It's a beautiful world

I come from a father who loved the finer things in life and a mother who loved nature.  My youngest memories of a vacation were on a lake in Minnesota bailing out a large wooden rowboat stained in deep warm browns and forest green using an old rusty coffee can with my grandmother in the early morning.

Strangely enough I am more like my father.  I am not an outdoorsy person.  I am touched to core by the thunder of Beethoven, the haunting pertinence of Debussy, the sweet order of Mozart.  Yet I find myself enraptured by Johnny Cash and Roger Daltrey.  Pavarotti enthralled me, both the man and his voice.  Old country folk songs wring my heart and nothing touches me like live music, especially if it is played just for me.

The first time I saw an original van Gogh I burst into tears.  Monet's Giverney holds my attention for hours.  The pictures my granddaughter sends me fill me with joy.

Yet, when my children came along I wanted them to see the majesty of a world created by the greatest artist who ever existed.  I wanted to give them the umbilical to nature that has sustained me all my life. We took long, not always fun, vacations to National parks and out of the way places where it snowed in July, or the wind played beautiful music through ancient ruins, places where we experienced the terror of a fresh grizzly kill, or the beauty of sniffing trees that smelled like butterscotch.

When I stand next to a tree, I feel the relevance of my being in the grand scale of things.  Water amazes me.  I wonder if the raindrop touching my face has touched yours in the past, if it washed Monet's hands, or once lay in the river Jordan?  The miracle of the tides rising and falling intrigue me.  The warm brightness of the sun, the cool glow of the moon, the fact that a redwood grows from such a tiny seed -- these are the things that tune me, that bring me into a sustainable relationship with everyone and everything around me.