"The best way to know God is to love many things."

On buffaloes, shattered souls, and the transcendence of snow

“The best way to know God is to love many things.” — Vincent van Gogh

While out hiking last winter, I saw a buffalo. I stood by it in a field blanketed with snow. I captured it in a photo, lounging on the frozen grass, with the mountains and a naked cottonwood tree in the background. It was a moment brimming with wonder, yet I passed by it barely noticing—because I was hungry, and because I was worried about getting a headache.

It's impossible to explain, even to myself, how wonderful it is to be here. I slip past moments of transcendent beauty, one after the other, nearly too fast to know them at all. Yet somehow they know me. They touch me in a kind of recognition, the solidarity of brothers. The buffalo knew me, though I had never seen it before. And I knew him. Just as I knew the crunchy snow I hiked in that morning, and the cerulean blue of the sky, and the tender broken heart of the man who sat at the table next to me at lunch. I looked on them all, and loved them, because I recognized them, because I knew them, though I cannot say how.

This continuous miracle makes it even more impossible to also explain how difficult it is to be here. Every joy is laced with sorrow, every ecstasy tinged with suffering.

Does the buffalo know it is captive? Does it carry the memory of its proud history, when tens of thousands of its brothers and sisters thundered across the Great Plains like an anthem of worship, with none to challenge their right to live free? I cannot say, but the memory haunts the air around the buffalo all the same.

The man at the restaurant, he didn’t know. He shuffled like a dog who'd been beaten daily by his master. He kept his head bowed low, inches from his plate. He scarcely looked up, scarcely said a word. He was beautiful, but life had beaten that truth out of him, so he did not remember. But I see him, and remember for him, and in this way, I carry his burden, if only for a moment. I love him, and it hurts.

Even the simple beauty of the snow will wound me if I but take off my shoes and let it.