The Frank Preston Conservation Area, Moraine State Park

The capacity for awe and wonder comes at an early stage in human development, and we lose it all too quickly. The jadedness of the world seeps in with time and teaches us to take things for granted. It woos people away from their wide-eyed wonder, teaches them to gaze on life and its marvels more disinterestedly. A sunset, a distant star, the joy of fellowship with others, the spine-tingling awareness of Life and breath within our bodies, the familiar tune of a half-forgotten song, the homelike comfort of a smell or a sound: these things touch us less profoundly as the years pass. It's not until we're old that they come to us again to speak as they did when we were small.

Wonder, if we can cultivate it in our adult spirits, makes us to know that we are small, that we don't have all the answers, that we don't have things under control, but that it doesn't matter, because we don't need all the answers, and we don't need to be in control.  

The somber springtime countryside was almost too dark to photograph.  This is Lake Arthur as seen through the forested hills in the east end of Moraine State Park, in a mostly equestrian stretch of parkland called the Frank Preston Conservation Area.  Old public roads meander in and out of private farms before dead-ending at woodlots or overgrown hayfields.  I saw some magnificent birds out here, including one pheasant and four bright yellow birds with black crowns.  There's a haunting beauty to this place, eerie and serene.  And yet, for all the darkness, it's a season of new life.

A few years ago, we used to hear the military expression “shock-and-awe.” Our way of life nowadays leaves us dealing with a lot of shock and too little awe. Our human systems are shocked by the long hours we work, by the isolation we feel, by the lack of physicality in our daily routine. Our systems are shocked by the flood of information that constantly barrages us, by deadlines, and by bills. Our tendency is to numb ourselves to the shock of life, to seek escape by means of our televisions, and radios, and computers.  We turn to addictions or anything that keeps us from seeing the rapid passage of time.  We don't want to see the fact of our smallness, the fact that mortality is our lot. But numbing ourselves to life's shocks also numbs us to its awe.  And we need to stand in awe every once in a while just to get life in perspective.