Saturday, April 7, 2007

Nature Made


Peleg and I and our friend Kat decided that each of us would create an Andy Goldsworthy style sculpture during our camping trip.

I created my sculpture the afternoon of the first day we were there. I took a hike by myself up the side of the hill that rose behind our campsite. Near the top of the crest of the hill a vein of milky quartz appeared and brilliant white rocks had broken off from it spilling down the side of the hill. I gathered several dozn white rocks and packed them into the crevice of a dark colored outcropping lining up the stones to create a well defined spear-point shape, cpaped by a perfectly formed triangle shaped rock.

The effect looked at once organic, because the only materials were the rocks resting by gravity on the ground, but also a stark contrast in their hard-edged arrangement, and the pure white against the dark background. The piece was obviously a human construction, demonstrating rationality and purpose, against the natural background.

But as I said that to myself, I also observed that I am nature myself. I am a part of nature that has developed rationality and purpose. Human beings have many qualities unique in nature, but we aren't unnatural. The small rodents and birds that had made homes in the landscape also arranged the available materials for a purpose. The natural forces of geology and gravity and erosion were also re-arranging the landscape, not purposefully, but to the same beautiful effect, to those parts of nature like myself able to perceive beauty.

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