At the entrance to a farmhouse, now abandoned, the weeds have choked out most of the wild flowers. Still, a brave stand of Queen Anne’s Lace rises along the fence line. Its stems are fragile, but they shoot for sky, baring intricate white blooms.

If vistas draw us out, intricacies draw us in. Depth is as intoxicating as breadth. It woos us with a finer world that one may only enter if she stops, bends, moves in for the tight shot.

Rewards from the Queen Anne’s Lace are immediate and obvious: thousands of tinier white blooms supported by the tiniest green stems. Each summer snowflake is unique and wonderfully made.

Those who quilt understand the pull and pursuit of perfect stitches laid out like miniature maps in chosen blocks of color. Quilters lose themselves in fine details, and hours pass during which they breathe in measured breaths, each stitch a labor of love and focus. Intricacy becomes intimacy.

How easily calligraphers move from the world of broad strokes and bold sweeps into the intricate land of small loops and whorls, slight lines that end in points almost imperceptible to the human eye. Bent over their work, calligraphers understand the intimate relationship of hand to pen to paper.

The intricacies in our world beckon us just as surely as the vistas do. And if we risk sending our words and our selves into the vast spaces before us, we also risk sending them into those tighter, finer places.