the beauty of nature touches us as something great that goes beyond us. man comes from nature and returns to it. an inkling of the measure of human life within the immensity of nature wells up inside us when we come upon the beauty of a landscape that has not been domesticated are carved down to human scale. we feel sheltered, humble and proud at once. we are in nature, in this immeasurable form that we will never understand and now, in a moment of heightened experience, no longer need to because we sense that we ourselves are part of it.
i look out into the landscape; i gaze at the sea on the horizon, look at the masses of water; i walk across the fields to the acacias; i look at the elder blossoms, at the juniper tree and become still.
she is bathing in the sicilian sea and dives under water. her heart misses a beat. a huge fish passes close by silent and infinitely slow. its movements are untroubled and powerful and elegant. they have the self-evidence of millennia.
-peter zumthor
thinking architecture
