It is 9pm, yet just now barely dusk.
The camber of our world inclines to offer the northern hemisphere generously to the sun's light at this time of year, lengthening days. That great star, ever so patiently, slowly makes its descent behind the mountainous western horizon. The evening wind stirs in anticipation of the long-awaited, coming night.
What is it about these ranged mountains that proves so irresistibly compelling to the eye? Standing in view of their horizon, one simply cannot help but gaze, if given but a moment to do so. Even the staff here, for whom this is the constant backdrop of their daily life: I watch them move along the ridge in the course of whatever duty or errand, their eyes regularly, compulsively drawn upwards to behold the grandeur of it.
We are possessed, I find, of an instinctual, reflexive hunger for beauty. In the face of such grace and grandness, we cannot help by long to consume it, until it becomes a part of us - ours - forever. Or, until we find that we have been consumed by IT, becoming part - and so, eternally beautiful - ourselves. The beauty here is so profoundly expansive; it is almost discomforting to behold.
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Another day: an afternoon's rain gives way to sunset. The mountains and breaking clouds, backlit with pale yellow diffusions of glory. Wisps of fog rise from the wet strands of spruce lining the river valley, delicate and ephemeral as cotton candy. They rise, and then disappear in the waning rays of the setting sun.
There is always a hint of sadness in the experience of the truly beautiful, I find. Because we know, even in the midst of the moment itself, that it must eventually pass. And so, in the presence of the beautiful, we always find our joy and gratitude tempered with a quiet sort of mourning. A sunset brings me grief, because I know the moment at which I turn away to cease beholding it, that beauty will have slipped through my fingers, never to be beheld again in the same way.
We take pictures, attempting to freeze and capture the beauty, attempting to make the joy portable and enduring, somehow. But our facsimiles never do us justice. The feel and sound of wet grass beneath the feet, the subtle bite in the air from the lingering moisture, the perception of the river's sounds having grown in strength ever so slightly, the birds' chirping in celebration of the passing storm... The cumulative experience of a beheld moment of beauty evades capture and preservation. And so, a piece of us mourns the loss, even in our gratitude for the beholding.