awe

at some point maybe a few hundred thousand years ago, some slightly strange humanoid stopped foraging for long enough to stack a few rocks into a careful tower. i think of him or her pausing for a minute and looking out from an elevated spot, where a new, not entirely translatable feeling came swarming suddenly and overwhelmingly out of the landscape, and this person’s response was to make something that said, “i was here, and i was a part of this.”  at least, that’s how i visualize it, when i think about goethe’s great statement: “the shudder of awe is humanity’s highest faculty.”

collected beach rocks

from beaches on lake superior and the mediterranean sea