“I found that my boat was floating motionless by the grassy shore of a little island. The water was deep to the very edge; and I sprang from the little boat upon a soft grassy turf. The island seemed rich with a profusion of all grasses and low flowers. No trees rose skywards, except in one place, where a few plants of the gum-cistus formed a kind of natural arbour. The whole island lay open to the sky and sea. As I walked over the grass towards the cottage, all the flowers of childhood looked at me with perfect child-eyes out of the grass. The cottage was square, with low walls, and a high pyramidal roof. It had no windows that I could see; but there was a door in the centre of the side facing me, up to which I went...

‘I had to go through that door - the door of the Timeless - to find you; and because I went, the waters around my cottage will rise and rise, and flow and come, till they build a great firmament of waters over my dwelling. But as long as I keep my fire burning, they cannot enter. I have fuel enough for years; and after one year they will sink away again, and be just as they were before you came. I have not been buried for a hundred years now.’

She took my hand, and led me through the third door; whereupon I found myself standing in the deep grassy turf on which I had landed from the little boat, but upon the opposite side of the cottage. She pointed out the direction I must take, to find the isthmus and escape the rising waters. I had not gone very far before I felt that the turf beneath my feet was soaked with the rising waters. But I reached the isthmus in safety. It was rocky, and so much higher than the level of the peninsula, that I had plenty of time to cross. I saw on each side of me the water rising rapidly, altogether without wind, or violent motion, or broken waves, but as if a slow strong fire were glowing beneath it. Ascending a steep acclivity, I found myself at last in an open, rocky country.”

— Phantastes, by George MacDonald

“Thus I floated, till something gently touched me. It was a little boat floating beside me. How it came there I could not tell; but it rose and sank on the waters, and kept touching me in its fall, as if with a human will to let me know that help was by me. It was a little gay-coloured boat, seemingly covered with glistering scales like those of a fish, all of brilliant rainbow hues. I scrambled into it, and lay down in the bottom, with a sense of exquisite repose. Then I drew over me a rich, heavy, purple cloth that was beside me; and, lying still, knew, by the sound of the waters, that my little bark was fleeting rapidly onwards.

“Finding, however, none of that stormy motion which the sea had manifested when I beheld it from the shore, I opened my eyes; and, looking first up, saw above me the deep violet sky of a warm southern night; and then, lifting my head, saw that I was sailing fast upon a summer sea, in the last border of a southern twilight. The aureole of the sun yet shot its longest rays above the horizon-waves, and withdrew them not. It was a perpetual twilight. The stars, great and earnest, like children's eyes, bent down lovingly towards the waters; and the reflected stars within seemed to float up, as if longing to meet their embraces. But when I looked down, a new wonder met my view. For, vaguely revealed beneath the wave, I floated above my whole Past. But so indistinct were the visions, that sometimes I thought I was sailing on a shallow sea, and that strange rocks and forests of sea-plants beguiled my eye, sufficiently to be transformed, by the magic of the phantasy, into well-known objects and regions.”

— Phantastes, by George MacDonald

Down in the turquoise waters of the sea are ocean rocks hollowed by the waves into caves and grotesque shapes. Around them grows sea-weed and coral in every shade of the rainbow. The rays of sunlight shine the ripples of the surface down on the sandy floor littered with seashells and starfish. In the distance dolphins play around a diver against the background of giant kelp.

“I arrived at another hall, the roof of which was of a pale blue, spangled with constellations of silver stars, and supported by porphyry pillars of a paler red than ordinary. The whole of the floor of this hall, except a narrow path behind the pillars, paved with black, was hollowed into a huge basin, many feet deep, and filled with the purest, most liquid and radiant water. The bottom was paved with all kinds of refulgent stones, of every shape and hue. Led by an irresistible desire, I undressed, and plunged into the water. I rose to the surface, shook the water from my hair, and swam as in a rainbow, amid the coruscations of the gems below seen through the agitation caused by my motion. Then, with open eyes, I dived, and swam beneath the surface. And here was a new wonder. For the basin, thus beheld, appeared to extend on all sides like a sea, with here and there groups as of ocean rocks, hollowed by ceaseless billows into wondrous caves and grotesque pinnacles. Around the caves grew sea-weeds of all hues, and the corals glowed between. I thought I had been enchanted; and that when I rose to the surface, I should find myself miles from land, swimming alone upon a heaving sea; but when my eyes emerged from the waters, I saw above me the blue spangled vault, and the red pillars around.”

— Phantastes, by George MacDonald

“Just where the path seemed to end, rose a great rock, quite overgrown with shrubs and creeping plants, some of them in full and splendid blossom: these almost concealed an opening in the rock, into which the path appeared to lead. I entered, thirsting for the shade which it promised. What was my delight to find a rocky cell, all the angles rounded away with rich moss, and every ledge and projection crowded with lovely ferns, the variety of whose forms, and groupings, and shades wrought in me like a poem; for such a harmony could not exist, except they all consented to some one end! A little well of the clearest water filled a mossy hollow in one corner. I drank, and felt as if I knew what the elixir of life must be; then threw myself on a mossy mound that lay like a couch along the inner end. Here I lay in a delicious reverie for some time.

“I took my knife and removed the moss from a part of the block on which I had been lying; when, to my surprise, I found it more like alabaster than ordinary marble. The ray of sunlight had now reached the spot I had cleared, and under its lustre the alabaster revealed its usual slight transparency when polished; and I observed that the transparency seemed to have a definite limit, and to end upon an opaque body like the more solid, white marble. One revelation after another produced the entrancing conviction, that under the crust of alabaster lay a dimly visible form in marble. I saw before me with sufficient plainness—though at the same time with considerable indistinctness—a block of pure alabaster enclosing the form, apparently in marble, of a reposing woman. She lay on one side, with her hand under her cheek, and her face towards me.

“‘Who can tell but this cave may be the home of Marble, and this, essential Marble—that spirit of marble which, present throughout, makes it capable of being moulded into any form? Then if she should awake! But how to awake her?’”

— Phantastes, by George MacDonald

I love playing with water and other refractive materials in the sunlight.

A look below the surface of the river that has been seen in others of my scenes in the cwm.

Cwm Solitude
Welcome to the Cwm
Cwm Waterfall
Window on the Cwm

I decided to do a summer version of my Winter Leaves work.

“The Lord is my light and my salvation.”
Psalm 27:1

I thought a lighthouse scene would be appropriate for Easter.

This is the kind of place I like to walk in the fall and winter, with little secluded hollows and pools covered with fallen leaves and the warm autumn afternoon sun.