PERSPECTIVE AND COLOR

I usually don't write a lot on this blog, preferring to show you interesting things, but today  I wanted to share An Enchanted Place, written about the alchemy of a change in perspective, which I need this fall as I follow through on an injury that sidelined me from my, very busy creative life...

This summer, on my daily walks I often saw intriguing glimpses of the watery, slow moving canal that flows throughout the area. It winds its way between forested, brushy, overgrown banks. A few houses are widely scattered along the bank on the canal, but between them the undergrowth is impenetrable. Uneasy about tramping through a stranger's yard, I was always on the lookout for a way down to the edge of the water.

One day, to my delight, I found an empty clearing where someone had installed electricity, probably for camping with a trailer. Although the thicket of trees and bushes at the back of the lot looked impenetrable, I thought I spied part of a railing nearly hidden in the undergrowth and went to explore. Sure enough, the railing was part of a stairway leading down to the water. Blackberry vines and salmonberry bushes scrambled around the railings and over the steps inviting me to descend to a small dock below.

Overhanging cedar limbs provided sun-dappled shelter as I settled down on the last step and looked around me, enjoying the faint breeze and the quiet. The sparkling water and the elegant green drapery of trees and bushes creeping sleepily into the waters of the canal captured my imagination.
I had the idea that the trees were only drowsing, and might wake, shake their roots, and be surprised that their feet were wet. Dragonflies zig-zagged their delicate emerald-blue fire through the shimmering air. Lily pads with buttery yellow blooms spread out to each side of the dock and into the canal.

A few yards away where the bank opened up a bit, wild iris flirted with the sun, flickering velvet purples, azure blues and electric yellows through the thick green rushes. A quiet joy crept over me and I sat for a long time, caught in the spell of that enchanted place.

I visited this emerald paradise only a few times before problems with my feet kept me from walking much, but those visits never failed to unravel the craziness of my work week, and to restore my spirit.

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One September morning the sun beckoned me out and down the road to the hidden stairway and the watery green world of the canal. It felt good to be out walking, and the sight of the old railing lifted my spirits. I started down the first set of steps with anticipation, pushing carefully through the riot of berry vines. As I caught a glimpse of the canal, my smile faded. I stood very still. Something had changed this world terribly. The gleaming landscape was gone.

In its place was a brown swamp littered with dead misshapen lily pads rising awkwardly out of the murky water, stark and black and twisted. I stared in disbelief, sinking down on the steps, feeling such a sense of loss. I could not recognize this colorless, unadorned, drab new world.

After a few minutes however, the warm sun and mild breeze drew me down to the dock. I sat down with a sigh. Staring out over the ruins of my paradise I watched the sluggish, taffy-colored water barely moving in the center of the canal. Two ducks paddled into view, dipping their beaks noisily into the weed-choked water and I smiled at the sound of their watery smacking. As they drew closer I could see the rapid flash of their orange webbed feet, propelling them so precisely here and there, as if they were following a map invisible to me. The water near me must have been fully of tasty things because they lingered, checking the water methodically for food.

As I studied them I saw, for the first time, the infinite layers of feathers: brown, gray, russet, cream, silver. As one duck turned I saw a flash of violet sapphire on an under wing. It gleamed for a moment, an unexpected jewel against the muddy water and weeds. I rested my chin on my arms, soothed by the erratic and elegant movement of the ducks. Their noisy feeding was the only thing that broke the drowsy silence.

After awhile the calm meandering of the ducks brought my attention back to the drab water and tangled growth below. In that instant my awareness shifted like a lens sharpening a fuzzy picture. I noticed that the weeds, laced over and under each other, half in and half out of the water, had the lushness of silk velvet. The pale amber water in which they lay shimmered like a delicate silk chiffon.

Next I noticed the lush inky shadows cast in the water by the tangled weeds-- shadows that streamed down through the water and softened as the sunlight filtered toward the bottom. They were a rich, deep shade of indigo and it was this translucent inky shadow that gave the gracefully entwined weeds the appearance of elegant lace.

I was dumbfounded to see that the brown, deformed lily pad leaves on their spiky stalks cast the most beautiful shadows of all. At the outer edge of the shadows where the sunlight falls around the leaf and stalk, into the water, a thin stripe glows a rich amber yellow and a surprisingly clear, warm orange. Then, in the space of a few drops of water, the color jumps to deep ultramarine blue, fanning out and fading to periwinkle as the sun's rays stretch the shadow through the water behind the stalk.

I sit very still, overcome by wonder. Here in this "dead" place, which so disappointed me, I see pale liquid yellow, luminous orange, crimson-gold, dusky green, rich terra cotta brown, shimmering topaz...what an enchanted place. 

C. Stevenson