We've been sick around our house for a few weeks now - a couple of months if you count swimmer's ear. It's been one thing after another, but, then, some seasons of life are like that. In spite of the germs, I've been enjoying fall the past couple of weeks.
Yesterday, we went up to Pilot Mountain. We stood looking at this beautiful hunk of rock thumbing out of the flat earth around it; we were overcome by the beauty of this bit of creation on the clearest of days. It was magnificent. We may have been wheezing and coughing as we tried to express the beauty of it, but it was worth every interrupted sentence, every half-thought, worth the exhaustion that followed the hike.
It's a necessary occasion, walking into the wild (or semi-wild). Ungangly trees, feeding on rock, praise in their inhibition. They achieve an Oriental beauty and call us out of ourselves. Their struggle achieves a splendor, a uniqueness, that could not be, given a more perfect environment.
The struggle and sheer difficulty of life do not destroy God's irrepressible creativity, but reveal it.
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I saw a tree this summer, along the Pictured Rocks Nat'l Lakeshore on Lake Superior that I wish I'd been able to get a better photo of. It is perched on the top of a tall spire of sandstone, its roots wrapped around the rock as if it clings for dear life as it trys to keep its balance. The rocky ground around the spire has fallen away, leaving only this island, high up in the air, with no possible nutrition for the tree.
A lone root, however, had stayed connected to the soil when the surrounding rock gave way. This root now stretches desperately across a ten foot chasm, a life line connecting the tree with its only possible source of nutrition.
The scene was so brave, so life-affirming, so willfull.
It was beautiful.
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