Yesterday my sister Barbara and friend Teri (both visitingfrom Tennessee) and I traveled to San Antonio to see the Alamo and eata tasty Tex-Mex lunch on the famed River Walk. Imagine the scene around noon time: it is summer-in-Texas hot and the streets are almost steaming. The sun beats down right on your head, and your arms shine with perspiration.Tourists are fanning with the plastic sacks full of t-shirts and toy armadillos they are carrying.

Then you cross a street, go down a long flight of steps, walk ahead someyards…and then you see it! A long, greenish-color river meandering right underneath the hot asphalt city streets. Overhead there are big busses with their motors idling at traffic signals, taxis honking their horns, people weaving in and out of the cars lined up to get into parking lots. But down here, underneath the city, you are walking along a river banked by huge oak trees, bushy, big avocado trees, even a taller-than-any-person orchid tree. Yellow and red hibiscus flowers surprise you at a bend. Orange blossoms of the Spanish Bridal Veil plant seem to wave at you as you pass. A big clump of lavender soothes your eyes from a distance. It’s another world…this River Walk underneath a city. And one you would never imagine existed if all you did was stay up on the busy streets.

I remembered, as I strolled along the river yesterday, a moment a few years ago at another visitor attraction. My Aunt Frances had come from Georgia. We were at Moody Gardens in Galveston. At one point on the tour of that lovely place, you come in out of the glare of the sun into a long,cool, narrow passage way which looks as if it were made of stucco. In the walls of the passage way have been carved small cave-like openings.Each of these openings contains a specimen of a beautiful gem or mineral that had been mined from the earth. Purple amethyst, blue aquamarine, pink and orange quartz, green peridot, clear moonstone. Suddenly it dawned on me: these beautiful substances, these brilliant colors, these amazing stones are what we human beings on this planet walk on everyday! Underneath the brown or gray or black or red dirt, below the green grass, farther down than a tree root is likely to grow lie these amazing beauties! We are walking on jewels!

Underground rivers and gemstones…I hope I can remember more often that inside, underneath, below may be running water and brilliant colors just waiting for me to dip down and see them.

Dr. Elizabeth Harper Neeld offers wisdom and practical insights to anyone whose life is in a time of transition, change, grief and loss of any kind. As an internationally recognized and accomplished consultant, and author of more than twenty books - including Tough Transitions and Seven Choices: Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your World - she is committed to work that helps lift the human spirit.