Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog

                “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog” by Caspar David Friedrich

              

It had been a long walk;
Or, perhaps, it could be better described as a climb.

Now he is here.

The rocks below him are jagged.  What force of nature had driven them to be so?

Certainly nature has power but…what kind of creation is this?

Now as he stands above the abyss he can see the violent past of these rocks.

But nature attempts to hide this violence.  It covers the scars with a layer of fog,

So that the wanderer may not be disturbed by what he sees.

The wanderer however is not disturbed. 

The wanderer is awestruck by the beauty of nature’s creation.

Somehow from the violent past of these rocks has been born a truth.

The world is scarred.

And despite how the world tries to hide these scars every day,

It is exactly these scars that have made us who we are;

It is exactly these scars that make us, the human race, beautiful.

The wanderer could ask what’s underneath the fog,

But in truth he already knows. 

Underneath this fog is potential beauty.

It is beauty that we do not allow ourselves to see

Because we are afraid that we will poison it with our gaze.

There is no mystery here.  There is only beauty.