It's been awhile since I've done one of these, so here's the background - what was the last most beautiful moment that you experienced? It's easy to get caught up in the grind and slog of all the things that are going wrong and should be going better - it seems that I'm there a lot of the time myself. But it's important to recognize that we're working to making things better, and to keep in mind the beautiful moments that inspire us.
In my experience, moving from theory to reality involves a very serious adjustment of scale - awesome ideas in theory take a hell of a lot of work to accomplish in reality. I'm lucky to have found a place where my work is increasingly focussed on small real accomplishments, but it's easy to get ground down in the details, and it's important to be able to step back now and then and say "That was pretty cool!". I come to DK for inspiration, and I always get great inspirational stories of moments of beauty here.
I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours!
The last most beautiful thing that I did was dig a hole in the ground. A very special hole - a vernal pool. And I didn't do it on my own - it took a lot of support from a lot of people. We ended up with a very good hole - so good, you barely could notice it! The goal was to incorporate a vernal pool into an existing forest, so the end result needed to fit very well into the landscape.
The most beautiful moment was walking back to the pool in a quiet moment after the volunteers had left. There were a variety of birds, local residents, various species, checking the pool out, and they seemed cautiously pleased. This project was an enormous amount of work and various humans have been impressed, but the most satisfaction I got from this project was watching those birds frolick in their new habitat!
So tell me, what was your last most beautiful moment?