Enduring Overwhelming Beauty: To Truly See A Trout in Eleven Mile Canyon

I know I don’t see things as I ought. I see “dimly as through a glass”.  If I have a weakness in regard to my “vision” it would not be my inability to sight fish or to see the fly but rather it is my inability to truly see and to deeply appreciate the beauty around me. And so today, while I was in Eleven Mile Canyon guiding, I could plainly see the trout rising to tiny tricos but I had a sense that I was missing something. I was seeing but only dimly.

I have often wondered if I truly could see the beauty of a person, a sunrise, or a single fish, that such images would overwhelm me. Perhaps my nervous system would not be able to handle it. In C.S Lewis’s fantasy book, “The Great Divorce”, a group of people  have left a bus begin to notice how different nature becomes as they make their way up the allegorical heavenly mountain. The sky becomes bigger and wider. They observe a water fall with such a thunderous roar that they conclude that if such a water fall were back on earth they would not be able to endure it. It would be too “big”. C.S Lewis writes, “A waterfall was pouring. Here once again I realized that something had happened to my senses as that they were now receiving impressions which would normally exceed their capacity. On earth such a waterfall could not have been perceived at all as a whole; It was too big. Its sound would have been a terror.”

I think of the poet Rilke who seemed to understand the power, wonder and even the terror of beauty, “Beauty is the beginning of terror… and threatens to annihilate us”.  I wonder if some things in life are so beautiful and wonderful that we cannot handle them. I think of the old scripture, “No one can see God and live”.  And again of Rilke who wrote, “Even if one angel pressed me suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.”

I know there have been times when I have stood looking at a river at sunrise watching mist come up off of the river and the image is so beautiful that I almost cannot endure the experience. I almost have to look away or change the channel in my head or focus on only one aspect of it all, such as trying to catch the rainbow rising on the far bank.    

I wonder if in the end if we are to ever find our way up to the heavenly mountain that we will have to be changed in order to endure such overwhelming beauty. Then I might truly be able to hear and see a river. And be able to truly see and endure the beauty of a fish.  

For now, I can still see those tiny tricos falling in Eleven Mile Canyon. I can still see fish rising to them. I never had a problem with that kind of vision.  But, I know if I truly saw even a single trico mayfly, one of the tiniest of bugs, that it has enough glory to overwhelm me and I would not endure.