Sanctuary

60: (September 2025)

My husband and I went to Grand Teton National Park for several days this month—that is to say, we went to a sanctuary. A sanctuary is defined as a holy place, a refuge, a place that is in some way sacred. Whether you think that our natural world is a gift from God or a result of the Big Bang doesn’t really matter; the fact remains that it is indeed a sanctuary, a natural temple so saturated with beauty and wonder that it is unfathomable.

Grand Teton is in Wyoming, where the sky is bigger than it is here in the Northeast, with our foreshortened vistas framed by forests. In Wyoming, the sky and grasslands resting beneath it seem as wide as forever; they just go on and on. Then there are the mountains, which are indescribable. It is not enough to say they are stunning. It’s like trying to describe the concept of God; words are inadequate. The beauty and majesty of the mountains are ineffable.

What I was beholding felt like it was too much to absorb, so instead, I needed to be absorbed into it. To allow myself to be enfolded into the dramatic crystal clear lakes and the gigantic mountains that reached up to pierce that tremendously wide expanse of sky. I was dazzled by the beauty of Grand Teton Park. While I cannot truly comprehend it, I can be grateful for the blessing of having been part of it for a few glorious days.

The experience of witnessing this grandeur was thrilling, awesome, and humbling. It will stay with me, a reservoir within. How fortunate our nation is that President Calvin Coolidge had the foresight to create the park, which was later expanded upon by President Harry Truman. Along the way, other presidents and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr were also instrumental in forming the ultimate park we enjoy today. History shows that protecting this incredible national treasure was not easy. Anyone who has experienced the park knows that all that effort was invaluable.

40: (September 2005)

Did you ever notice that there aren’t many straight lines in nature? The earth moves in wavy lines of hills, rolling fields, and bent horizons. The rocks she makes are rounded. Trees are decorated with varied shapes and markings on barks that lift skyward but are not truly straight. Even blades of grass that might appear to approximate a series of straight lines are always bending, the blades dancing between what is rooted and the freedom of the wind. Mother earth. Curvaceous. Flexible. Feminine.

Yet it is difficult to find a landscape that is not punctuated by our man-made straight edges and taut lines. Houses with right angles of wooden planes, or bricks stacked in neat lines one upon the other. Fences. Highway dividing lines. Telephone poles. Humans alter the visual landscape by creating straight lines and implanting them in various forms on the earth. I like to imagine what it would look like without the right angles, without the straight lines. It’s harder and harder for the eyes to find a chunk of earth that has not been tampered with by human hands and is left to its curves.

We strive to create order. In a world that seems to be experiencing an even greater degree of chaos lately, maybe those straight lines and right angles makes us feel like we have some control over our environment. Hurricanes. Earthquakes. Too much rain in one place, droughts in another. Nature is unpredictable in its actions. Mother earth is continuously giving birth, and giving birth is sloppy business. “Ride the waves,” a friend advised before I went into labor with my second daughter. It was good advice. I went with the waves of contractions. No straight line from here to there, no two births ever alike. I moved with the waves, groaning loudly to release my pain. It was messy—and awesome.

We strive to know and to understand our world. We are trained to look for patterns from an early age. We are uncomfortable with the seemingly random acts of nature, and we long to figure out some way to make sense of it all. Yet the only thing I am sure of is that the more I seek to know, the more I know I don’t know.

I walk in my autumn garden, all yellowed and browned and crunchy. Countless acorns roll underfoot as I stroll the garden path. Broken branches from recent storms are everywhere, mingled with decaying flower stalks, tangles of tomato plants, and overgrown mint. Chaos reigns. The big oak drops one leaf, then another, each surfing to the ground on waves of wind. Beautiful, all of it. And the birthing and the dying circle round and round.

60-40:

In Grand Teton National Park there were precious few straight lines, because nature is largely left to itself there. There was one important line though, and that was the one that went straight to my heart.

Bliss.