Lightning

Of the many things art can do, it can ask us to pause with wonder and awe.

The Lightning Field by Walter de Maria — a sculpture meant to be walked, viewed, and experienced — is an arrangement of 400 stainless steel poles, each over 20 feet in height, spread in a grid across a square mile of western New Mexico desert.

With or without lightning, the installation calls viewers to experience and appreciate nature in a new way.

Like many great works of art, it asks us questions and allows us to find our own answers — or to just sit quietly with the questions.

Even without traveling to New Mexico, perhaps just knowing about The Lightning Field will help us to pause with a different kind of reverence the next time we see a streak of electricity spanning the sky.