Serendipity at the Lion's Bridge

October 29 2017

After Dr. Redick let us roam on the trail, I went with Lizzy farther into the woods. As we turned the corner, a deer ran in front of Lizzy and stared at us after meeting with two other dear not so far away. We pulled out our phones to take a video but kept it short. It felt rude as if we had interrupted some sort of meetup. The previous class, when we sat on the bridge steps, we were told that beauty, as Annie Dillard stated, happens whether we are there to experience it or not. Therefore, we should try to see as much as we can and appreciate that we had the opportunity to see it. The deer we saw were a reminder of that.

In a sense, the park we went to is a “spiritual void” as Lane puts it in Landscapes of the Sacred (52). It was not established as a religious place; however, it can have a special meaning to some. Although I did not find it spiritual, it made me feel strangely at home. I usually do not miss living in West Virginia because it was not the best place to grow up in. One thing that I look fondly on was the woods in my neighborhood on the hill. The sounds of birds and crunching leaves occasionally interrupted by the sound of a car was eerily familiar. The euphoric feeling I get when Liz and I came across the deer took me back to when I would play games with my cousins. The last thing that struck it as personally significant was when we passed an old man and his dog. The dog was the same breed as my grandfathers and the man was wearing a large cowboy type hat similar to his.

Although we went to the Lion’s Bridge, my interest was in the water and in the trees. These serendipitous events were examples of kairos, moments that could not be repeated (Lane 41).