OCTOBER 2, 2022 – What a turnaround—so to speak—a single rotation of the earth can make. Today, the morning sun said to me, “Smile, you fool, and I’ll smile with you!” So I did, and Helios kept his word.
Feeling much better physically—and therefore, mentally—I took advantage of the fine weather and went for a two-hour walk all over “Little Switzerland” . . . and its neighbors, “Little France” (the undulating expanse designed by the renowned landscape architect, Horace W. S. Cleveland) and “Little Northern Italy” (site of adjacent Lake Como, named by a real estate agent in 1850, honoring the original (white) owner of the property around it—a guy whose birthplace was on the Swiss-Italian border).
I “coulda, shoulda, woulda” been up at the Red Cabin/Björnholm on the shores of Grindstone Lake, three hours away, but given my recent setback, I didn’t think it wise to trek up there alone—my spouse not wishing to go. As I set out on my walk to the local, scale model of the Swiss-French-Italian Alps, my absence from our family’s Shangri-La felt somewhat as a betrayal. Yet . . .
As I encountered all the beauty along my route—neighbors’ gardens and landscaping, as well as the splendor of the “scale model” itself—I saw (again) that nature’s bounty, like happiness, is closer than I often imagine.
There’s nothing like autumnal color to sharpen one’s sight. Add the lowered angle of sunlight—and thus the heightened “spotlight effect”—and all sorts of visual delights dance across the stage of the great outdoors. The most tantalizing facet of the experience is that every “scene,” like every person, has multiple aspects to its “personality.” As I strode along, I’d come upon an oak or maple; hues, lighting, and shadows; an entire painting—suitable for a “nice photograph.” But when I lined up my iPhone camera and worked the area for what I thought would be the best backdrop and perspective, I’d discover multiple angles. I soon pretended that I was in a magical, inter-active art museum filled with masterpiece landscapes. All woes, personal and of the world, dissipated quietly into a deep blue sky embellished with wispy clouds.
I recalled my mother’s habit of extending her arms and framing scenes with her thumbs and forefingers. She was a painter and explained that her style of “framing” was a time-honored device of artists sizing up possibilities for their paper or canvas. This device is mimicked, in effect, when we snap a photo with our smartphones (or, in the case of serious photographers, with their $3,000 cameras). For two hours, I “framed” many scenes—with iPhone, as well as with thumbs and forefingers, and with . . . my memory. I then hung them in an imaginary museum, where I found peace and happiness.
In the course of today’s “travels,” I long-outdistanced my recent malaise. And perhaps even more important, I rediscovered that although beauty and happiness might well be where we aren’t, they are most certainly to be seen and grasped where in the moment we are.
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
