Come with me, if you have a moment, and let’s talk a walk through this photograph of beauty.
The colors of this aspen grove in the fall make me stop and stare. A backdrop of yellow-gold leaves makes the striking white trunks stand out in relief.
The scene has an other-worldly quality.
It’s as though we can reach out and touch those trees. And if we could, we would feel the ridges and roughness of the bark under our fingertips. We would take a deep breath and inhale a woodsy scent mixed with, perhaps, damp leaves lying on the forest floor.
I’m told that because of the way aspen leaves are made, they tremble with the slightest wind. They flip and flutter constantly. If we stop and listen, we can hear the leaves whispering and see them dancing in the wind.
Far below the leaves, beneath the white trunks lies a huge underground system of roots. An entire grove of aspens can come from just one seedling. Just one.
Not only that, but new seedlings can appear as far away as 40 feet from the parent tree. But that little sprout is not on its own out there because it’s still attached to the other trees through that root system.
And, when an aspen dies, the root system lives on, continually sprouting new trunks, giving rise to new life.
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I have never seen an aspen tree or walked through a grove. Yet, this photograph makes me want to be there, to see what the photographer saw, to walk through that grove myself. It makes me stop and really look at them.
Their beauty, design, variety, color, and lifecycle fascinate me.
Just like we can’t see the breeze that sets aspen leaves rustling or the root system below that sustains them, we can’t see the God who created these trees but we have evidence of His existence through this marvelous creation.
And this photo not only reminds me of that but it inspires me to keep looking for the beauty around us.
Think about a painting or photograph that you like. Sometimes it’s hard to pin down why a piece of art or beauty pulls you in. Sometimes you just like it—and that’s okay.
But sometimes, you can go deeper. What do you like about it? Why does it draw you in? Is it the subject matter, the story it seems to tell, or the skill of the artist?
The next time beauty in nature or art or the unexpected makes you stop and stare, think about why it inspires you. And then share it with someone else—like me.
I’d love to hear about your favorite photograph, painting, or other work of art. Tell me about it in a comment below. With your permission, I might use in a future blog post. Thank you for reading!
Photo by John Price on Unsplash.
