The Navaho word hozho, translated into English as "beauty," also means harmony, wholeness, goodness. One story that suggests the dynamic way that beauty comes alive between us concerns a contemporary Navajo weaver. A man ordered a rug of an especially complex pattern on two separate occasions from the same weaver. Both rugs came out perfectly and the weaver remarked to her brother that there must have been something special about the owner. It was understood that the outcome of the rugs was dependent not on the weaver's skill and ability but upon the hozho in the owner's life. The hozho of his life evoked the beauty in the rugs. In the Navaho world view, beauty exists not simply in the object, or in the artist who made the object; it is expressed in relationships.
In climbing where the danger is great, all attention has to be given the ground step by step, leaving nothing for beauty by the way. But this care, so keenly and narrowly concentrated, is not without advantages. One is thoroughly aroused. Compared with the alertness of the senses and corresponding precision and power of the muscles on such occasions, one may be said to sleep all the rest of the year. The mind and body remain awake for some time after the dangerous ground is past, so that arriving on the summit with the grand outlook—all the world spread below—one is able to see it better, and brings to the feast a far keener vision, and reaps richer harvest than would have been possible ere the presence of danger summoned him to life.