When I arrived in Wyoming, I fancied vibrant yellows and then deep rusty oranges - the colors of aspen leaves in the fall. For the first time in my life, I am now drawn to pigmented blue greens that mirror the deepest hydrothermal pools in Yellowstone. Every shade of green found in plant life has been a constant for me since I knew the words for colors. It amazes me day after day how the natural world holds all the colors in the palette of my life, and beyond. Humans seem to be the only animals that think about colors differently than our fellow earth dwellers.
A pine marten swaps out its brown summer coat for white winter one to blend in with the snow as well as keep warm (white hairs are hollow and trap warm air), a male western tanager has a vibrant orange head as if dipped in paint to attract lady friends, and a red fox camouflages into its background to appear invisible to its red-green colorblind predator and prey. Animals are practical with their colors whether it be for food, reproduction, or protection. Humans, on the other hand, are less practical. Oftentimes people will flirt with camouflage and dress in earthy fall colors that mirror the season, but just as often you will see a vibrant red dress on a pale sandy beach or a hurried runner rushing by with a flash of neon.
The closest we come to biological practicality is wearing colors we think complement us, or hunters and military wearing camouflage. Mankind mixes colors with identity, emotions, and feelings. Science has even discovered that various colors can invoke different feelings in us; red for passion, purple for creativity, yellow for happiness, blue for calm, and so on. Humans attach so much meaning to colors and even connect them with personal identity. Social stigma labels blue for boys and pink for girls, and birthstone assignments can be noted as colorful adornments around necks and fingers. Mankind is a walking rainbow, both random and intentional… if those two can even be simultaneously possible.
The palette is beautiful. It is easy to let the eyes linger on deep greens lush with life, or vibrant turquoise dripping with the notions of mystical waters. When I was younger, I wished I could stay in these vibrant places and skip over the darkness or dullness of the various parts of human existence, even more so contrasted in youth. With time I learned that life has both light and dark, vibrant and dull, and they both are vital towards the human experience. The most energetic and bright parts of life cannot exist in solidarity from the quieter mundane and sometimes painful parts. The abstract artist needs the bright white canvas to coat with dreary strokes from the brush, just as much as the artist needs the highs of love and the lows of loss to move them to put brush on paper to begin with. The coffee and wine fanatics find immense joy in extracting flavor nuances from the visually consistent dark brown and red liquids. A tarnished bronze statue oxidizes to adorn patches of vibrant green. The visually mundane black words on a white page can invoke feelings of love and passion all from deriving meaning and understanding from the plain words. It is a union between opposing but complementary forces.
I meet up with an old friend who I haven’t seen in a year. We soak in natural hot springs by a river and talk about everything one could ever talk about in an afternoon. The hot water soothes our bodies and the steam opens our hearts and minds as it opens our pores. These hot springs are not vibrant like the ultra-hot ones in Yellowstone, no, these are murky and muddy with strings of green seaweed that lazily wrap around the toes. The white snow surrounding the banks of the river is a bright highlight on what is a dark and rocky shoreline. A bald eagle sores above us, its’ white head and dark brown body ever so distinguishable. I feel like a true creature of the earth in this state of being, rooted into the dirt and mud, bound to the same gravity that pulls the water to the earth. Soon, there is too much heat so we submerge our bodies in the river a few strides away. Pain, pain, pain, comes with the dip, but emerging from the water I feel renewed with a new sense of clarity. We go back and forth from hot to cold for the next couple of hours, each exit from the icy waters feeling reborn.
Masochism, no, this is our way of juggling the highs and the lows. I can see the hot and the cold both having vibrancy and dullness to them. The woozy and groggy feeling of overheating, the comfort of the warmth, the dark painfulness of the cold water, the bright flash of clarity and renewal the coldness brings. Both extremes are used together to create a wonderful new experience, ours leading to connection.
On the drive home I stop and wait for a few deer to cross the street in no hurry. They leave behind a deer that was hit by a vehicle. I wonder if their slow walk is one of apathy or mourning. Humans sheath themselves in a black, the same color behind the closed eyelids of the dead. There is no blackness in the procession of deer, only the black in their eyes, noses, and hooves. The occurrence of death slips away as quick as it came, both deer and humans seemingly moving on. What color represents a non-human death that no one mourns? Is it still black, or do we keep our colorful lives within the human experience?
In the coming years, I wonder what colors will come into my life, and what ones will leave. As I look up to the mountains outside my house, I savor the pinks, blues, greens, purples, yellows, oranges, and blacks. Seeing more of this planet I see new colors that I never knew nature could create. I hope to always be moved by colors, even if it is a silly human thing that has no bearing on survival. For humans, our consciousness does not allow us to solely rely on basic methods of survival like other animals. No, colors are not so silly in the grand scheme of things… but they sure can be. Contrast.
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