Last week, for a miraculous half-hour, I had the ruins of Machu Pichu all to myself. The rest of my family was doing an early morning climb up a treacherous mountain peak (that I had opted out of at the last moment), and the swarms of tourists who would later take over the park had not yet arrived. The fog was lifting off the valley floor, the song of the birds was the only sound other than my footsteps in the gravel. Wandering alone through these centuries-old structures was magic. To stand in the spot where thousands of years ago a civilization of people had built something so lasting in such an inaccessible - yet dramatically beautiful - setting took my breath away. How I could be standing alone in the jungles of Peru while at the same time at home in Manhattan, life existed so completely differently was awe-inspiring.
And so I return to the topic that I so often do - Gratitude. Because isn't awe a form of gratitude? A recognition of the incredible-ness of things? An awareness that you are present to a moment of beauty, strength, or wonder? And one doesn't need to travel miles to experience it. There is awe in a chalk drawing on the sidewalk, a guitar solo on the subway platform, the facade of a beautiful building from New York's turn-of-the-century; in a baby's fingers, a sunset, or a piece of art, whether an oil painting, an exquisite taste, a series of notes in a musical phrase, or a beautifully crafted sentence.
And in the place of quotations to accompany this post, some photos of our recent trip (taken by my husband).
~ Sophie
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