‘Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you…’ — Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
DECEMBER 5—Disoriented by grief and crying uncontrollably I wandered down Ashpohtag road in rural Norfolk, Connecticut, to a vacant farmhouse where I sat on a cold stone step in the bitter wind of a late autumn afternoon. Around me oak leaves swirled, making dry rustling noises as they swept the earth.
I hadn’t been sitting long when a familiar sound seemed to call from the wind. Could it be, I wondered, the same haunting song I’d heard years before while traversing a lonely mountain pass high above tree line in Washington State? Or, while hiking the desert of New Mexico on a brittle winter day beneath a vast turquoise sky? How many voices does the wind have as it travels the earth? I listened to this oldest of acquaintances and watched the leaves fly past.
When I stood to go, heart calmer, my eye landed on an old granite hitching post where a lovely lacework of foliose lichens fairly glowed in the fading light. My attention momentarily arrested, I gazed in wonder. Beauty. Wind and lichen. Unexpected grace.
Footnote: Lichens, the oldest living organisms on the planet, with some dating back 8,600 years, are found in the most inhospitable and barren environments—from the arctic to the great deserts, wherever the wind blows.