I was chatting with a friend the other day about how kids have this innate sense of wonder about the world. As we get older, it seems to fade away. Our surroundings become less magical, less fascinating and immersive. A sense of wonder is a valuable asset. It can carry you through the worst times, and it completely solves the problem of boredom along the way. I am always watching for what can give me that feeling of being pulled out of myself, of feeling as if, for a moment I can see things beyond myself, or that I am part of something much higher than I am.

One of those feelings hit me on an evening drive with my husband a few days ago. The sun was going down, and we got out of the car to stroll along a bit on a dirt road. There were big clumps of this ‘thistle’ like plant growing along the sides of the road. The plants were a very deep purple, even in the shadows, and when I looked more closely, I found they were not at all ordinary. The plants look like pineapples and stars growing together, and the shades of color are unbelievable. Transporting!

Purple is the color of kings, and the shapes of the leaves coming from the flower of this plant are like the frozen tails of shooting stars. The combination of the two wild ideas in one little weed was almost astral, like something you’d expect to see on another planet, yet here they are, quietly growing along the roadside.

I looked them up when we got home, just to see if I could find any lore on these guys that might grow the story in my mind. “Eryngo or false purple thistle (Eryngium leavenworth) is a spiny thistlelike plant that is actually a member of the parsley family. Its royal purple blossom and purple bracts and stems brighten the Central Texas landscape in late summer and fall. The Greeks apparently thought of it as a thistle, as the name Eryngium means thistle. The botanical name Leavenworth is in honor of Dr. M. Conkling Leavenworth, an American botanist, physician, and military man who traveled in the South collecting plants. Eryngo is excellent for dried arrangements, keeping its color for many weeks”, Elizabeth Silverthorne says in her book, Legends and Lore of Texas Wildflowers.

I’m bringing some of this false purple thistle home to remind me that there are things outside ready and waiting to deepen and restore this sense of wonder. It’s almost as if we’re being beckoned and taught by these things. I think wonder is a gateway to a deeper sense of being, to finding who we truly are, and to understanding more about the world and even God himself. The fact that moments of true wonder, these flashes of something beyond ourselves, something magical and so deeply moving that it speaks directly to the soul without needing a word, can be found in something as simple as a weed growing by the roadside, is astounding to me. I like how the poet TS Eliot explained such encounters, as he gets down to the root of the everyday vs things that transcend, for a short time, our days and even time itself. Eliot wrote:

For most of us, there is only the unattended

Moment, the moment in and out of time,

The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,

The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning

Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music

While the music lasts.

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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns appear Thursdays on BrownwoodNews.com