First Snowfall
Today we are in Estes Park, Colorado. The view is spectacular. The scene is one of those Ansel Adam views: the mountains are wild and deadly, shrouded in snow and blowing fog. The clouds are storm clouds, black and shot through with the sublime rays of the setting sun. The mountains draw me, but… where? Or rather, to what, or to whom?
At the Park Visitor Center they have a 20-minute film. It is called “Spirit of the Mountain.” I like the language but it is predictably neo-pagan secular spirituality, limited only to the creation and never about the Creator, only the art and never the artist. This type of naturalism spirituality speaks vacuously of nature in the same way someone might say the canvas and oils have a spirit of their own, while skirting around the soul behind the brush. Art always begs the artist, yes? Otherwise, the “art” is just Deck-the-Walls brainless sentimental kitsch. We buy this stuff because “we like the colors.”
These mountains draw us toward the Artist. According to the Visitor Center film the Paleo-Indians and Arapaho said the mountains came from The Man, The One. The native American soul knows transcendence, the Artist. They didn’t worship the mountain, they revered the creator of the mountain. Are you an artist? How do you know?