Of Unblushing Beauty

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them!  Thou

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice.

~Shelley

'Walking is a man's best medicine.'  So says Hippocrates, and I couldn't agree more.  Landed for days in a studio neighboring a beautiful horse farm, there have been many empty hours in which the most pleasing aesthetic is a journeying out into the meadows and pastures surrounding the great log house.  

On first stepping out from the front door my senses are greeted with a delicious aroma of the nameless something that hints of wildflowers and trees, birds and butterflies, magic and fairies, health and vigor.  I satisfy my muscles' cry to stretch, and, breathing deeply of the loveliness in the air, I embark on my solitary ramble.  

The wind blows back my hair and clears the angst that has wound itself into the lines of my face, caressing my eyes and my spirit with its gentle touch.  My ears delight in the sweetness of the birds' chirping and the grass growing.  A horse's neigh floats to me across the expanse of the fields.  A child laughs in a neighboring house and the leaves of the trees rustle in the perfumed breeze.  I see the richness of color all around me, and my mind recognizes the overflowing of the joy that creation holds.  The reckless beauty in the wildflowers, the brilliant red of a wild rose and a vivid black-eyed susan with her wreath of sun-kissed yellow.  I slip off my shoes and let my feet revel in the cool softness of the grass, gather a spray of baby's breath and smell the sugared soul of the flower.  A lazy bee drones amongst the purple violets, gathering the nectar that will be made into the honey which delights the tongue.  My body and mind join together in their enjoyment of exercise and beauty intermingled, and I rejoice in the unabashed glory of the magic of God's imagination.

And if this fallen world can freely give such bliss, what joy lies for us when nature is freed from her bondage to decay?  Maranatha.