Until one sees its Beauty

“To look at a thing is quite different from seeing a thing, and one does not see anything until one sees its beauty.” – Miss Mabel Chiltern, An Ideal Husband

Until one sees its Beauty

The evening sun, the “golden hour,” was just beginning to slip behind the Stansbury Mountains, on its way to seemingly take a dip into the Great Salt Lake.  This exceptional light made it so the green of the grass was remarkably vivid and bright.  And, it was a brilliant contrast against the tall, dry, yellowed grass just over the fence.  That was the look of the pastoral scene right in front of me and it surrounded the reddish colored gate standing as a doorway to a stockade.

Once I passed through this portal, I saw anxious black, furry faces turning toward me and then toward an adjacent manger in anticipation of dinner.  I slipped through one, other gate, slid the barn door open, gathered hay, walked back to the manger, and threw the hay in.  At that moment, moist, broad, back noses reached toward the food and were soon covered in flakes of green, as was my shirt.

I turned away, brushed the green flakes from my shirt, with my gloved hand, and ambled through the gate, back into the corral.  My eyes were fixing on the reddish gate as I walked, the fading sun to my right.  That’s when movement in the tall, dry, yellow grass across the fence beckoned my eyes.

“I wonder what that is?”  I whispered to myself as I walked right up to the fence.

My own dinner was calling me, so I hesitated to linger.  It moved again.  I stood still and focused.  The light was waning.  It was hard to see.

“It looks like two sticks moving above the lightly waving grass.”  I thought.

But, its rhythm was in contrast to the grass’ dance.  I looked harder, more carefully.  Doing so exposed a small delicate head, a petite narrow snout and two antlers.  It was a young, buck mule deer.  Its unexpected beauty captured my presence.  I gazed to absorb it.  To see rather than to just look.

That evening, for the first time, the tall, dry, yellowed grass just over the fence came alive.  Six more heads, sensing my concentration, rose almost in harmony above the grass.  They wanted to see me as well.  They were a brilliant contrast of life against the above-ground-dead grassland.

“This truly is the golden hour!”  I said, right out loud, to the small herd of deer in front of me.

I turned reluctantly to my right, toward the reddish colored gate, so I could leave the stockade and walk through the pastoral scene toward my home.

“To look at a thing is quite different from seeing a thing, and one does not see anything until one sees its beauty.”