My wife Abby and I live on a very nice seven-acre patch in a very small town called Byng, Oklahoma. We are fortunate to experience all seasons here, from sunny, hot summers to cold Christmastimes, stormy springs, and chilly nights at Halloween.
In all these seasons, the place where we live is beautiful. There are few other words that express it as well as that: beautiful.
So what is it about beauty? Why? Is it wired into our brains as a survival strategy? Do we love beauty because it represents the prosperous, the fertile, the productive? Can it be distilled into science like that, or is there something less tangible?
Discuss.
Since it is June on our seven acres, I work outside a lot. In the past couple of weeks since we got back from Santa Fe, we’ve had bountiful rain, so the green is very alive and growing, and I am outside working many evenings, sometimes until dark. Last night was no exception, and the patch was nothing short of magnificent, wonderful, beautiful. It is a gift I hope I never fail to appreciate.
It’s a gift. From God. I’ll tell him thanks for you.
Dr. Miranda Jones: Ugly. What is ugly? Who is to say whether Kollos is too ugly to bear, or too beautiful to bear?
I’m glad to see a post that’s almost exclusively about your place in Byng. I always enjoyed coming out to shoot, burn brush piles or just hang out, though admittedly I only got to come a few times. It is a great little patch of Oklahoma and I think some of your best images come from right there in your back yard. Y’all are extremely fortunate and I look forward to blog entries about The Farm.
I have learned as air to lungs so beauty for my brain. It’s required to function. It is a gift for you to live in such a place of growth.