artfelt photography: 05.13

My surroundings in China have a hazy grey filter over them.

Everything is clothed in dust. Leaves are dull and the sky is murky most days.

The exception to this is usually the day after it rains. Things come alive, and I feel like I’ve entered wonderland. The colors are bursting once again and I remember that this is what life should look like.

We drove an hour out of Xi'an into the Qinling Mountains the day after a great downpour. The further away we get from the city, the less modest the trees become. They are beginning to shake off their dust cloaks, and show their real selves. As our van trudges up into the mountains and drops us off, we are seated in a valley, looking up to the sky at the places we’ll climb. There are some subtle hints of grey rock but overall a forest paints these mountains. You can’t even see all of them, in the distance they begin to get foggy-like. The sky is bright blue once again, there are pure white clouds stretching their skinny fingers trying to hold hands with the forest-covered mountains. My eyes are confused because all of the trees are naked now, allowed to show off their green. The grass is undone and natural.

In China, they don’t allow these places to remain as they are, but insist on creating an obvious way of how one should get there. Their best assessment of this is a ladder of stone. Steps, thousands and thousands of steps become our leader until we reach a small village where we’ll spend the night.

After a few minutes of climbing stone upon stone, we all find out just how much of a city girl Jade really is. We’re in nature now, and of course there are spiders and mosquitoes and bees. None of them go unnoticed from her shrieks. But I am simply in a trance, listening to the predictable patterned sound of my team’s steps in conjunction with the beauty that my eyes have been suppressed from.

When it comes to finding beauty, I am pacified fairly easily. I can find beauty in most places, most things. When it’s just there for me without having to try or work at it, it’s a sort of gratuity. Being in nature feels like God coming down and lending me his sight.