The Power of Nature

Prizing the special moments in life.

“My wish is to stay always like this, living quietly in a corner of nature.”

~Claude Manet

     We all have our moments of realization. For me, it is usually only through singular, unique experiences that I am able to discover things about myself, and the world around me. 

     Although the possibilities of nature are nearly limitless, there are very few things out there that have captivated my fascination as much as the stars. At no other time was this more obvious to me than a quiet and cold night during the Windsor Mountain trip a couple of months ago.

      I had always known that there were many stars out there. Star charts, random apps that I had installed and then subsequently forgotten about many years ago, and various things that other people had told me all pointed toward the existence of many more stars than I had ever seen before. But, although they are very closely bounded together, learning is not the same as experiencing. Being told something is next to nothing, compared to the ability of being able to actually experience something in real life. So, as I sat there that day, attempting to preserve what little heat I had, gazing at the stars shining brightly overhead, their light passing easily through the non-polluted air, my brain finally began to realize both how many there were shining the sky, and why the small formations of stars at home looked so pale and small in comparison to the behemoth floating in front of me.

      Above the cities that so many of us live in, there lies a fog—thick, black, yet also strangely invisible curtains that block the view to the stage and it’s inner workings. Only a small chunk of our population gets to experience the view of the stars without a curtain in front of them on a regular basis, and that number is steadily decreasing. Urbanization, climate change, and factories that produce the cloth needed to repair the rolling curtains will eventually steal the experience from everyone, and not just the people that live in the cities. Then, no one, unless they leave the Earth, will be able to discover an amazing part of nature.

      Nature is a thing worth preserving.