I really enjoy going to art galleries and museums. Without doubt, humans have the ability to create phenomenal works of art. But in the end, I believe nature will always be the superior artist, with the rest of us trying to copy her amazing diversity of texture and color.
When I hike, whether in the shaded forest, through colorful open meadows, or along the gray toned beach sand, my eyes are always drawn to the gorgeous assortment of patterns and textures I find in nature’s perfect artwork.
Sometimes it’s the way shadows fall on the ground in abstract patterns in the evening light, the way frost settles on grass and clover, how wood grains cascade in lovely patterns like petrified waves of a wise crone’s beautiful gray hair.
I can find myself holding my breath in amazement over a thousand water droplets clinging to grass seeds, hanging above the sturdy blades like glass beads on a fragile sculpture, or smile as I walk the beach marveling at the way early sun lights up the patterns of beak holes and sand critters scuttling as the waves recede, or the way the waves leave interesting patterns of shallow ridges across an expanse. I can find myself admiring a small pile of ropy kelp because in the ocean’s perfect placement it looks as if someone left a beautiful necklace coiled on the sand.
As I walk along I am intrigued by the endless textures, the light and dark, the bubbled, the fuzzy, the sharp, the cupped, the layered, the dripping, the pocked, the poked, the rippled and ridged. The imperfect beauty of it all.
I will always stand in awe of a huge lip of shelf fungus beaded with dew, clinging to a dead tree.
I am endlessly fascinated by cloud patterns that lift in soft smudges like the downy feathers of some giant celestial bird or billow like the ash from the birth of a great imaginary mountain range, by paw prints and beak prints, wood grain and water ripples.
I might stop to admire a cluster of flocked white fungus clinging like furry shells to a rotting log or the way it stacks on an old stump like the colorful layered skirts of twirling Spanish dancers.
I love the jigsaw puzzle texture of ponderosa bark and find the semi-translucent, amber-orange seepage of pitch from a dripping pine wound beautiful.
Nature’s textures and patterns are a treat to the eye, a gratitude to the heart, an inspiration to the soul. I will never tire of the riotous medley of beauty, the interchange of light and pattern, the perfect art of nature.
Mossy Whispers: Imperfection is never a mistake. It creates a beauty unique as a snowflake and as interesting as a Van Gogh or Monet.
Lovely images!