You don’t need to Photoshop nature.

You just can’t improve on perfection.

When I step into nature, I sometimes wonder why we (humans) bother creating any art at all. I suppose we like to see what we can create and, well, it’s fun and all. But if I’m looking for beauty or something to intrigue my senses, you don’t have to look very far. Just take a step into nature, it’s truly all you need.

It’s odd, I am impressed and appreciate great technology, I’m a music lover (especially live music as I’m so far from being a musician myself), and I love beautiful things. I appreciate them, I admire how they’re made, I envy those talents who make them. But then you see a flower or even, in the case of Utah and Arizona, a rock massaged over millions of years by water. Rocks and water. Really? That’s it? Rocks, water and millions of years and you get colors, formations and beauty that goes beyond what we could have imagined. We humans even have imaginations, vivid ones. But still, even with our powerful brains, it’s hard to get one up on nature.

I don’t even know how to Photoshop something like this.

Photoshopping would ruin it, make it worse, make it not real. It would add a human touch. At best, we can copy, emulate, try to do something similar–or different. But nature just does it, it’s just there. It’s not even looking for admiration. Why does it do it? A peacock and the animal kingdom have their reasons (survival, reproduction, etc.). But what about a narrow gorge carved out of Navajo sandstone only because water needed a place to go? The water and sandstone didn’t make a deal, they didn’t work this out together, they’re separate parts of the same equation. Do they work together? Or are they just individual elements co-existing?

Maybe we spent too much time in caves, canyons and mountain tops this past spring break.

Or maybe I don’t spend enough time there the rest of the year.