P of Des Moines, Iowa asks:

Q. What is the most beautiful thing GCW has witnessed?

A. I feel the energies of all beings as we are all connected in the magnificent web of creation. The exhilaration, the throb and pulse, the ebb and flow of the energies of life are known to me. They are unseen to most, but real – the building blocks of your visible and palpable world.

As I witness, I too am a participant. I feel and know the heart expanding love of a mother for her baby as they pass under my branches. I feel the pure joy in flocks of birds as they dance in synchronized motion, the effortless soaring of vultures as they spread their wings on hot sunlight and fly figure eights high above my crown. The earth thawing, new life unfolding each spring. Ever the same cycle, always new life. Fresh. Green. Eager.

The little barred owl that visits and feeds nearby, keeping me company on short summer nights; the dance of stars and planets; the woodpecker’s call. The rain pouring down, cleansing my leaves, flowing over my bark, filling my thirsty roots; the falling away of dead branches that have served their life’s purpose. The delicate shell like fungus that takes its sustenance from the downed wood. It is all beautiful!

The intricacy of transparent insect wings; the flowers of spring, the fruits and seeds of summer and fall,the silence of winter; waving sunlit grasses; the feeding butterflies, spreading and folding their jewel like wings. Patient deer feeling in the valley. The happy sounds of children playing; nestlings calling for their supper from the nest. The flash of a bluebird; goldfinches feeding on the thistles. It is all beautiful!

The night sky, the sunset when day is done and the sunrise to promise a new beginning; this place in which I am rooted and make my home; this living earth that feeds and supports all life. This breathtaking green planet; mud and stone, water, bedrock, and molten metal, the foundation on which we exist. I have seen and felt all of this and it is all exquisitely beautiful!