Six years ago, I stood in this very same basin up at Alta, in these very same meadows, still singing with color and light.
I had just upended my entire life like a bookshelf that bore one too many stories on its back, driven across the country in an old Subaru that was burning oil from Tennessee on, and read from a tattered thrifted guidebook on the floor of my then-empty apartment that Utah had some of the world's best wildflowers.
I decided I would go find them.
If living out West has taught me anything, it is that in life and in love and in anything really worth its salt, joy and awe are practices that offer themselves up to us as choices that we can pursue, again, and again, and again.
One of the first things that drew me to Mary Oliver's words was her constant plea to notice; to pay attention:
"Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it."
"To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work."
"Attention is the beginning of devotion."
At first, I didn't love the word. It conjured memories of grade-school reprimands to get my nose out of a book about magic or to stop wondering why the leaves on the tree outside the classroom window turned belly-up before a rainstorm.
But, I decided that seeing as Mary Oliver is a much wiser woman than I, her words were probably well worth digging deep enough to find their roots.
I began to practice, and then I began to realize that maybe those teachers had it wrong all along.
Maybe having your nose in a book about magic or wondering why the leaves on the tree outside the classroom window turn belly-up before a rainstorm are the only kinds of attention worth paying into.
So here I am again,
in a meadow,
in awe,
finding the color,
feeling the light,
filling with gratitude,
devoted.
