Can beauty become too much?

Since leaving "my" table at Shining Falls Sunday morning for the trip back to Bissett and our car, I am overwhelmed with the vast and the beautiful.

The flight from Shining Falls to Bissett was amazing. The pilot apologized for what was going to be a bumpy and slow ride, the storms having calmed enough to make the flight but that was all. His apologies were needless. He flew above the broken clouds and what I watched below us for the 45 minute flight was rugged, boundless beauty, sunlight glinting on streams, rivers, lakes, the terrain of mingled forests, rock outcroppings, islands large and small.

Landing on Rice Lake at Bissett was a sad moment; the Shining Falls experience was, indeed, over. But ... on the dock awaiting our flight was our pilot's 2 year old son, a cookie in his outstretched hand saved just for daddy. Now, this guy is serious, all business; there is no time for chitchat when unloading and loading. He's focused on his job -- and I might add, the lives on his de Haviland Beaver, his own included.

Well, the sight of that child ... The man who told us tersely to board and buckle up at Shining Falls was a different man when he helped us onto the dock. When it was his turn for daddy's attention, that little boy didn't just hand him that saved cookie. The pilot-turned-daddy opened his mouth wide, making ferocious growling, gobbling sounds, and the laughing child met the mouth with the cookie. Everyone smiled at the sight -- the two of us, the three people waiting to board, and the mother/wife who, by the way, runs the seaplane base. Such beauty ...

The drive from Bissett to Dryden on Sunday took us west and south to the Transcanada Highway where we turned east for the remainder of Sunday and most of yesterday. The Transcanada in large part is tw0-lane with many third, passing lanes for vehicles in each direction. The shoulders of the road, except when it was cut through towering rock, are gravel and very wide (and include bicycle lanes east and west bound). In all we travelled about 550 kilometers on the Transcanada. No billboards. No roadside trash. Period. Just kilometer after kilometer of indescribable beauty. Long vistas, uncountable lakes, wildflowers profuse at the outside edges of the right-of-way. It took me by surprise again and again and again. And just when I began to feel almost numb, another scene would open up and I'd actually experience another sudden, quick involuntary intake of breath.

We arrived on the western shore of Lake Superior yesterday afternoon. The first glimpse of it, the fog rolling up and onto the road, reminded me of looking at the ocean on a calm day. It's an inland ocean for sure. 350 miles long, 160 miles wide with 10% of the world's fresh surface water. Our hotel, the Best Western Cliff Dweller, is between Lutsen and Tofte on US61, and almost hangs out over the water. In all three thunderstorms rolled through here last night and the view from here of the lightening over the lake kept me up and watching. Not thinking about much of anything, just watching.

And, I wonder, can the beauty become too much? Mind you, we've seen some ugly too. The centerpiece of Dryden, for example, is a Weyerhauser paper mill right in town on the river. Not only did it look out of place, the main building about 20 stories high in a town where at most the buildings were 3, there's always an odor associated with paper production. And, we've also seen grinding poverty along our route. But, the question remains. I don't know how to describe it, but it's almost as though the beauty makes me tired. On one hand, I don't want to give in to sleep for not wanting to miss any of it. On the other hand, the beauty itself hurts somehow. I feel an anguish, a deep ache as I gaze upon it.

I don't know the answer to the question. For right now I am trying to rest in the beauty -- be it moments of love like that on the dock at the seaplane base Sunday or the cliffs jutting up out of Lake Superior's waters or the little lake tucked in behind a hill on the Gunflint Trail. Rather than looking too hard, trying to take it all in, I am concentrating on the exhale. It's a choice between the sharp intake of breath and the gentle "ahh." I know, I know. None of it's an either-or. I guess I'm attempting to distinguish between the simple gazing upon it and the trying to memorize it. The dwelling in rather than the dwelling on. Is that it? Maybe, maybe not.

The last thing I want is not to see it at all, protecting myself from the ache. I pray for the ability, the willingness to try dwelling in the loveliness, the vastness, the beauty and then letting it be.

Perhaps, oh, perhaps ... There's a line I've always loved in one of evening prayer's collects: Shield the joyous. I've never quite known what that meant, so I've prayed that those who are experiencing great joy will not be let down too quickly. Perhaps the ache I'm trying to describe is, among other things, what that line is about. Just a thought.