swiping materially soaked explanations against the face of awe.
Maybe that’s why I write. It helps me to describe, if only to myself, so many things that have been brain or word-washed away. It’s a means for me to unlock the stall door and allow my horsey, Nuance, to bolt out of her enclosure and gallop towards a vast sunny pasture.
Dostoevsky wrote this enigmatic sentence, “Beauty will save the world.”
That’s not what it means or meant to me. It takes a poet.
I would often hike to Bear Lake and sit on a cliff overlooking the water. It was a tiny lake, surrounded by forested hills, and was located in the beautiful Frontenac Provincial Park. I found solace and courage in the park’s wild beauty.
One day, a short time before we moved to Cape Breton, I was sitting on this cliff. Beside me was an area of cedar trees. It’s a deer yard in the winter. I could see, across the lake, the white waters tumbling and splashing into the lake. My partner, at the time, called it Mystical Water Falls. She said she felt spirits. A tall and ancient pine tree stood next to this water fall. The reliable sun warmed my body and I felt at peace and expectant. I often experience these emotions when I’m in a beautiful wild place. I imagine that many people do.
I did what I usually did. I ate my lunch, read a bit of, in this case, a book of Emerson quotes, wrote in my journal, kept my eyes on the eagle and listened to and experienced this enchanting wild place.
I then packed up and hiked down the trail. Suddenly, the super weird struck me. On the way down, I felt, or realized or sensed or was crazy enough to think, that I had been somewhere else, for some time. This thought or recognition drove a powerful emotion into my soul. I have always wished I’d stopped and wrote down what I could remember. But, I didn’t, and so I have only the memory of a large sun-lit field, an animal enclosure in this field and a woman standing by this pen. It felt Celtic.
As Dostoevsky wrote: “Beauty will save the world.”