Nature is usually filled to the brim with joy. Except for the times when she isn’t. Most people don’t notice at all. In fact, many people don’t notice or care about the natural world. Even those who do notice nature don’t often see her different moods. Most people see nature as being completely neutral. She’s just a canvas, something that life paints upon.
But nothing could be further from
the truth. Nature is not the canvas, she
is the artist. It is life that is the
canvas, life that is tweaked this way and that to satisfy her whims, life that
is the passive vessel. And like any
artist, Nature is very temperamental.
Her moods swing from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. One moment she is in heaven, and the next she
is raging through the depths of hell, tearing at her face and screaming at all
of the world. Yet there are two things I
have noticed about this unforgettable artist.
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| Brave little aster alone on the shore. |
The first is that when she is low
and sad and miserable, she glorifies in it.
Nothing in nature is “vanilla” -- nothing. When things are horrid and dying and
decaying, she jumps into the horridness head first and screams it at us. When life--her canvas--suffers and has pain
and dies, she is there in all her terrible glory. She does not leave anything undone. Oh, it is so easy to see her when life is
beautiful and days are filled with wonder and awe, but how many see the wonder
and awe in her aspect of death? I assure
you it is there. It will make you
shudder in fear and it will change you, but it has its own terrible and
secretly longed-for beauty. There IS
only one thing, after all, one life and one death, and she keeps spinning and
spinning, showing us both sides of her beautiful and terrible face. Each side gives way to the next, and each is
surrendered to completely.
The second thing I have noticed is
that Nature never gives up--ever. It
doesn’t matter to her if winter and death are coming. She still creates life right on the brink of
death. It doesn’t matter to her if an
animal or a whole herd dies. She still
laughs with joy. When I say “it doesn’t
matter,” I don’t mean that she doesn’t care.
I mean that she is unaffected, she is unstoppable. It doesn’t matter if winter and a hurricane
and a tornado and an earthquake and a flood (all parts of her own creation)
come and destroy half the world. When
their ravages are through--or even just as they are arriving!--she still
creates life. She revels in the
destruction and then cries with the most profound joy and reverence at the
tiniest new leaf emerging from the soil.
Say goodbye, then, to this tiny
new aster growing on the rocky shore.
Winter is fast approaching and the water is salty and the soil is sandy,
and everything about this picture--just everything!--says death, says it’s not
possible, says it’s too late. But the
impossible little aster grows for now on the unfriendly shore as Nature thumbs
her nose at the approaching Axe of Ice.
We will not see these flowers here
next year, but how wonderful to see them now.
