Bankrupt Descriptors

A while back I left my apartment around midnight and ran for about an hour. The snowflakes fell small and slow. They resembled glitter in the streetlights. At one point I took a right onto the trails—just me, the darkness, the light of the snow. I was fortunate enough to have been the first to run the trails since the snow fell. No other footprints marred the landscape.

Okay, stop. As I describe this, I’m sickened.  The description looks like any other winter night. There’s nothing special about it, yet there was something special about it, something that I cannot portray with my limited vocabulary. My brain scrolls through bankrupt descriptors, and as the words tick by, I check them off one by one and give up.   Attempting to describe this night has only served to silence me, to humble me. Maybe one of the precursors for beauty is that it can only be spoken through gasps, odd facial expressions, and absolute humility.  And if that’s the case, maybe it’s okay to receive confused looks and crinkled noses at my pathetic descriptions, which reminds me,

Last fall a friend of mine found a salamander for the first time. Even at 25 years old, she was so enthused that, as we ran through the woods, she stopped to show me the exact log it had been hiding under.

And then I recall when my little cousin, Joe, found a baby turtle. It was about the size of his thumb—cute.

“So, Joe, do you have a name for your turtle?”

He smiled, letting it crawl across his palm, “Yup.  Joe.”

As he passed it on to his little sister, she went on, “But what if it’s a girl?”

Joe shrugged his shoulders, “Then I’ll call her Josephine…but Joe for short.”

And as he ran off to find a camera, I had to look at the turtle again, extra carefully this time, because there must be something…

Most walk right by the sculpture, eager to see flashier pieces of art.  My dad, however, ponders the bronze and says under his breath, “He’s probably trying to pass his wisdom on to the younger generation.” The sculpture is an old man beside his grandson. He has a beard, a cane, and his bronze wrinkles are cut deep, especially around the eyes. A few weeks later my nieces come to visit. They take a picture with Papa beside the sculpture. Dad acts almost reluctant to take the picture, as if humbled by the prospect of being compared to the old man.  

And as I think on these instances of others’ experienced beauty (C.S. Lewis may call it glimpses of joy?), I run through the shin-deep snow, an empty palate awaiting the paint of my shadowy footprints…and revel at the fact that I can only gasp and continue on.