sky high

Bonus! I’ve got double viewing from my chair in the tube at 30,000+ feet.

Check out the view. It appears this cloud formation is resting on a pillow of cloud billow.

Here we are passing over Colby, Kansas.

And now Cheyenne, Wyoming. You can see the Rockies way off in the distance.

Gazing down on our land, I’m reminded of a recent episode of Krista Tippet’s On Being podcast. Her guest was Michael McCarthy, a naturalist and author of The Moth Snowstorm:Nature and Joy.

He talked about how the natural world is where we evolved and how “there is a legacy deep within us, a legacy of instinct, a legacy of inherited feelings, which may lie very deep in the tissues — it may lie underneath all the parts of civilization which we are so familiar with on a daily basis, but it has not gone; that we might have left the natural world, most of us, but the natural world has not left us.”

What we are called to do right now, is to defend nature. We should offer up what it means to our spirits; the love of it. We should offer up its joy.

Now flying over Barroil, Wyoming.

Oh, look, it’s the Rocky Mountains near Lander, Wyoming.

McCarthy says the joy nature gives us is distinct from fun or pleasure. It is an intense happiness and that “joy looks outward to another person, to another purpose; and that joy has a component, if not of morality, then at least of seriousness. It signifies a passionate happiness the natural world can trigger in us all.”

Now passing above Jackson, Idaho.

Whoa! Where did the Rockies go? Over Dubois, Idaho.

Now gliding over, Leadore, Idaho, with the Rockies back in view.

Returning to McCarthy, “my contention is not that we all love nature, but my contention certainly is that we are all capable of loving nature, because in us, at the very deepest level, in the bottom of our psyches, we have a link to the natural world, which really goes to the essence of who we are.”

Tippet commented “there is an emergence of literature of public health, about contact with the natural world and human well-being” and the positive affect this has upon each of us.

Gazing out over Grangeville, Idaho, I’m thinking this can’t be good, for hope of seeing Mt. Ranier.

The conversation concluded “with the world that we love, and that bond we have with the natural world – if we could take that seriously, that could keep us, also, attending, and then participating in the healing of our natural world”.

I have just spent 4 1/2 hours gazing upon this portion of the natural world. I have been filled with joy as I gazed below.

There it is! Peeking out. Mt. Rainer. 14,441′. Awesome sight.