Random beauty

Some days the beauty is unstoppable

You just have to stop for it

It began early, with the mist enfolding the newly naked trees

That would have been good enough for the whole day

The mist lifted, and I drove to our house, where the new roof is being put on this week… In the past, I’ve been traumatized by the sight of all the damage

Today I had a view from the living room like I’ll never have again

I went up to the bedroom to catch the window view down the valley the view I have missed

In just another five weeks – it will be ours again

Without any furniture, I could concentrate on the lovely lines and angles of the house, the way the spaces fit together

The loft also gives me another view into the living room  The open roof played up the beauty of the architecture

I went outside for more angles

I poked around on the tree that caused all this damage

The root ball has been washed by the rains, and now I can start to see the intertwined beauty of how the tree held fast to the slope for those six or seven decades

I am looking forward to watching those roots return to the soil None of it looks like damage anymore It looks like new life

I went for a hike Inhaled beauty Starting with the first running stream – oh, how I have missed that water, and now the rains have brought the valley back to rich wetness

The forest glowed with the afternoon light  The black ink strokes of the trees lined the road

And the light began to touch its fingers, gently, here and here and here, like a whispered question – can you see?

Can you see?

Look closer always closer

A whole world there in the moss, I could have spent an hour lost in the forest of the moss

but I walked on because there was more and more and more

A scatter of leaves, as well-composed as the master works in my art books – just a random piece of beauty left by the wind

Even driving away, the dried dead grass on the hillside was golden with beauty in that light

I defied the driver behind me, slowing down to 10 mph so that I could admire it

The beauty is unstoppable

You just have to stop for it

Every second it’s there

Random and rich and rolling

Today the penny is a random beauty, from 1995

I saw the random rich patterns of sugar palms against the fields of Cambodia were, in December that year