BECAUSE . . . IT IS

JULY 26, 2020 – I’ve always found refuge in beauty—redwoods; mountains; seashore; sunrises, sunsets; starry nights by Heaven; Starry Night by Van Gogh; birdsong in spring and Beethoven’s Spring Sonata. But I also mean “small” beauty—delectable nourishment arranged artistically upon my dinner platter; translucent tail feathers of a bluejay flying across the yard into the sun; delicate wings of a damsel fly flitting across my path; expanding circles on dusk’s still water as fish sup on unsuspecting bugs.

I’m always on the qui vive for ubiquitous beauty in infinite forms. I pretend I’m an early hunter, except prospective sustenance is aesthetic gratification.

I attribute this disposition to my parents, who routinely called out beauty. “Look at that!” my mother would say, pointing at a red maple tree holding court on a gentle slope overlooking the roadway. “Listen to this!” my dad would say, as he put on a recording of Schubert lieder, then sat back with eyes closed and a sublime smile lighting his face.

I was 14 when I became “actively aware” of beauty. I’d been sent to school in a remote corner of Vermont. The purpose was largely remedial—my parents hoped strict schooling would “redirect” me. It did. A side effect was “aesthetic awakening.”

During a break between classes in late September, I stepped outside the main classroom building. In front of me the sun showered its favor upon the resplendent maple guarding a corner of the village common. Against a deep blue sky, that bright orange tree struck me as . . . beautiful. More significantly, I consciously realized it. Breathing fresh air, soaking up warm rays, I thought about my reaction to that scene and kept pondering it as I returned to Mr. Field’s math class and his “beautiful” problems. Why did I find that orange maple against the blue sky so “beautiful”? Light? Color? Contrast? But why? Why did those factors affect me so?

Two weeks later a school bus hauled us up the narrow road to the base of Mt. Mansfield. I was happily seated with friends in the last row. We’d been chattering away when an impulse of curiosity caused me to look out the back window. Unfolding behind us was the narrow valley through which the bus had just climbed. Colors were at their peak. “Look!” I cried to my chums. One said, “Huh” before rejoining the group chatter. I kept looking, so enthralled by the circus of color, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I thought about my reaction to that maple against the sky outside the classroom building. Why, I thought, is beauty . . . beautiful?

Finally . . . to wake myself in advance of the dormitory’s ear-splitting “wake-up bell,” I set my clock radio to the CBC, broadcasting from Montreal. Programming at that hour was classical music. Every morning I got a five-minute dose of what I’d rebelled against at home. Hearing it on my own terms, I soon realized I couldn’t live without that beauty. But why is it beautiful, I asked myself.

Because . . . it is.

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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson