Beauty

better late than never...
My ramblings on beauty: For this subject I had so many ideas, and yet none that I could put into a tangible artwork. Would it be classical beauty in the form of some cloth draped goddess? Some transcendental landscape? Some vague modern piece of elegant, sophisticated architecture? no. I couldn't settle on one work.
Better to choose none perhaps. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, they say. I say its more like air - tell someone to draw air; to represent it in a painting true to life. Can you really ever portray air? Or can you only show its effect on everything else? Maybe you can only show it how your mind perceives it, somewhat like the way ancient map makers inked a fat-faced cloud blowing curling tendrils of wind to show the currents. Whoa, too vague to draw air. Who does that outside of cartoons and old mapmakers? What about water?
Water is portrayed in some of the most beautiful works you'll ever see - ancient Roman baths where those marble beauties stood, the waterfalls and lakes of those transcendental brushed canvases... oh heck, I've gotta fish tank right next to me. It's a work of modern technology with all its filters and plant fertilizers. Haven't I gotten all three of my prior choices in one?
It occurred to me when the topic first was presented that my home is a beautiful land worth mentioning for this piece. Not my creaking century and a half colonial, nor the wild rocky garden out back with its flowers and koi pond (again with the water) but the defining aspects of the region. For those of you who have not seen New England or western NY, come visit, it's beautiful. I warn you though I'm biased on that.
...but I digress. To my surprise my husband was getting excited earlier this year for the beginning of fishing season. I had NO IDEA that he liked fishing. He only mentioned that he went with his family as a child. Being newly wed, I was amused and humored him. We bought a CT fishing license; borrowed a pole. He searched online for local fishing spots that had trout. I found a net at a tag sale. By June, he had tried the local stocked pond at the state park down the road, other spots outside of town, and a few local woodland creeks and falls with the males of my family.
The vernal falls over rocky hills and cliffs near my house were still flowing steadily in June, creating mossy, ferned woodland pools, flowing to creeks, then to rivers and finally into Long Island Sound in the Atlantic.
I never imagined he'd open my eyes to a beauty I had so often overlooked. The Naugatuck River is a mere few hundred feet down the hill from my house. In winter you can see it through the trees. Jay had gone fishing there. I was surprised - I thought it was dead.
The industrious New Englanders of the past used to put mills on any river that had enough speed to wash down waste and give hydro power. With its steep gradient and even steeper forested valley walls, the Naugatuck was one of these.
The rocky little river that widened as it flowed became so polluted local boards of health had declared it a toxic stew of noxious chemicals nearly a century ago. Most local waterborne creatures steered clear of it for decades. Sure they tried cleaning it a bit here and there from the 70's on, but even as a kid most joked swimming or playing in the water would make you glow. I hadn't realized that somewhere in between my growing up and forgetting about the river outside my door it came back to life.
One Saturday we drove north up the river to look at a few spots for him to fish. I chuckled to myself imagining the odd scrawny fish he might find after a week of trying. Pulling over on the side of a wooded dirt road, and stumbling down some rocks, to my amazement, a school of minnows swam past the shore. I looked upstream, to watch a man and his son fish just below a rapid area of granite boulders. Downstream in my town of Thomaston, an old stone spillway behind an aging long forgotten brownstone mill was the fishing spot of not a man, but a crane, waiting silently and still for the rainbow trout to show. A sign nearby stated the rules of salmon trophy fishing in that area.
"Salmon trophy fishing?" I asked, stunned.
I never realized that little river could be the home of salmon, let alone the trophy variety. Our final spot was near the house, the spot I used to take my dogs walking as a child. A pair of woodland ducks swam by unphased as the hawks circled low. That area is sunny. I assumed not much would be there that afternoon, not like the shaded spots we saw that morning. We climbed down the brush covered bank to a smooth outcropping where the bedrock peaks out of the soil. Sure enough, a school of large carp rested within the deep smooth crevasses of the jetty, not the least bit startled by our jumping rock to rock. The day left me filled with an emotional realization.
I always knew the river flowed and ebbed with the seasons. I knew it carved out the valley my sleepy little town is nestled in. Yet, if you had told me this body of water was teaming with life I would've laughed. I had looked at the delicate flower flourishing in the sidewalk crack as an unsightly weed.
I admonished myself for my folly. All these years, I admired the details of the landscape: the falls, the forest, the ferns, the animals yet ignored the flowing lifeblood that kept it alive and carried it all away on it eternal journey to the sea.
The struggle and rebirth of that which is essential to life returning to its former glory... that it beautiful. Beauty surrounds us all. Like air, we cannot always see it, but every once in a while when we step outside and pay attention, that gentle breeze we feel against our skin reminds us its there. One can look at the same view everyday and not see the loveliness of that spot, then suddenly through another's eyes we are awakened and see it everywhere. Let it be the lesson simply to look for it in all things.