In the meadow

Yesterday evening I lay in a grassy meadow and looked at the tall intricate feathered stalks around me, and I thought, “If any one of these were the only one of its kind in existence, it would be treasured as an exquisitely crafted art object of surpassing beauty.” 

And of course the truth is that each and every one is an exquisitely crafted art object of surpassing beauty. We are surrounded by such treasures. The invitation for us to be touched and overwhelmed by their splendour is always there, any time we are able to pause and give them our attention. 

When Mary Oliver asked, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”, she was not encouraging us to rush out and make grand life-changing gestures of bravery or risk. Motivational posters take her out of context. What she was saying is that, in the sweeping context of human mortality, nothing is more worth doing than watching, really watching, a grasshopper. 

And in the context of environmental destruction, falling in love with the beauty of nature is a sound move.

Next time you are with a seagull, look as closely as you can at its soft grey and white feathers, the lines of beak and eye and wing, and allow yourself to be captivated and enraptured. Imagine how beautiful this bird would be to you if it were a rare and exotic species you had spent many days trekking to a distant mountain to see. Or if it had been captured and killed and stuffed and mounted and brought to an exhibition hall to be admired by those who could never see it in the wild. Imagine how your eye would seek to notice every precious detail.

And then let yourself see that the gull is exactly that beautiful, right here, right now. And that there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of them, all around. And the leaves on the trees and the grass and the water and the stones and the hills and the sky. We dwell in marble halls.

When we release the idea that aesthetic value is a function of rarity, we can glory in the abundance of everyday things in the natural world. Perhaps it is a satisfying thing to own an original Picasso. I'm sure it is meaningful to visit the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls. But those who can be made happy by the detailed and dynamic living beauty of trees and birds and flowers and bees and, yes, of streams and stones – well, we on honey-dew have fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise. We should be the envy of royalty.