“Standing on the bare ground, —my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,— all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. I am ashamed of my petty idols, of my religion.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836)
Yesterday, as I drove toward the new house we will soon call home, the world —wise as always— offered me a lesson while I walked through it.
I try to stay focused when driving, for it would be careless to let beauty distract me from the road. But when that beauty overwhelms me, I stop. I always stop.
That was the first lesson: to admire.
To take the time to observe how a mountain, the sun, and the position of the Earth align to paint the perfect canvas of dusk.
To admire without producing is also to produce.
Do not be deceived —and above all, do not deceive yourself— into thinking that productivity belongs only to the visible.
To produce noble thoughts, to feel rightly, is one of the highest forms of living.
Not every fruit grows on trees; some blossom in the soul when it learns to contemplate.
Later, I resumed my journey. In the distance, a hawk took flight toward its prey. I watched it: its focused gaze, its precise descent, its flawless capture. The physics of the air, the pressure beneath its open wings, the curvature of its flight —everything obeyed an invisible perfection.
The rodent was no victim, but part of the cycle. Life does not die; it transforms.
The hawk ascended, and the rodent ascended with it —turned into energy, into sustenance, into flight.
Perhaps that is why some say that the language of God is the language of birds: they speak without words, yet with divine precision.
I arrived at the new home.
Amid the bare aspens —the very trees that give this land its name— I understood another teaching: the time for rest has come.
Autumn is the sacred pause of the forest.
The trees stop producing chlorophyll; photosynthesis ceases, that miracle that turned sunlight into food all summer long.
Now they draw their strength inward, pulling the sap toward their roots and waiting. It is not death —it is retreat.
Nature teaches us that we too must learn to stop, to preserve our energy for renewal.
And then I remembered the words of Emerson, that man who confessed he felt ashamed of his idols and his religions when standing before nature:
“I am ashamed of my petty idols, of my religion.”
For before the magnitude of the living world, all human artifice dissolves, leaving only the essential: the soul united with the breath of the universe.
I went to arrange a few things that needed to be done to make the new home more habitable.
I did it the same way I have learned to order my thoughts —with calm, with intention, with gratitude.
Because order in the mind always manifests as order in the world we inhabit.
Every object that found its place reminded me that within myself, too, there is a place for every idea, every emotion, every silence.
When I finished, it was time to return to 101 —the house that had been our home for so many years.
Before getting into the car, I looked toward a tree I’ve always liked; something caught my attention.
On one of its branches, silent and majestic, perched an owl.
It seemed to be watching me —or perhaps that’s what I wanted to believe.
Perfect in its posture, perfect in its stillness: a guardian of twilight, a sentinel of eternity.
I then recalled an old legend that said owls are the eyes of the night, messengers between the world of men and the world of spirits, protectors of those about to cross into a new cycle.
In Greece, they were said to accompany Athena, goddess of wisdom, and wherever an owl landed, the light of understanding was near.
Among Native American traditions, however, the owl is the messenger of rebirth —it does not announce death, but the passage to a higher vision.
Perhaps that is why it appeared that evening, just before my return —as if to remind me that every departure is also a way of awakening.
On the way back, near the intersection of Emma Road and Sopris Road, I saw a group of deer grazing before nightfall.
I stopped again.
The youngest among them leapt through the grass with the unspoiled innocence of those who do not yet know fear.
That image carried me back to another time —to those evenings when Emma and I shared the same tenderness watching Bambi, or Ñañi, as she used to call it when she was little— discovering together that innocence, like life itself, always finds a way to return.
Back at the house on 101, a final revelation awaited me: the raccoons of the forest had given birth.
I watched them approach through the shadows —silent, curious, their natural masks turning their faces into symbols of purity and mystery.
And as I looked at them, I remembered the words from Matthew: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.”
They do not need us —the Father feeds them— and yet, from time to time, we share a piece of our bread.
Not out of compassion, but out of communion.
Because when they lift their gaze and look at us with those shining eyes, the universe seems to pause for a moment —as if recognizing that to give, even when nothing is lacking, is the purest way of giving thanks.
At the end of the day, as I prepared to sleep, I lifted my eyes to the sky.
I thanked life for revealing itself perfect in every detail; the universe, for reminding me that I am a single thread within its luminous fabric; and Him —the One, the All— for teaching me once again that existence has but one face: the face of goodness, of perfection, of the individual that, in recognizing itself, becomes universal.
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