What's up, doc?

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OK, so I just don’t have the psychic energy to follow the news anymore. I know they are just following their old mantra “If it bleeds, it leads!” But really.  I, on the other hand, am hankering for something that allows me to feel good about our world and who we are. To that end I’m spending more of my screen time differently. 

No surprise, I am guided in this screen odyssey by the tenets of Distilled Harmony, particularly the first two: Foster Harmony and Enable Beauty. Being a nature junky and photography geek, it wasn’t long before I stumbled upon the Netflix series, Night on Earth, sort of the progeny of the earlier Netflix series, Planet Earth.  But shot entirely at night with cutting-edge, low-light and infrared video technology. Both the new series and it’s older ancestor speak eloquently to those first two tenets and set me off binging on whatever pops up when I enter “nature documentaries” into the YouTube search engine.  

But this adventure requires a bit of explication. First of all these programs are not Disney, the Muppets, or Toy Story. These programs are not animation of any sort.  The programs I select - I have just finished a couple on the National Parks of Africa, and a National Geographic winsome piece on a barn-owl’s search for a new home - are “real life” stories that feature prey and predators. And so adults need to preview before sharing with little ones. Remember, the harmony of nature really is a “circle of life” and that includes death. So to foster harmony we must learn that true harmony results from complex notes scored not solely in concert with, but also rubbing up against, one another. Nature, especially when captured fairly and artfully in these documentaries, does just that.

The treatment of second tenet, Enable Beauty, staggers the imagination in these new works. And here I must truly give the new technology its due. One of my favorite all time nature documentaries is Yellowstone in Winter, shot in 1984. Sadly it is one of those things, like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, treasured best in memory. With the original Yellowstone in Winter I found myself vainly trying to adjust the focus on my iPad. You can’t do that. I noticed that there are newer HD versions, and I will give them a try. But it was my disappointment with the original that prompted me to include the word “new” in my nature documentaries searches. Incredible. Now I often have to view each video twice, as all through the first screening I am saying, often to the chagrin of anyone who happens to be watching with me, “How can they get that shot?” “Where is the camera?” “Why doesn’t the gator eat them?”  Then someone says, “Will you be quiet and let us watch?” So we start over.

But there is something far more important than the astounding technical quality of these documentaries, and that is what they reveal about harmony and beauty. I must admit that most often when I think about harmony and beauty, the dual cores that support Distilled Harmony, I think about the arts; music, painting, sculpture, literature, architecture - those tangible manifestations of our species at our creative pinnacle. However, a few hours of peering at our world, our universe, through the incredible lenses and microphones of today’s nature documentarians reveal that far deeper layers of harmony and beauty can be discerned in the quiet contemplation of realms external to, or relatively untouched by, our species. As Shakespeare said, “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horacio, . . .”

Well, I find that I have written myself into the proverbial corner. I’m trying to use words on a screen to describe experiences that we need to experience through our eyes and ears. I hear tell that some creatives are making significant headway in revealing these worlds through virtual reality platforms. That is truly exciting, and I look forward to the experience. But in the meantime, I will content myself with binging on “best new nature documentaries.” Come on in! The water’s great!

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