“Do you see O my brothers and sisters?

It is not chaos or death . . . . it is form and union and plan

. . . . it is eternal life . . . . it is happiness.”

-Walt Whitman “Song of Myself” (1855)

These lines by Whitman, for me, really capture the way I felt when this picture was taken, of myself standing against a breathtaking backdrop of the South-German countryside. The view from where I stood was spectacular and humbling; though it was on the slant of a hill and was no mountaintop, the landscape seemed to have been sculpted by divine hands. I looked down and out into the village with its red clay-colored rooftops, and farther out, at the rectangles of orchards, criss-crossed by a network of rivers and streams which trailed off and away into valleys cradled between more green hilltops and mountains and it all seemed too perfect. In witnessing scenes like this, I perceive an assuring nod, a warming, smile from the Universe.