Breathtaking...

This post has nothing to do with Tea Parties, or elections, or Health Care, or Obama, or Libertarians or DADT. It has to do with a walk in the woods yesterday.

We live on an 18 acre parcel of hilly woodlands, which abuts the 21-square mile, undeveloped Pisgah State Park. Our constant neighbors are porcupines, at least one wolf, hummingbirds, a pair of rose-breasted grosbeaks, red foxes, and, based on the missing birdfeeders and the bent wrought-iron feeder hooks -at least one black bear. Once we begin walking into the woods, it doesn't take long for it to get very, very dark - even in the middle of the day.

Yesterday, Scott and I went walking down an overgrown path back into the woods. It got darker and darker as the trees formed a wall on all sides and their branches touched and overlapped overhead. Everything in sight was forest-floor-brown, or forest-green, and everything was in shadows.

About 5 minutes into our walk, I looked to the right, where the tree line briefly parted for a short distance of about 15 feet. About 20 feet ahead, through the gap, was a craggy, boulder-strewn hillside too steep to easily climb without equipment. The largest boulder was practically illuminated, sitting in the sole shaft of sunlight that somehow found a direct route into the forest.

And surrounding the boulder - above it, below it, in its depressions, around its sides - was an explosion of color. A thick patch of Wild Red Columbines was in full bloom. I literally sucked in my breath and held it. I had never seen a patch of wild columbine.

And I sure didn't expect this burst of red and yellow - and light! - in the midst of this dark expanse of browns and greens. I could bring myself to do *nothing* but stare at it, knowing that I had stumbled into one of the woodland's hidden treasures...the closest thing I have seen to a Chapel made without human hands.

Somehow, I know that there are ancient monks and Celtic hermits who know *precisely* what I experienced yesterday.