Dear Jenny:

Something quite remarkable happened to me when I saw you the other night. I fell in love. I swear I didn't mean to. What a shock! After all, I only dropped by for a brief visit after the many years since I last saw you. I know you didn't remember me.

We spent only two hours together, but when it came time for me to leave you there, basking in the silver glow of a full moon, I felt a terrible loss.

My longings were those of young lovers everywhere upon tender partings, except that I am not at al l young. My face has become drawn and wrinkled with age. And you are much older than I. How is it that you never show the scars of time? Indeed, you looked even more radiant than the first time you took my breath away, so long ago.

Allow me to tell you how you made me feel, how you made my heart skip a beat. This is the way I will always remember our incredible evening together.

The sun had just sagged down behind that jagged mile high rock fence called the Teton Mountains. Shafts of light, split by the peaks, radiated overhead, illuminating the green valley and timbered mountains in the east.

It was dusk when I stepped down the soft forest path to be near you, and to gaze a long moment across the dark, glassy waters and up to the granite that rises majestically on the far side. A fish jumped. A chipmunk scrambled for ripe berries in the bushes along the water's edge. Tall pine trees stood mute and motionless as the cloak of night descended steadily and gently into the valley.

The darkness was brief. Suddenly a huge, golden globe began to crest the eastern horizon, washing the shadows in honey. It was a rare "blue moon," the second full moon of August. As it rose, its light turned a shiny silver, rendering as luminescent the snow capped peaks above. Jenny, you too were radiant and beautiful in that glow.

This was but the beginning of our perfect evening. You were yet to teach me the lesson that made me fall for you all over again, a lesson you were uniquely qualified to gently impart. I can honestly say it has changed my life.

For me, daily life is awash in words. More written and spoken words offend my desk and assault my ears every day than I can begin to perceive and sort. Yet, you used not a single one.

At first it made me impatient and uncomfortable just standing there, not knowing what to say or do. As I looked at you, anticipating what might happen next, I had no choice but to focus on your aura of peace and solitude. It was then that I began to learn your secrets.

Finally, I began to realize that the silence was not absolute, as I noticed a distant but distinct roar. My ears, trained to sift out the ever present sound of traffic that permeates my life "back east," took a moment to register that we were miles from any highway. I scrutinized the far horizon for the source of this soft but constant invasion.

Abruptly, I saw it, its top shimmering in silver. It was the crest of a great, distant waterfall I had failed to notice. Now it was obvious, even dominant. The glaciers above were feeding the valley, a key link in nature's cycle. I was embarrassed for not having immediately perceived something so conspicuous.

Nearer, minnows were snapping at small flies skimming the water's surface. Reflected moonlight highlighted the ripples, drawing my focus to the places where tiny living creatures were performing their assigned roles in the orchestrated struggle for life. I hadn't noticed that before, either.

Somewhere in the tall trees a tiny movement caught my attention. While peering through the darkness for its source, I reeled when a red eye suddenly winked back at me. As I stared, it became clear that the red eye was not in a tree at all, but was six miles above this magical scene, and moving.

Soon I could see the aluminum skin of a jumbo jet, its four engines trailing silky ribbons of silver, quickly fading streamers connecting the tiny spotlights of stars shimmering on the black velvet cloak of infinity.

It all came together for me there in the sky: modern technology guided by the stars -- stars strategically stationed as unfailing nighttime sentinels for travelers on life's journey. It was a striking realization of symmetry and order. At the speed of a bullet, the jet was streaking a mile every six seconds toward the northeast -- to Chicago perhaps, or New York, or even London.

I thought about those three hundred people high above. They would be finishing their dinners, checking their watches, tending their children, and perhaps dreaming of friends they were sad to leave behind or would soon be overjoyed to see.

I felt close to them, a sense of cosmic kinship, and yet they were oblivious of me. Moreover, they knew nothing of you and so never knew their loss.

The deep thunder of four powerful engines echoed for a moment off solid rock and was soon gone, along with the people who had, for just an instant, been so close and yet unaware of the magical scene they had contributed to, and which was yet unfolding beneath their wings.

Jenny, perhaps you noticed my moment of solitary reflection just then. I was pondering how odd I felt to live in a world in which my senses have been conditioned to tune things out, rather than in. Life sometimes requires that. Computer messages, ringing phones, people with questions, problems and complaints, screaming sirens and screaming headlines, issues of all manner cry out for attention day and night.

These things assault and abuse the senses. To cope is to tune many of them out, to reverse and misuse one's precious ability to perceive, applying it instead as a shield against perception.

How odd to live where sanity is preserved by keeping so many things at arm's reach. In your own quiet way, you helped me understand how sad, how wrong that is. Since our precious moments together, I have reflected on that many times. It will guide my remaining days.

The lesson I learned is this: in our insatiable quest to know and be and do so many things, there is an insidious and dangerous snare: our unconscious but steady construction of thick cocoons of human isolation in the thick of all that life has to offer.

How odd that one can be placed in a firestorm of exciting and important cerebral and mechanical activity, and as a result become, in certain significant ways, not more aware, but markedly less. Yet most of us proudly carry on as though nobody could be more in tune with, in control of, their surroundings.

That night with you, I was awakened, becoming more aware. Perhaps only you could have taught me how to do that. By forcing me to use my senses in search of things I at first overlooked, I came to me that the real value of our human ability to perceive is the gathering and processing of the data and sensations we need to truly understand the nuances of life's small, important treasures. They make all the difference in our time here.

How strange that when our senses are overloaded they lose and even reverse their most valuable functions. We are served and strengthened, the gaps in our lives are best filled, when we search with keen intensity not for the things big and obvious, but for life's subtle, all important details.

Jenny, how will I ever be able to thank you for your seduction, for enticing me ever closer, that you might share your priceless secrets? I will never again think of you as a thing of beauty, but one having nothing important to say. I will no longer simply admire you. Instead, I will forever love you, for you helped me learn to love life.

There are things in life that can't be predicted. Once they happen, one is forever changed. You have added meaning and power to my life. I only wish I could find the words to express the depth of my appreciation and admiration, and that you could understand those words.

A strange sensation comes to me. I want to share you with everyone I know, and yet desperately to keep you all to myself, to hoard you as a special secret for only me to know.

The sights, sounds and smells of my wonderful, rare evening with you will forever rest gently in the warm recesses of my mind and heart. If only you could know the perfection of your timing. At just the right moment, you did so much to strengthen and to salvage my sagging spirit and soul. From today on, I will celebrate live at a higher level.

Until I join you again, I will speak reverently of you to all who will listen, explaining as best I can the things you shared with me that special, glorious evening.

Yes, I will regale them with tales of your beauty, there in the shimmering moonlight. There will be a special lilt in my voice and radiant flash of inspiration in my eyes as I tell them how a beautiful, perfect little lake named Jenny at the base of the Grand Tetons is a precious natural treasure -- and my deeply cherished friend.

Until we meet again,

Don Hardy

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