Most Beautiful Thing You Have Ever Seen

Take a moment and try to think of the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. However, try to go deeper than say children, nieces or nephews, loved ones, etc. Now, go ahead take a moment and try and come up with it. Tough right? I remember way back four years ago a professor of mine, Strand, once told me while he was working an apprenticeship in England the master posed this question to him with those stipulations. He said his answer (after some thought) then was he had seen a wooden table which had an arc carved in its leg from a lamp or something from being out at sea for many years.

Yesterday, this conversation came up with a friend of mine, Abby, and because I had been previously talking to another friend, Todd, I finally knew what my answer was after four years of searching. My personal journey for the most beautiful thing I have ever seen has not been an easy one. Many times I had seen a landscape so wonderful like Nebraska sunsets in our backyard, Niagara falls, a weeping willow drooping over onto a river in my Mother's hometown of Stratford, Canada. But I determined that landscapes are all so very beautiful for their own qualities they negate each other. I have seen a few pieces of famous artworks in person, and they are beautiful, yes, but something about how I felt lame saying a particular piece of art would be "it". And you know what, I have been to the Hagia Sophia, and I tell you it is one of the most beautiful structures, if not the, most beautiful structure I have ever been in. To me though, it isn't my culture and that rules it out to me, but boy is it beautiful-even with the scaffolding in there to keep up the dome...and the wonderful mosaics covered with gaudy paintings of less quality. I could make a whole blog entry about the Hagia Sophia. But still it is not what I determined the most beautiful thing I have ever seen is. The most beautiful thing I have ever seen is clean, impossibly rhythmic, entrancing, space enhancing, and yet simple.

The most beautiful thing I have ever seen is something people see a lot. The most beautiful thing I have ever seen are the the wind power generators. Yes, it may seem odd to say those are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, but they are. When you see them in the green fields spinning each blade seems to go slower on the up turn and faster on the down giving a rhythm to the spin, but they are all turning at the same time evenly. The clean white structure is echoed by the wonderful clouds and imposed on the bright green of fields and the sky blue of our sky. How many structures has man made that seem to enhance the look of nature? Somehow these things do. The idea and purpose is so simple, but the whole is beautiful and entrancing to see a whole field of these things recording each gust of wind. These structures are giving people reasons to drive through Iowa. Sorry to everyone from Iowa. Honestly though, how boring is driving through the MidWest? Pretty boring. When you have these clean simple structures nearly acting as sirens of sight of the fields the drive becomes much more visually wholesome. I simply find these structures to be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. One more thing, they are huge. I have never personally been next to one, but I have seen the blades on trucks on the Interstate, and they are huge!

Now, take some time and come to your own conclusion. Who knows what I may find to be the most beautiful thing in the future, but for now it is wind power generators.