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“These beauties that we experience in the world are fugitives which have gone into matter. And of course, this is the heart of all sculpture, painting, writing and music. It’s an attempt to elicit or evoke the hidden presence of beauty. ”

-John O’Donohue, Beauty: the Invisible Embrace

O’Donohue, in his book, was calling up ideas about the nature of our experience of beauty from the collected wisdom of human history, as far back as the Greek philosopher Plotinus in the third century.

How else can we explain the overwhelming aura of our sensory experiences? We have been gifted not just an intellectual understanding, but a world in which we not only see, but can become enfolded into the Earth’s beauty.

One of the places I experience this is 50 meters beneath the surface of the Earth in Maligne Canyon in Jasper National Park. The first time I descended to the deep it was -35 degrees C.  The winter ice had stopped the flow of the Maligne River and it suddenly revealed its work: huge curvilinear solid rivers of rock carved deep into the Earth layer by layer over the ages, by mighty tons of water crashing and swirling, year after year.

In summer, you hear the rushing roar and see a spectacular waterfall poking though green moss-covered cliffs from above. In winter you descend to the bottom and the colors travel into rock, the greens and grays and purples. 

And then you wait for the low afternoon winter sun to perhaps beam its deep orange rays high above the crevice. They turn to gold the spruce trees that precariously cling to the rocks a world above. And just for a moment there’s enough light to illuminate the huge cavern where you stand still at the bottom.

Just for a moment.