A balcony view from my room in Park City. 

There’s something about the early morning hours in winter. The rich blues coloring an otherwise monochromatic landscape. The best recent example of this occurred at Park City, where we had a leadership retreat for WGU. My room provided a delightful panoramic view of the surrounding mountains and valley, which to me looked the prettiest during twilight hours of dawn & dusk.

One side of the view at dawn. 

The stillness & quiet of the early morning provides one with the perfect opportunity to reflect on the beauty of life, to appreciate the many precious gifts life offers us. I’m reminded of Wordsworth’s sonnet, “The World Is Too Much with Us,” which points out that time (“late & soon” ) & money (“getting & spending”) enslave us so we forget to value nature (“we lay waste our powers”).  In an increasingly digitized world, nature starts to disappear, replaced by virtual environments. We work and earn, losing contact with the very meaning of why we are here.

The other side of the view at dusk. 

As one of original Romantics, Wordsworth wisely responded to the industrial revolution by warning contemporaries of their folly, & here we are now, centuries later, facing the 4th one. How will we preserve nature? Climate change is real, so will our children see nature as we know it in the world of the future?

These are things to contemplate when we slow down long enough to pay attention.

Glowing lights in Park City.