We spend most of our lives within the realm of our outer vision - our sight, our touch, our hearing. But we are have an inner vision - a mode of awareness that dreams and creativity and wisdom and insight are made of.
I get up before dawn several times a week and take a walk with my dog along the lakes, rivers, and under the cottonwoods of our local green belt. It is the best time of day - the air is cool and crisp; the wind is usually still; the streets are mostly empty. Until today I had only seen one person in that area of the green belt all season.
Being up and around at that time of day reminds one of the simple pleasures of each day; and makes a person aware just how different one day is from the next if you are out there watching. One morning we walked through a dawn thunderstorm - the slow dawn to the east was met by the fury of hard cold rain, thunder, and lightning from the west. Another cloudless morning the sun came up to the first hard frost of the fall; The frost covered the crimson red current, yellow sumac, and white, blue, and purple asters. Mist floated up from the lakes, brightly lite by the Colorado sunshine.
I usually walk along a path that goes beneath a grove of 11 old cottonwoods. There is something special about this spot. I get a home feeling there; a sense of history; a sense of roots. I usually pause there and play my harmonica, enjoying a few minutes of solitude with my dog before I start back home and begin my work day. My dog and I are not alone. Seven or 8 red foxes and one black fox live nearby. At first they would run when I played my harmonica. Now they are getting used to us; watching and listening, but pretty much ignoring us. They seem to accept me and my dog and my harmonica as one of the early morning occurrences. We have earned their trust by not threatening them and showing up each day at about the same time.
This morning as I played my harmonica I had the feeling that something was watching, someone other than the foxes. I looked all around as I played, trying to see if anyone was near. It struck me as unusual that I was doing that.
The foxes ran off. I started home. After I had gone about 100 yards I saw a photographer walking where the foxes had been. Clearly, I had felt his presence even though I had no clue he was there. (he had been hidden by trees). I watched him follow the foxes. He seemed anxious to get a good picture. I thought of the contrast of my quietly enjoying the early morning sun painting the tops of the cottonwoods yellow, the cool still air, the companionship of my dog and the foxes, and the photographer's hurried walk, his stalking to get his image, his tenseness. I like to take photo's also, but I realize that the camera often blocks my full awareness of being out in nature, and I leave my camera home for most of my walks. The developed image is a poor substitute of the feelings I get under those 11 cottonwoods throughout the year. Experiencing the dawn in the outdoors on a regular basis changes me as a person. It affects me inwardly, makes me rich, more appreciative of life and being alive.
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"To enjoy scenery you should ramble amidst it; let the feelings to which it gives rise mingle with other thoughts; look round upon it in intervals of reading; and not go to it as one goes to see the lions fed at a fair. The beautiful is not to be stared at, but to be lived with." . . . Thomas Babington Macauley
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"Nature is not only what is visible to the eye -- it shows the inner images of the soul -- the images on the back side of the eyes" . . . Edvard Munch
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