Perspectives on Beauty, Love and Death – voices from the Marble Mountains
I stopped to look at an interesting plant, California ground-cone. It as the first one I had seen in the area. What did it have to say?
Ground-cone – You are always interested in the rare ones, the ones that are unusual, and I qualify. I appreciate the attention, but I am no more special than a blade of grass. There are a million of them for every one of me. But do not take rarity as a qualification for being exceptional. Every blade of grass is doing a significant function. Every blade of grass is beautiful.
I have evolved to require particular conditions, in the soil, madrone roots to grow on, a certain amount of moisture and sunlight. So there are not a lot of habitats, I fulfill a particular niche, it does not make me better or special. It is just my place. Perhaps if there is a lesson for the human race, it would be to learn your place in this magnificent complexity. Once you establish your place, once you find the niche where you can live sustainably, life will be much easier for all of us.
Trillium – Sometimes there is even more beauty in simple things. Three leaves, three petals. No embellishments, but it gives me a chance to come out first in the spring to brighten the trail, to brighten the sky. Once there is a spot of beauty, it illuminates the beauty in everything around it. Beauty does not outshine the ugliness. It does not numb the pain like a drug, if you open your heart to beauty even the ordinary becomes a thing of wonder. Beauty is the visual manifestation of love. It does not take anything away, it only adds, it gives sustenance to the whole of life.
Avalanche lily– We brighten your day. Is there any more to do? What function could be more important than creating beauty? Beauty is the essence of life, of love, of god. Creating beauty fulfills us, fulfills our purpose. Beauty is evanescent. It has the power to transcend yet is vulnerable as a breath of wind. We hoist delicate flowers on long narrow stems here in the harshness of the mountains. Beauty is a bet against the power of the natural world. It stands as a symbol of the transcendent power of love. Yes we get wiped out by avalanches, but we come back. Yes we get buried by late snows, and we come back. Vulnerability is inherent in our beauty.
Death – There is a more durable beauty. A fire can take out a whole forest, but beauty remains even in death. It is death that unites all of us back into the earth. It is the opposite of vulnerability it is the inevitable.
There is beauty in the struggle. It shines through the scars of life and gives meaning to the life lived with courage and perseverance. Even when the struggle is over, the beauty lives on. It is a gift of life to the next generation to encourage, awaken and inspire. Inhale the love. Let it serve as a guide though the difficulties of your own life so that someone looking at your whitened bones will feel the strength of the ancestral support.
Essence
Essence – We mountains are the core of the planet, extruded, bent and folded by the fire within. We are the fundamental structure of the world you depend on, laid bare, visible, touchable.
You may not think each rock is beautiful as it crumbles from our eroding bodies, but you are drawn to our domain like iron filings to a magnet, for you seek connection to the source, to the field of love which gives birth to this universe. We exist in a time scale you cannot fathom by adding zeros to centuries. We offer you portal to slip beneath these talus slopes into the infinity of time and from there touch the void, the ultimate beauty of being you call love.