It’s wonderful to see an example of an art term in the outdoors while contemplating the nature of things. In art, when contrasting silhouettes are layered, it’s easy to lose one’s figure-ground relationship. In art, it’s called “visual confusion” when positive and negative space make it difficult to discern spacial relationships of objects (or, as in this case, one object is the background for another). Sometimes, like our intellectual perceptions in life, the eye plays tricks on us. There are times the students we work with at ASI seem fragile like a flower but are actually also amazingly resilient and strong like a rock. What I do know in any case: we want them to recognize their own inner beauty and glow even during tough times when contrast shadow arrives in their lives.