Mastering the Art of Awe

Sometimes you see something that sticks with you. Sometimes you think to yourself “I will always remember this” and other times you just hope you will.

It is dark and cool as I pulled away from their driveway at 5am.  I looked back to wave goodbye. Dad and Jill, clad in bathrobes, stood framed in the doorway of their home.  My headlights splashed over them as they held each other and waved goodbye to me. The picture of them there is imbedded in my mind.  I want the image to stay, I want to stay. I want to be in the presence of the love they share for each other and, in turn, heap onto me.  It is something wonderful and something rare. It is awesome in the truest sense of the word.

As I make my way down Highway 83, away from their house, my mind drifts.  I want to go back in time. Perhaps to Wynooski street, in Oregon when I was about 10 years old.  I want to sit at the table and listen to Dad as he sings and cooks his “specialty dish” called “Pasta Mazool”. Later I would learn that it was all the weeks’ leftovers rolled into something mysteriously tasty and edible. I would like to argue with my brothers again about who gets to ride in the front seat of the “Rig” with Dad. The Rig was Dad’s Chevy Suburban and home base for most of our summertime camping and fishing adventures.  That 10-year-old girl had no idea, at the time, how awe-inspiring those simple things would become.

The sky is beginning to lighten and the lake flashes silver between the trees on my right like a kaleidoscope. The road is black and wet. Rain smears on the rear windshield, blurring the road behind me as my car races forward.  Bigfork, Ferndale, Swan Lake, Pony Creek all pass in the white mist that hovers over the road and lies between the dark forest trees.

I am out here all alone. Learning to be alone and at ease with the silence is something we learned from Dad.  We learned to be awed and inspired by the silence, by the beauty, by the simple and the natural things in life.   The sun is ascending and spills across the snowcapped mountain tops, making the peaks look like delicate frosting on a chocolate cupcake.  My thoughts drift back to pancakes and SPAM that we shared camping somewhere in the mountains of Oregon.

The sun is up now as I follow the road twisting and turning past the Mission Mountains.
It is funny how the mind works, looking back yet racing forward. In the magical Montana silence I hear the Hawaiian surf crashing on the beach and my father’s enthusiastic encouragement as we learned to body surf coupled with his warnings of the unharness-able strength of the undertow.

As I entered the town of Seeley Lake the smell of smoke fills my car. My mind flips to a dirt road on a mountainside. We stood outside the Rig and watched Mount St. Helens’ mighty eruption. I remember slipping my hand safely in his as we witnessed this gigantic and awesome display of Mother Nature’s power.

My brothers and I are fortunate to have been raised in the light of “awe”. It is a message not often taught or understood in today's’ world but was perhaps the mantra of my father. Throughout our lives, he steadily enriched us with a heavy dose of Awe.

“Be careful in your quest for knowledge that you don’t lose your ability to be inspired by the simple things in life.” Is a quote from In the Shadow of Babylon, a book that he wrote.  The book itself is an amazing adventure tale, but looking deeper it teaches some incredible lessons of Awe, Honor, Knowledge, Visualization, and Attitude.

His book goes onto say “Be in awe of all things…for all things are connected in ways we can never know”.

Fast forward to today and we are standing in the Mall Of America. It is an amazing multi-level structure with its balconies, white shiny floors and dangling chandeliers. The plethora of goods and activities offered here is mind-boggling. As we wait for Jill, he shares details of another Mall, one he visited in Dubai with an indoor ski slope.  The look on his face as he described the children skiing down a hill in full snow gear while it was a mere 115F outside was incredulous, amazed, he was truly in the state of Awe.

Someday I hope to master the Art of Awe, but for now, I will continue to be grateful for who and what I have and the simple awesomeness of the world around me.

Awe is a beautiful thing.

Look for and enjoy it daily.

Leslie Kemmet

8.5.2019

PS… if you are interested in reading In the Shadow of Babylon you can order it on Amazon.com