Random Moments and Senseless Beauty
One of my favorite moments in The Hobbit occurred deep in Mirkwood Forest. The Dwarves were increasingly nervous -- and irritated -- that the sunless, foodless journey through the ancient woods had taken so long, with no sign of an end. They convinced Bilbo, as their scout, to scramble up one of the taller trees to see if the edge to the forest might be in sight. Alas, it was not: Bilbo could only see the undulating treetops in every direction, as far as he could see. But...
...though he did not find what he was looking for, Bilbo was treated to something else, completely unexpected. Reaching the top of the tree, and poking his head up above the canopy of the forest, he saw and revelled in the sunshine for the first time in many days. And in that glorious sunshine, he saw butterflies. Thousands of them, fluttering about in the canopy, living a normal but deeply beautiful life in the sunshine, just meters above the dreaded darkness in which Bilbo and the Dwarves had been suffering.
It was a random moment of unexpected beauty.
Visiting the breeding grounds of the Monarch Butterflies this week in the mountains of Mexico, I experienced such a moment, myself, and could not help but think of Bilbo.
The butterflies, for our group, were not unexpected, of course. We knew where we were going. And our journey to get there was not nearly as dangerous or as bleak as the path of the Dwarves, but it was grueling -- up to the 11,000 foot level of altitude, on bumpy, twisty mountain roads in a van... But it was no less beautiful.
The most amazing moments were when -- for reasons completely unfathomable to us -- all the monarchs in a particular tree would take off at once, and there would be an explosion of orange wings streaming into the air for 20 seconds, until it gradually thinned out and they all landed again on some other tree... So beautiful.
I've had many other moments like this, both in my own travels and in stories written by others, and the ones that touch me most deeply are the times it is completely unexpected, or completely unrelated to the plot.. or at least what I thought was the plot.
Like the wolf that appears on the horizon in Wes Anderson's animated film, The Fantastic Mr. Fox. It stands majestically on a distant hillside, completely separate and distinct from the characters in the story (who are all anthropomorphized animals), invoking a moment of silence and reverence. And then disappears. Nothing else that happens in the plot of the movie would be changed by this momentary encounter with beauty and transcendence... and yet it is the one part of the movie I best remember and most often recall.
Or the chapter "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" in The Wind in the Willows (yes, the inspiration for Pink Floyd's early album ot the same name). Other than Mr. Toad's wild adventures and poems (which I embedded in my memory via years of riding Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disneyland!), the single most memorable passage in that book is when Mole and Badger accidentally happen upon The God of the Woods (The Piper) and experience a mesmerizing departure from time and space as we normally relate to it. Go read that chapter! It may be the best description ever written of finding God. Or at least finding senseless, transcendent beauty.
Or the time I was wading in the two-inch deep tide along the beach in Santa Cruz, California. The beach there is very flat, and at the right time in the tidal pattern, the sea stretches for fathoms along the beach at just an inch or two of depth. I was on a break from a business meeting, just walking in that vast expanse of the tides to relax. The sun was dancing off the ripples in the water, scattered by long strands of wispy, irregular foam and bubbles... and I dropped right through. I don't know how long I was "gone," but for some stretch of time, my consciousness was altered, and I felt like Alice on the other side of this natural looking glass, hypnotized by the simple, rhythmic beauty of the water, the foam, the sun. I grew up on the beach, and have walked in the tide thousands of times, so this was a completely unexpected encounter with something bigger. I felt expansive and ageless, as if, through the simple sensations, God was making Itself present to me.
The most dramatic sight of our visit to the Monarch colony were those moments when thousands of Monarchs took flight at the same time (out of the 3 million or so that were in this single colony). But the moments of transcendent, senseless beauty sank in only after those dramatic launches had passed. I sat in the dirt and watched, and listened, and felt. As the minutes passed, I felt myself sink into the forest, and felt the forest sink into me. Thousands of butterflies never stopped fluttering through the open spaces between the pines. Many swooped directly at me, before diverting to pass within inches of my head. They just kept doing what they were doing -- just being butterflies. And for those precious few moments, I allowed myself to just be a guy sitting in the forest, watching them dance in the air.
Being in Mexico this winter has definitely reminded me of how important it is -- and how completely doable it is -- to slow down and keep my eyes and ears open for these random moments of senseless beauty.
Senselessly, Zemo — March 7, 2024