Opening to vastness

sierracottonwood
Mt. Whitney. Robin L. Chandler, 2017.
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Inyo Mountains from the Alabama Hills. Robin L. Chandler, 2017

Recently, I visited the Owens Valley and gazed upon the vastness of the Sierra Nevada and the Inyo Mountains. Mountains and sky: in that infinite space, their beauty humbled me. In that quiet desert, I opened my soul to their medicine. For two solitary days, I painted Mt. Whitney and the Inyo Mountains from vantage points in the Alabama Hills becoming part of their story. And now, healed by their beauty, now part of their family, I understand how vast humans can be…..when we open our hearts.

Thomas Lowe Fleischner says it best in Nature, Love, Medicine: Essays on Wildness and Wellness, “but each day we start anew and walk out into a world that is full of sorrow and injustice, yes – but that is also heartbreakingly beautiful. Despair must not overrun our appreciation for this world – plant and animal, stone and sky, and human souls – that is immeasurably lovely, more beautiful than it needs to be, in spite of the grief that is embedded within it.”

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