Natural Beauty in the Mundane Moment

A Snow-covered bench flanks Moon Lake at the newly-reopened Hebei College of Finance (Baoding, China; picture by Ryan Bettwy)

It’s not that natural beauty doesn’t exist in Baoding, but it’s something that you have to search for more intentionally than, say, if the mountains stretched out before a blue, spotless sky all around you. I mourn on days when the sky is overcast and can’t be seen, which happens often here due to our proximity to Beijing, China (one hour by train).

Yesterday, however, I was confronted with the most beautiful natural scene I have witnessed in all of my time in Baoding. The moment came and went like a mouse darting out of its hole, grabbing the crumbs of a slovenly-eaten dinner, and exiting his way back to the hole again, just swift enough to yank his tail away from the sweeping eyes of the table-sitting eaters. I wasn’t expecting it as I neared the underpass leading out to the Olympic Gymnastics Training Center stationed in central Baoding, a mainstay on my bike route, no more than any man reclining after dinner at his table expects to see a mouse stealing the remnants of his feast hoarded for fellow varmints in their hole, but there it was, the image painted through the centuries onto the canvas of the present moment:

I saw two dozen birds circling around a group of apartments that rose awkwardly across the landscape off to my left like primary school boys craning their necks in the class picture to look just a bit taller than the rest of the boys. Their attitude was for naught, for their stage was stolen as I saw over them to the rare, clear sunset of Baoding, something I’ve only heard whispers of, like rumors of healthcare progress or the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series: something I’ve heard described and dreamed of for decades, but never quite able to get over the hump. Here it was, inviting me to drink in the warmth of the dying sun stretching yellow and orange and fading into green and blue as I ventured on. The uphill climb snaking unconsciously through traffic as I continued taking in the view brought the revelation of several snow-covered evergreen trees, which proved to be the actual destination that the birds I was watching circled. Even with the furious traffic around me, I felt confident that I was experiencing a unique moment that most motorists were likely to glance over without a second thought, which forced me again to mourn not only the obvious, days when the sky is covered, but also the days when the sky is laid to bear on our lives and I am not open enough to allow the moment to press in around me as a daily Ebenezer of faithfulness the likes of which come only in the seeking heart.
Amidst this moment, I cursed the circumstance of having forgotten my groceries outside the coffee shop where I’d been planning my first week of classes and reading a great memoir called ‘Tis by American-Irish author and teacher, Frank McCourt. Since several of the groceries I bought at the Da Ren Fa were perishable, I decided that it was a bad idea to bring them into the coffee shop, but instead buried them in the snow so that they could stay for the two hours that I inevitably spent in the shop. This resulted in the demise of my ponderous moment as I U-turned across buses and taxi’s zooming by, knowing that the seekers heart must rejoice both in the profound and the mundane, such as when you forget your groceries that you buried in the snow to try to save money on refrigerating.