View #17

Thursday, December 25, 2025

Gyre, Thomas Sayre, 1999, concrete and steel

It’s finally here. After discovering what Santa left in our stockings and enjoying our traditional Christmas Day breakfast of sausage roll, Moravian sugar cake, and ambrosia, my husband and I are taking a leisurely walk through the central part of the NCMA park. The weather is so mild we don’t need coats; some people are even wearing shorts. Along the way, I point out some of the pieces I’ve already written about in this blog, including Mark di Suvero’s bright red exclamatory Ulalu that punctuates the museum entrance and Thomas Sayre’s earthy Gyre that spirals through the Upper Meadow.

When we get to the pond, we decide to take our time, and sit a while on the overlook. As I bask in the soft shine of the winter light, I listen to the wind stirring old leaves and dry grasses and to the gentle rustling of birds in the underbrush and gradually realize this seemingly serene winter scene is a bevy of activity.

Recently, I read Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age by Katherine May. It’s a wonderful collection of thought-provoking and lyrical essays that really resonated with me. I was so enchanted by it that I gave it to several of my friends for Christmas in hopes they, too, will find it as inspiring as I have. In the first essay titled “Lately,” May describes enchantment as “the ability to sense magic in the everyday, to channel it through our minds and bodies, to be sustained by it.”

Rather than dependent on spectacular beauty, May believes her ability to experience enchantment when she was a child “came from a deep engagement with the world around me, the particular quality of experience that accompanies close attention, the sense of contact that emerges from noticing.”

I spent my childhood playing in the backyards and neighboring woods of the North Carolina Piedmont and grew up with a natural affinity for the quiet, subtle beauty of its landscape. It speaks to me of home, of belonging. Here, by the pond, I feel that undeniable connection once again. My breath deepens and slows while I look around and try to take it all in. As usual, the longer I look, the more I see.

The striking silhouette of bare tree branches against a bold blue sky.

A collection of knobby knees gathered around the trunk of a cypress tree.

Reflections of light and shadow on the water.

The mix of textures, shapes, and shades of color.

And I feel a softening in the edges in my world, a blurring of the boundaries between nature, art, and self. The past and the future fall away. There is just this one expansive moment in time and it is so lovely. What a bounty of gifts to receive.