The Most Beautiful Thing I Have Ever Seen

She: “I have a great interest in all the beautiful things in the world, but I have never traveled.”
Me: “Why not? “
She: “I don’t know ... I’m just a farm girl ... and I am afraid of new places.”

Besides having a small farm, she worked in the purchasing department at Archer Daniels Midland, in Decatur, Illinois. She had bought me a beer after I stopped at the first bar inside the town limits to ask about motels in the area. It was the end of the third day of my solo bike ride from St. Louis to New Jersey. We had talked about traveling and she picked up on that I have done a bunch, in the US and abroad.

She: “What’s the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?”
“Besides my wife? And besides the most thrilling moment of my life when I held my just-born son in the delivery room ... and when he immediately stopped crying and became still?
“And how he smelled … and how he felt to me when I repeatedly brushed his smooth infant’s cheek with my face when I held him, which I never got enough of?”

She: “Well, I meant art, I guess. Like, how about Michelangelo’s David. Have you seen it?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“To tell you the truth, it was magnificent, but I don’t have a trained eye. I had seen copies and they looked perfect to me. And I had seen so many photos of the statue that actually seeing it “in the flesh” was sort of anticlimactic.”

“So what else would you say is the most beautiful?”

My mind raced. There were so very many works of art, and so very many places. How could I choose?
Besides, for me, there were equally as many vistas and aspects in nature that blew me away. I didn't think she wanted to hear that.
I had a statue-of-David experience with the Mona Lisa too. In fact, it was so inaccessible that it was not even appealing. Between the glass protection and the crowd control, and even how it was displayed, there was no way to appreciate it.
And maybe I have an off-center reaction to things anyhow. For example, I was utterly taken by the seemingly infinite variety of patterns of the parquet floors in the Hermitage (in Leningrad, as it was called when I was there in ‘86, at the beginnings of glasnost) … and the doorframes … and the equally varied tray ceiling treatments … and the parade of urns on both sides of the many stairways (or perhaps, more accurately, the ascending promenades) … and … and …
Visit Catherine’s Palace and the summer environs of (now-called) St. Petersburg, and even without acquiring an understanding of the massive and impossible-to-imagine restoration that was accomplished, you will throw rocks at Versailles.
Try the exquisite mosaics on any number of mosques in the Middle East for evoking involuntary gasps of wonder at the intricacy and beauty. Or the special churches in so many other places, with their carvings or precious marble interiors.
I had one experience that is as vivid now as when it happened. I get chills even now as I write this. The tour guide closed the door behind us after we entered the baptistery at Pisa. He signaled for quiet. He arched his neck upward and sang four consecutive notes, pausing briefly between them. You could almost literally see the notes swirling and circling upward. They melded into a chord, as though four singers simultaneously launched their separate notes. And he repeated that miracle a few times. Such a simple thing, really. Amazing!

As for the beauty in nature, there is no end of it. I have been blessed to see so many things. Where does one start?
The sunrise over the desert in Saudi Arabia. If it were a painting, you would say it could never exist in nature ... it is too surreal ... almost cartoonish. The shafts of darker and lighter orange light are sharply demarcated more by the dust in the air than the clouds (rarely seen in that desert of nothingness): Breathtaking! No wonder the nomads were awed by the heavenly display and had religious experiences.
And its opposite: the sunsets viewed from Jeddah, west across the Red Sea. It is called the Red Sea because of all the dust in the air over it, blowing on the wind from Ethiopia, northern Sudan and Egypt. The light is refracted at sunset and the water’s surface appears a true blood red.
On one occasion, I sat on the beach after hours of snorkeling. The sky was lowering. Looking across towards Africa, I saw a flock of flamingos on the horizon, outlined against a vertically narrowing yellow background. Just above the sea’s surface, they flew arrow-straight to the north. There was just enough light to see their pink/red feathers. It was my only sighting of flamingos in my 15 months there; a fleeting, ethereal goose bump occasion, permanently etched in my mind’s eye. Did I mention that it was Xmas eve?
Look below the surface of the Red Sea … see the reefs … the dazzling variety and beauty of the creatures and the hard and soft corals. I have seen Cousteau’s stunning Red Sea documentary. You would think that it might have truly captured that beauty. But put your head in the water: Not Cousteau – or anyone else – could do it justice!

One very clear night, after the pavement ended on Old Stagecoach Road, I continued driving, on into the deep dirt tracks and up into the Rockies behind the Broadmoor Hotel, in Colorado. The “road” leads right into the maw of an abandoned mine’s entrance. Returning, you have to back up all the way – maybe a half-mile. No fear – the ruts are so deep, the car can’t climb out of them. You can drive it with your hands off the steering wheel.
I was there because it was an especially clear night. Once around the first bend, all trace of light from the resort was gone. The star points were close-set, in a sky resembling pavé jewelry. They looked so low; you felt as though you could simply reach up and grab a handful. Eerily seeming near, yet vast and limitless … and humbling. It was whisper quiet … truly awesome … and I ached not having someone there to share it with.

But you don’t have to go to exotic places or be adventuresome or appreciative. Take the time to ponder the ocean shore most anywhere, but especially when the water is angry. Take in the breadth of the mountain peaks from any vista that includes them.
See a mountain meadow ablaze with wildflowers blooming.
Spot a truly wild creature in its element and think a little about the local ecosystem that supports its existence.
Get far enough away from all hearing of human activity and be still in the woods for a spell.
Or truly contemplate a tall tree.

I am always awestruck by the talent and creativity that bespeaks art and all the artisans' constructs ... maybe because I have so little capability and recognize the vast gulf between my deficiencies and the gift of talent their creators possess.

I could not rank artisanship ahead of nature, nor behind. They’re just different things. Seeing the best examples of either is not nearly as satisfying as sharing the seeing of them.

I told none of this to my Decatur lady. I needed time to reflect, though I knew while we were talking that an essay would be my reaction to her question. It haunted me some during subsequent days of biking. It also bothered me that she was so fearful of getting out of her own comfortable space that she could not have similar experiences of discovering beauty for herself, in person. Would that I could be her agent in the effort.

Sad, really.