Every Sense Applauds

Wallace Stegner authored more than 40 novels, short story collections, essay collections, and nonfiction treatises. Often referred to as the "Dean of Western Writers," Stegener earned the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1972 for Angle of Repose and the National Book Award for Fiction in 1977 for The Spectator Bird. A Presbyterian and an Eagle Scout, Stegner taught at the University of Wisconsin and Harvard University before settling at Stanford University for the bulk of his career as a professor of creative writing and literature.

In his lovely hymn to the western landscape titled The Sound of Mountain Water, Stegner reminds us of the enduring beauty of the American West:

I discovered mountain rivers late, for I was a prairie child, and knew only flatland and dryland until we toured the Yellowstone country in 1920, loaded with all the camp beds, auto tents, grub-boxes, and auxiliary water and gas cans that 1920 thought necessary. Our road between Great Falls, Montana, and Salt Lake City was the rutted track that is now Highway 89. Beside a marvelous torrent, one of the first I ever saw, we camped several days. That was Henry's Fork of the Snake.

I gave my heart to the mountains the minute I stood beside this river with its spray in my face and watched it thunder into foam, smooth to green glass over sunken rocks, shatter to foam again. I was fascinated by how it sped by and yet was always there; its roar shook both the earth and me.

When the sun dropped over the rim, the shadows chilled sharply; evening lingered until foam on water was ghostly and luminous in the near-dark. Alders caught in the current sawed like things alive, and the noise was louder. It was rare and comforting to waken late and hear the undiminished shouting of the water in the night. And at sunup it was still there, powerful and incessant, with the slant sun tangled in its rainbow spray, the grass blue with wetness, and the air heady as ether and scented with campfire smoke.

By such a river it is impossible to believe that one will ever be tired or old. Every sense applauds it. Taste it, feel its chill on the teeth: it is purity absolute. Watch its racing current, its steady renewal of force: it is transient and eternal. And listen again to its sounds: get far enough away so that the noise of falling tons of water does not stun the ears, and hear how much is going on underneath -- a whole symphony of smaller sounds, hiss and splash and gurgle, the small talk of side channels, the whisper of blown and scattered spray gathering itself and beginning to flow again, secret and irresistible, among the wet rocks.

Where can you pause this week to breathe in the rainbow spray of the rain, to listen to the snapping of branches outside your window, to watch the purple hue of winter across the horizon? When we scurry through our life with our heads down, hurrying from one obligation to the next, we miss the beauty that God has painted on all sides of us. Take a moment or an hour or an afternoon this week to revel in the majesty that surrounds us -- transient and eternal, whispers of heaven.

Blessings on your week,

Jennie