This weekend I finally found something that I had wanted for a very long time.

I wanted a sailfish. I felt dumb even admitting it here a few times.  Why in the world did I want a sailfish on my wall?  I remember a fish {was it a sailfish?} on my grandparent’s wall growing up and I’ve always been drawn to the taxidermied fish on the wall in cheap seafood restaurants. But, I could never explain why I wanted one.

It just so happened that that very same day, I found something else I had long wanted.  Some mounted antlers. Another thing I couldn’t explain.  The whitewashed antlers both pretend and real are somewhat trendy right now but, I wanted the real thing.  I’ll tell you more about how I found them in another post.  Right now I’m talking about the why.

Saturday morning my husband and I were upstairs. We heard the boys shouting, “The tree is falling down!”.  I remember wondering what tree I have in my house that could fall down and if they were building something with my bonsai tree.  Then we heard the groan.

This majestic old tree made our rental house feel like home.

We did most of our photo shoot with Amber under the canopy of the tree.

It had rained steady but not too heavy for 24 hours.

And the tree just leaned.

He’s been growing next to the creek for a hundred years?  And the roots just gave way.  And I found myself mourning a tree and then feeling bad because there are mothers losing children and I am morning a backyard tree. In a house we don’t even own.

Later that day I was reading and came across this quote on Ann’s blog

What kinds of articles are most likely to be emailed by users of the New York Times website? Researchers did a six-month study of the most-emailed list and discovered that, more than utility or surprisingness or feel-good factors (which were all helpful for an article’s prospects), it was a sense of awe that made a given article most likely to be shared.

And I thought about Awe.  And awe reminded me of the tree that isn’t mine but I liked to pretend it was.  And I looked up at my fish and realized it was full of awe and when I walked into the sitting room, those antlers stuck out all unbalanced but perfectly placed and I remember we told the hunter who harvested those elk that the antlers were awesome.  He told us that elk antlers are the fastest growing bones on the planet.

Suddenly I realized why I decorated with a rock at Christmas.

I connected the dots of why my landlocked house feels right filled with starfish and sea biscuits and sea fans every month of the year. My fascination with nests and eggs and feathers makes more sense now.  I love to incorporate things in my home that give me a sense of awe. And for me those things are items made by my favorite Designer.

Maybe for you something totally different invokes a feeling of awe.  But it’s worth thinking about, do you have anything truly awe-full in your home?