Rendezvous with Natural Beauty

Rendezvous with Natural Beauty

Have you ever experienced nature in such a way that everything disappeared and you felt consumed by your Authentic Self, your spirit? That your eyes well up and you feel fulfilled? I did. Twice. Once when I saw Michelangelo’s David and another time at Jasper National Park in Canadian Rockies.

By the time we arrived at our last stop, the Jasper National Park, my husband and I had visited many parks and walked many miles. Our stamina was squeezed out. At the Jasper Lodge, as soon as we entered the cabin one look at the very comfortable beds and we wanted to sleep.

Yet through the cabin window, the view of Lac Beauvert, “Beautiful Green Lake,” mesmerized. The weather magnetized. Reluctantly, we decided to take a short walk on the trail that encircled the lake. 

Sauntering under shaded trees, the crystal-clear water played hide and seek. Underneath its surface the white pebbles waltzed with the waves. The upside-down reflection of the distant mountains, some places green, other places blue, was as still as a photograph. Suddenly it quivered when a majestic flock of Canadian geese flew down and floated on its surface. As the geese buoyed by I felt my heart wrench. My eyes welled. 

The perfection and poignancy of those moments’ beauty first saddened me but then seemed to absorb all my emotions… including the heartache. Whereas the lover and beloved consummate their love by joining physically, the commune of nature-lover with nature’s beauty takes place in the mind and heart. This union of individual with spirit, artist with art, devotee with God, self with soul is a spiritual sublimation.

Some paint such scenes; some take photos. But none of those reproductions give as much pleasure as when the spirit, the Self awakens to such a view. Such beauty wells eyes, heart aches, the tenderness and fragility of the moment stings. And then raises you above all that. The feeling left behind is spiritual pleasure.