I’VE LONG FOLLOWED Maria Popova’s The Marginalian, an ad-free blog that originated as Brain Pickings in 2006. I do not exaggerate when I say nearly every time I click on her accompanying newsletter, I find myself sucked into the most beautiful vortex of art, poetry, science, and philosophy on a theme that always seems to center and refresh me. This morning she wrote again of a topic she addresses on the regular: Wonder. (Is there anything more wonderful than wonder? Seriously.) Maria opens the essay, titled How to be More Alive: Herman Hesse on Wonder and the Proper Aim of Education, with this:

“It bears repeating that what makes life livable is our ability — our willingness — to move through the world wonder-smitten by reality. The most wonderful thing about wonder is that it knows no scale, no class, no category — it can be found in a geranium or in a galaxy, in the burble of a brook or in the Goldberg Variations.”

She goes on to say:

Wonder, after all, is what we look for when we are looking, and the richest recompense of learning how to look.

It stopped me in my tracks even as I find this insight to be self-evident; not just wonder as the reward for looking, but wonder as the reason to notice—to consciously look, to pay attention—in the first place. And of course it is! It most certainly is.

CASE IN POINT: July on this old Western North Carolina mountain. The season up here is a spectacular one for a hundred thousand reasons, not the least of which is the proliferation of wildflowers that cycle through on nature’s determined schedule. We’ve had this getaway place enough years now that I generally know which to watch for, when. It’s a thrill to see a new varietal emerge, blossom, proliferate. What a show! And then the stalks quietly die back, as if exiting stage right so as to allow for another star to step forward and shine. I love nothing more than to walk our long driveway, snipping greenery and blooms and all manner of fernery delights, bringing back enough to fill our house with vase after vase of tiny summery arrangements. If we are driving? Making our way to visit friends or headed down the mountain to the mailbox? Tim knows to allow an extra 20 minutes for the 50 times I’ll holler “Stop! There’s red bee balm!” and he’ll graciously accommodate. And there is this—also this—the incredible lift as butterflies and hummingbirds flit and feast with such exuberant joy!

It’s all right there in the wild open meadows and the unpaved drives of our remote stunning mountain, this sweet show of summer, this celebration of that which is served up day-to-day, season-to-season, generation-to-generation—this glorious gift from Mother Nature herself who seems practically giddy to remind us:

Oh the wonders of this world. And they’re here, my dear, just for YOU!

XXOO