A Pebble Mosaic Carpet I built in a garden in Los Angeles

I am in Morocco again for the second of what may be a continuing series of trips to discover and revisit all that is wonderful about this country.  For over 20 years I have been inspired by it's art, and this has been reflected in my work and my home for at least as long as that.  Several years ago I purchased the Taschen Press book 'Moroccan Interiors', and poured over the pages absorbing the rich colors and patterns that have been a part of North African history for over 1,000 years.  I painted rooms in my house to capture the ambience I saw in Yve Saint Laurent's house at the Villa Oasis and the Jardin Majorelle in Marrakesh, which is featured in the book.

A Mint Green room  in my homeinspired by the Villa Oasis with a Moroccan silk velvet tent door

I taught myself how to cut tile and made my own zellijes emulating the style of tile work found there.  I used a selection of tile seconds from the Pratt and Larson company in Portland, Oregon to create a zellij in the kitchen of my home.  They manufacture tiles that can be assembled to create zellij like patterns.  I like the hand cut look, and only used their 8 pointed star tiles, which I gold leafed.  I hand cut the rest of the tiles using a score and snap tile cutter and hand tile nippers.  I now own a Moroccan tile cutting hammer because I can no longer use the nippers as they aggravate my tendonitis.

Moroccan Zellij behind he kitchen counter in my home

I have built a number of pebble mosaics using Arabic tessalate geometric designs that originated in Morocco as well.  One Portland garden has a long path running down a side garden.  At a halfway point, I built a small patio with a bench and a fountain that is visible from the long terrace that wraps around this historic home, with an eight pointed star and geometric patterns radiating out in a simple square frame.

Tesselate Star Pebble Mosaic

In a garden in Los Angeles I have incorporated several Moroccan inspired mosaics and a sunken garden,  inspired by the client's love of the country and it's arts and design.  The first project was to build a pebble mosaic carpet.  This elaborate design took a month to lay out and set.  I first arranged the entire mosaic in a bed of sand on site and then disassembled it and set it in mortar, using forms to break it up in to sections.

I was also commissioned to build a fountain  covering a concrete block form that was not of my design.  I was not particularly happy with the shape that I had to work with but I made the most of it.  Water flows in a sheet from a copper ledge over a 'Tree of Life' mosaic that is fashioned after a Liquidambar Sweet Gum tree adjacent to the fountain.  The tree mosaic is framed with a band of eight pointed stars and connecting bands, similar to the carpet mosaic.  The fountain is surrounded in white glazed brick to cover the sides of the concrete block form and pool, matching the white brick walls on the first story of the house.

Tree of Life Fountain

My next commision in the garden was to build a round gas fire pit for gatherings on cool evenings to roast marshmallows.  I built up bands of pebble mosaic using black and gold Mexican beach pebbles and then capped the ring with a band of eight pointed stars matching the other mosaics in the garden.  The stars are made of Turkish limestone tiles that I cut with a stone cutting blade.  The fire pit is connected to a natural gas line and has a double round metal ring perforated with holes that is covered in black gravel.  A Moroccan brass tray fits over the fire pit when it is not in use.

A elegant fire pit for roasting Marshmallows

We also erected a restored Indonesian pavilion in the garden to use as a tea house.  I recycled carved wooden panels from the roof of an old Rajasthani swing from India to use as steps, and built a landing incorporating the eight pointed star motif, and red pebbles to compliment the wood steps.

Tea House steps and pebble mosaic landing

My last big project for the garden was to remodel an area that once contained a sunken trampoline.  You an see the essay that I wrote on this project called 'A Sunken Garden'.  We removed a large trampoline and I built a sunken garden utilizing the hole that was there.  I was inspired by the shape of a Moroccan key hole door in designing the space.  We stenciled a border around the wall, and I added a fountain and Moroccan tiled table and chairs to furnish the space.

Looking down in to the Sunken Garden

The underground garage concrete pour

I was commissioned to build a cut slate roof terrace on an elaborate new underground garage for clients in Portland, to be used as a terrace for entertaining and dancing.  I used the eight pointed star design again in repeated medallions framed by colored bands of cut stone.  This was probably the most difficult project I have ever undertaken as it had to drain perfectly in to two very small drains on one side.  The terrace is quite large and took about 3 months to build.  The colors of the stone reflect those of the imposing house adjacent to it.  It is quite an elegant space, considering that there are two cars parked underneath it, and they have had some lovely tango parties on it, so that it is now called 'The Tango Terrace'.

Laying out the pattern for slate terrace

Star Medallion

The completed Tango Terrace

I've been working with a steel fabricator for several years now to build wonderful steel structures in my garden and some of my client's projects.  We cut these beautiful tesselate medallions to hang on walls and fences or trellises.  This pattern is a classic Moroccan design, representing a story from the Koran, where the Prophet Mohammed, escaping men who were pursuing him in order to kill him, hid in a cave.  A spider built a web across the entrance to the cave, so when the men came, they saw the web and decided he could not be inside as the web would have been broken.  The rays emanating from the central star represent a spider's web.

Steel Medallion hanging on the rusted steel fence in my garden

I have been collecting Moroccan lanterns over the years as I love to light my garden at night with candles.  The patterns that spray across the garden through the lattice patterns cut in the metal, and the colors of the glass are quite magical.

I was first inspired to float flowers in water filled bowls in my garden by an article I saw many years ago about the Hotel La Mamounia in Marrakesh.  There they had strewn rose petals in the fountains, an idea I find quite beautiful, ritualistic, and romantic.

Rose petals in a fountain at Dar Donab in Marrakesh

Dahlias are my favorite flower to float in water as they look like fabulous water lilies, and last for days if the raccoons don't come along at night and shred them to bits, which they love to do.

Dahlias and chrome balls floating in a carved stone bowl in my garden

I now have a small library of books on Moroccan design and gardens.  Perhaps the finest of all the books I own is called 'Arabesques, Decorative Art in Morocco', from ACR Publications.  This incredible book takes on the daunting task of defining the mind boggling complexity of geometric patterning in tile, painting, marquetry, stucco carving, and most amazing of all, three dimensional muqarnas.

The reason I am so fascinated and inspired by Moroccan design and that I have incorporated so much of the influence in my own work is that I find the artistic expression found in that country to be some of the most beautiful and profoundly meaningful I have ever encountered.  I am forever grateful to have the luxury of exploring this magical land and to see first hand the treasures that it has bestowed upon humanity.

Berber Me

Thanks for reading this, Jeffrey

A view of Chefchaouen, Morocco

Chefchaouen is a small city in the Rif mountains of Northern Morocco known for its climate, blue houses, and kif, or marijuana that is grown in the surrounding mountains.  It is a heady combination to say the least, though I have been passing on the hashish, as the blue is intoxicating enough on it's own.  I wrote an essay called 'The Colors of Morocco' while I was here last year, discussing the meaning of various colors used throughout the country.  Many people have written and posted images of this incredible town.  Here is my personal blue spin on the situation.

Pink Leopard Slippers on a blue doorstep

 Chefchaouen was founded in 1471 by Moorish and Jewish refugees fleeing the Reconquista of Spain, led by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabela the Catholic.  The town has an Andalusian character like the larger city of Tetouan near the coast.  The houses are typically white washed in the tradition of those found all over Andalusia in southern Spain, with related architectural styles.  This makes for a wonderful pedestrian Medina with beautiful homes tightly clustered along narrow winding lanes.

A blue street in the Medina

The blue color on homes came about as a pigment wash used by Jewish refugees in the 1930's who emigrated to Morocco fleeing Europe as anti Semitic oppression grew there.  Although the Jewish community has largely moved on to other countries, the color has become emblematic to the city.   Blue is said to represent the sky to Jews, and therefore heaven.  Blue threads have been traditionally woven in to prayer shawls for this reason.

Angel ladders over the Grande Mosquee

The day I arrived in Chefchaouen, I was up in a wonderful tower in the contrasting orange red mud plastered Kasbah.  There is a fantastic view from there of the Plaza Uta el-Hammam, the main gathering space of the Medina.  I was gazing out over the town when I heard a group of men singing.  The sound was quite beautiful.  Then, from the narrow lane below, the singing men emerged, wearing the typical tan colored Djellabas of the region.  These are the long winter robes with a pointed hood that are the traditional overcoat of men in Morocco.  These men were leading a funeral procession.  A group of men behind them appeared carrying a casket draped in a green cloth embroidered in gold with inscriptions from the Koran.  Green and gold are the colors of Islam.  When I turned around toward the mosque, with its beautiful red tiled roof, the sky had exploded with a spray of magnificent Angel Ladders.  It was as if Allah was shining down on the city in response to this moment of transition between life and death, a binding of Heaven and Earth.  It was so beautiful I started to weep.  The beauty of being blue...

Funeral Procession entering the Plaza Uta el-Hammam

The original blue pigment from what I have read, was derived from a type of Murex shell, which is usually a shade of royal purple once prized by the Romans and Byzantine empires.   Shades of indigo were apparently made for the use of dying the blue thread used in the Jewish shawls.  I have also seen blue powdery stones for sale by Tuareg people of the Sahara in the Djemma el Fna in Marrakech, who prefer indigo dye for their clothing.

Bags of powdered pigments for sale in the Medina

The vibrant pigments used today for painting in Chefchaouen are probably synthetic.  The colored powders are mixed with water and applied as a wash on a regular basis, often with a primitive brush made of coarse dried grass bound together in a bundle.  They come in many colors. In Tetouan I found that virtually every color was used, red, pink, blue, green, yellow, charcoal, purple.  But these colors don't sell very well in Chefchaouen.  Adding additional layers of color over time gives the surfaces a luminous glow, especially in the evening.

Number 16

They say that blue is used to trick mosquitos, who perceive it as clear flowing water, which they are not attracted to.  In fact it sometimes feels like you are swimming when walking down flights of blue painted steps surrounded by blue walls and ceilings.

A blue passageway

I have heard that the blue washes most commonly used were predominantly pale, but that over time, due to the availability of varied shaded pigments, and creative impulse, combined with civic encouragement as tourism in the town developed, the shades of blue have become more varied, vibrant, and intense.  What is most extraordinary, is that places that normally don't get painted, like pavements, are often washed, so that the entire view in some walkways makes for a surreal blue world.

Pale blue treads and deeper blue risers

A wall can be painted blue, but then it is trimmed in a darker shade.  The risers of steps can be a darker shade as well, giving a flight of stairs a wonderful undulating ripple affect.  Doors will be painted to throw the whole mix in to the realm of psychedelia.  It could be women inhaling the second hand smoke of their husbands kif pipes in small rooms.  Who knows for sure.  But in the end it is utterly inspiring, and beyond beautiful.  It is like a blue dream.

A woman painting the stairs at dusk

As the evening sets in the colors become more intense, and they glow in an entirely different way when the lights come on at night.

Grape vines form a tendril canopy over a street in the Medina at dusk

I find myself walking up and down and around and around, absorbing the lush chilled saturation of colors, taking photos at every turn.  Women often wear vibrant blue kaftans here, complimenting their surroundings.  But every color looks electric in this blue world.  I have painted the ceilings in three of the rooms in my home blue, so that when I look up it is like looking in to the sky, to the heavens, or in to a crystaline pool, or the deep blue sea.  It is transportive and transcendent, and oh so beautiful.

Colorful Life in the Medina

Blue Hole

Blue doors at night

Blue trimmed everything

Blue Scallops

Technicolor Blue Door

My favorite blue ruins

The vivid colors seem to trigger a response in the brain that makes the people here some of the sweetest, kindest, and most gentle I have ever met.  Complete strangers will engage you in ways that seem impossibly penetrating in no time at all.  A baker gave me fresh cookies from the wood fired oven for free.  A boy playing a game blindfolded in the street grabbed me and hugged me as if I wasn't a stranger.  Girls shake my hand, and so many people say hello.  I find myself smiling more, and often laughing, and crying from the sheer beauty of it all.  The color blue may just be a cure for the blues!

Thanks for reading as always.  I'm going back out there to swim around Chefchaouen.

Blue and Silver

Bags of Hand Spun Thread

The Intensity of Blue can be astounding at times

Bags of Sand

Blue Steps to a Blue Door

A Blue Door with a Black Flower Pot design

The Sweetest Boys

The Sweetest Girls

Water trickling down blue steps

Doorway to another World

Palacio de Asamblea

Melilla is one of two Spanish enclaves on the Moroccan coastline that are remnants of Spain's occupation of parts of North Africa.  The other is Ceuta near the city of Tangier, which I visited at the beginning of this year's adventure in Morocco.

Ceiling in the Palacio de Asamblea

The reason I didn't make it last year, and barely did this year is that it isn't all that easy to reach from the rest of Morocco.  The road along the coast that I will be traveling by bus soon is said to be rough, and slow going.  I took a 5 1/2 hour train from Fes to Oujda on the Algerian border, and then a 3 hour bus to Nador.  From there I took a city bus to the border, and then walked across the border zone to another bus that brought me to the city center.  Traveling can be hard work.

Door of the Casa de David Melul designed by Enrique Nieto i Nieto

I have wanted to come to Melilla for some time, as it is a jewel box of eccentric architecture.  There is a medieval fortress built up on a rock promontory over the Mediterranean, and the Ensanche, which prospered at the turn of the 20th Century as the main sea port between Tetouan, Morocco and Algeria.  The new city has the largest collection of Modernisme buildings outside of Barcelona and Valencia, as well as a number of other styles including Art Deco.

Model of the Melilla la Vieja

The old city, Melilla la Vieja, is comprised of a spectacular fortress complex built on a rocky promontory over a long period after the Spanish conquest of the region in 1496.  The fortress was added to over time to create a multi layered impregnable conglomeration of high walls and stone buildings.  These are accessed by tunnels and spanned by draw bridges over a wide moat connected to the sea.

Gate with a drawbridge leading in to Melilla la Vieja

Each alteration or expansion incorporated the latest technology in defensive architecture.  The fortress was recently and meticulously restored by the European Union and contains some small but excellent interactive museums with exhibits on history, ethnography, Catholic art, and the military.  On Sunday, rather than being besieged by pirates there was a brass band playing popular standards in a plaza to a happy crowd.

Live music on a Sunday afternoon

Melilla la Vieja from the port

Melilla la Vieja at dusk

Under the encouragement of King Alfonso XIII, Melilla expanded beyond the old city after the turn of the 20th Century.  The King made three separate visits to motivate the design and manifestation of a new district called the Ensanche.  The Rio de Oro was realigned to make the expansion possible and streets were laid out in the fashion of the time.

All original architecture on Avenida Juan Carlos I Rey

A bronze statue of Enrique Nieto by Mustafa Arruf

But Melilla's real claim to fame is it's grand collection of Modernisme buildings.  Modernisme is a style of architecture that flourished in Catalonia, found mainly in the city of Barcelona where the architect Antonio Gaudi brought the movement to it's pinnacle of expression.  This was a response to the Art Nouveau movement in the rest of Europe and the colonial world.  Although several architects contributed to the design of the city, the most renowned was the architect Enrique Nieto y Nieto.   A student of the great Catalonian architect Luis Domeneque Montaner, Nieto engaged in his studies with a group of students who would all go on to become exemplary architects, including Josep Maria Jujol, who was responsible for the tile benches in Parque Guell (see my December essay about this) and the ornamentation of many of Gaudi's most important projects.  Nieto worked on Gaudi's Casa Mila project for a time before he moved to Melilla, as there was an opportunity to work independently of his powerful mentors.  He arrived in the North African city in 1909 in his late 20's, and remained for the rest of his prolific life.  He was designated the city architect of Melilla in 1939, and undertook the design of a thousand different projects and the completion of an astounding 457 buildings in the city, 148 of them considered to be Modernisme, continuing the tradition long after it went out of style in Catalonia.

He also designed a number of Neo Arabic buildings with keyhole arches and tessalate geometric patterning on the facades.  Later on the Art Deco style came in to vogue and his deco buildings tend to have an aerodynamic look to them.  They also have a different color palette, frequently using more sombre grey and tan tones.  He worked right up until 4 years before his death in 1953.  He was responsible for the design of several buildings for the Catholic Church, Melilla's Or Zaruah Synagogue, and the Grand Mosque.

Beautiful drawing for the Junta Municipal y Juzgados building

A handsome home overlooking Parque Hernandez

So everywhere you look in this confectionary town you see these wedding cake like buildings smothered in floral and geometric ornamentation, or with the busts of women with ribbon plaited hair.  The buildings pale in comparison to the fantastic brilliance of Gaudi's work, but the fanciful exuberance of Modernisme and other styles makes Melilla visually a very fun city.  The area called the Golden Triangle is packed with Nieto's work and other architects like Francisco Hernanz, and Emilio Alzugaray.  This area prospered during the first half of the 20th Century, with the construction of wide streets and boulevards.   The grand Parque Hernandez and round Plaza de Espan~a were designed by Jose de la Granada in 1913.

Wavy Tile Walkway in Parque Hernandez (it is flat, although it has the illusion of undulation)

Plaza de Espan~a

Two Lions on a door

Melilla is also interesting in it's cultural mix.  It was inhabited for over 2,000 years ago, first by Phoenicians and later by the Romans.  There were conquests by Berbers and the Caliphate of Cordoba in Spain.  Catholic Spaniards conquered the city after driving the Moors out of the European continent.  There were numerous rebellions by Berber factions against the foreign occupation but Melilla and Ceuta have remained under Spanish dominion ever since.  The massive fortifications in both cities were intended to maintain sovereignty.  Like Gibraltar in Spain, which is a colony of Great Britain, these cities are a mix of cultures unique to their locations.

Enrique Nieto designed the Sinagoga Or Zaruah in the Neo Arabic style

Plastic on the beach

There is a small remnant Jewish community with about 1,000 people, a large number of Berber Muslims, and a Spanish majority.  Tourist literature likes to point out that there are about 100 Indian Hindu's living in Melilla as well, calling it the 'Land of Culture'.  There is a small Chinese community as well.  You find all the trappings of Spanish society here, with theaters, bars, cafes, tapas bars, and grand parks.  Although I don't see a huge amount of cultural mixing, everybody seems to live in relative harmony.   The city is very clean, in stark contrast to Morocco, unless you are on the beach.  The sea is full of plastic, a true environmental tragedy we are all responsible for.  Land of Plastic Culture.

Cheap Red Wine with lunch

Melilla is rather quiet compared to the bustling towns on the other side of the well fortified border.  You can eat late here, but if you want to have dinner before 9:00 it is virtually impossible unless you want to dine alone in an empty restaurant.  It appears that the Spanish subsist on pastries, coffee, cigarettes, and beer, and finding a meal outside of a late lunch or dinner seems next to impossible.  As I poked my head behind a few doors I did manage to find subsistence.  And there is a Turkish Doner place catering to people who want to eat before bedtime.  When you have a Spanish menu del dia at lunch time and say you want red wine you get an entire bottle included in the price.  Cheap wine in Spain is really cheap, and not too bad.  The best meal I've had here was Chinese at the Golden Dragon Restaurant.
The downtown area is dominated commercially by the franchise businesses typical of the Spanish retail economy.  You have your Zara and Massimo Dutti and Pull and Bear, and Benneton and Etam, but not so many little independent market stalls selling everyday essentials you would find all over Morocco.  Europe, like the United States, is frighteningly dominated by corporate franchise, which takes away the distinction of any particular place.  It is the same stuff everywhere.  My favorite shops in Melilla are the ones with old fashioned facades and signs that lend to the time warp feel of the place.

Red Wine colored windows

But more than shopping and eating out, I will feast on the architecture while I am here.  I did a fairly exhaustive survey of historic buildings over three days.  I found a lot of variety and some repetition that was probably the result of economy, what I would call 'budget Modernisme'.  These are stuccoed brick buildings with cast mass produced cement ornamentation attached to the door and window frames.  They are not necessarily extraordinary for their innovation but are rather derived from a lot of different styles.  The more money budgeted for a building, the more ornate it tended to be.  The art deco movement may have come about in part as a necessity of thrift that came with recession in the 1930's since the facades were much cleaner and without all fanciful detail.

Art Deco detail on the Teatro Cinema Monumental by architect Lorenzo Ros

Blue Confection

What is most remarkable about Melilla's historic architecture is that there is so much of it that still exists.  There is an enormous body of work by Enrique Nieto and other architects that is preserved in relatively good condition, but few of the buildings have been restored to the point of looking like parodies of what they once were.  Rather they are just nice old buildings, showing some wear and tear, but not falling apart at the seams.  There is great charm in the peeling paint and chipped moldings.  I even like the funky electrical wires wrapped around the decorative brackets as part of some low budget upgrades.  It is real, and it is wonderful that they haven't been torn down and replaced with sad modern structures like you see in so much of the rest of the World.  Spain and the city of Melilla values it's architectural heritage and it shows.  The part of the cities buildings that has suffered the most are the street level facades, which have been greatly altered in many cases to make them more functional for commercial use.  Roller security doors and plate glass windows have replaced what must have been elegant doors and windows.

A Cake Shop Block

Casa de Tortosa by Enrique Nieto

A building with Sgraffito style ornamentation

Sgraffito is a type of ornamentation where a contrasting color of stucco is layered on to a building and then literally scratched to create the design.  It was a popular form of ornamentation during the Renaissance and made a resurgence in Spain during the first half of the 20th Century.  I saw a lot of this type of ornamentation on buildings in Firenze and Rome in Italy.  This style of facade ornamentation was also popular in Bavaria in German.  The shapes of the Sgraffito buildings in Melilla tend to be very simple with horizontal lines dividing the walls and ornate surrounds on the doors and window.

This is in sharp contrast to the most opulent buildings in town, which rival Rococco and Queen Anne Victorian buildings in their extreme ornamentation.

Edificio La Reconquista

 Its easy to spend a couple of days wandering the streets admiring the fanciful details and variety of styles and influences the went in to this eclectic but harmonious array of buildings.  Corner buildings often have ornate balconies topped with a cupola.  The cupola's on the Edificio La Reconquista are covered in a dragon scale like tile pattern similar to buildings in the Eixample district in Barcelona.

Laundry on fancy balconies

Two Griffins over a door

Filling water jugs at a public fountain

Simple facades could be ornamented by attaching molded ornamentation to give them the popular decorative look without great expense.

Stenciled frames on tall windows

Door Knocker

The busts of women are a popular motif on Enrique Nieto's Modernisme buildings.

Casino Militar by Enrique Nieto on the Plaza Espan~a, built in the classical style demanded by the military

Casino Militar at sunset.  There must be a gymnasium inside.

I am about to post the most laborious essay I have written to date for this blog site.  I've been wanting to do it ever since I revisited the Alhambra in Granada, Spain last year, but hesitated to do so because of the daunting prospect of covering this magnificent architectural achievement in the manner I think it deserves.

I have now worked on it obsessively for over the week since I returned again from Spain and will post it in the next hour.  It is a rather long read so I am forewarning you in advance.  I suggest you get a good cup of coffee or tea and sit down on comfortable cushions when it comes time to indulge yourself in this essay.  I've done a great deal of painstaking research and have learned a great deal in the process, the proceeds of which I want to share with you.

Blissed out in front of the Palacio de Partal at the Alhambra

I hope you enjoy it, Jeffrey

The Alhambra viewed from the Generalife

"Everything here appears calculated to inspire kind and happy feelings, for everything is delicate and beautiful. The very light falls tenderly from above, through the lantern of a dome tinted and wrought as if by fairy hands." Washington Irving, Tales of the Alhambra

25 years ago I made my first pilgrimage to Spain, and that was largely due to my desire to visit the Alhambra.  While studying Landscape Architecture at the University of Oregon, the professor Ron Lovinger gave a lecture on this iconic citadel in Andalusia.  That presentation showed me that it is possible to create places that allude to the concept of Paradise.  This place was built to be extraordinarily beautiful, melding man, nature, and art in to a heavenly abode.   This glimpse of such an earthly realm made me want to visit the Alhambra perhaps more than any other place on Earth.  Last year I was able to return for the third time to the stunning city of Granada and see the Alhambra and the adjacent Generalife with more time, and a far greater knowledge and understanding of what I was seeing.  Traveling in Morocco has made it possible for me to see how the work by artisans (the fairy hands) is actually done so that when I look at it now I understand better how it was actually built.  When you consider the endeavor with knowledge of its manifestation, you realize how astonishing this place is on a whole different level.  I am so glad I make the conscious effort to get out in to the world on a regular basis to experience places like this.  They are my inspiration.

25 years ago in the Patio de los Leones

The name of the Alhambra comes from the Arabic word 'al-hamra', which means 'the red one', alluding to the reddish pink color of the clay coating the walls and towers, although they were at one time white washed. Being surrounded by forested green slopes in that state, it was once referred to by poets as 'A pearl among emeralds'.   There are 13 towers surrounding the citadel, all of which were built to defend it, and some that were remodeled into palaces to capitalize on the resplendent views they provide. The famed Nasrid Dynasty palaces were built during the 13th and 14th Centuries by a succession of Emir Sultans incorporating the knowledge of the 8 centuries their predecessors assimilated.  Being isolated from the eastern Islamic realm allowed for new directions in art and culture to develop, closely linked to that of Morocco.  As the Moorish kingdoms of Cordoba and Sevilla fell, Granada received an influx of talent and brilliance from those regions, and maintained independent autonomy as the last remnant of Al-Andalus for 250 years until the Emir Baobdil handed over the keys to the conquering Catholic monarchs in 1491.

Carved Stucco calligraphy over Arabesques and foliage patterns framed with elegant arches in the Sala de Comares

Granada, which means pomegranate in Spanish, is as delicious as the fruit.  The city that spreads out below the Alhambra is one of the loveliest in the world.  Lording over it in an autonomous realm of its own, the royal citadel became the depository of some of the finest architecture ever rendered by the hand of man.  5 palace complexes were built, each with a splendid series of patios, audience halls,  council chambers, and residencial quarters designed and embellished to showcase the artisanal skills of the Nasrid culture and the highest ideals of western Muslim culture.

The Alhambra and Generalife (left side) from the Albayzin's Mirador San Nicolas

Approaching the Puerta de Granada on the Cuesta de Gomerez

Puerta de las Granadas

Water is the binding thread that ties everything together here.  In the Alhambra it is like the blood in our veins, flowing through every part of the complex as if it were a living organism.  When you pass through the golden sandstone Puerta de las Granadas or Gate of the Pomegranates on the Cuesta de Gomerez leading up from the city below, you leave the urban landscape and enter the Alhambra wood, a verdant forest of tall trees.  The gate was commissioned by the Emperor Carlos V in 1536 in the Renaissance style.  Its designer was Pedro Machuca, who also designed the Emporer's palace in the Alhambra complex.

Passing through the gate is like entering a different realm.  Here there are birds singing, and you are greeted with the most marvelous sound of running water.  On both sides of the road that goes off to the left, there are two river stone lined gutters flowing with clear water that emerges in a cascade passing through a wall of the citadel.  The sound is so lovely it alters your entire state of being and the walk up the steep hill then becomes pure pleasure rather than labor, at least for me.  There are nicely contoured brick benches to stop and rest if the climb is too rigorous, and to savor the ambience of the wood.  I have walked up to the Alhambra a number of times just to experience this path, without actually going in to the complex itself.  You can also take the bus, but then you will miss out on what I think is an essential penance of exertion on the road to paradise.

One of a series of finely crafted brick benches with a pebble mosaic threshold for resting while ascending to the Alhambra

If you go up the seldom used path to the right you switch back up to the ancient Vermillion Towers and the home and cultural center of the famed Spanish classical music composer Manuel de Falla, who lived in Granada from 1921 to 1939.

The Vermillion Towers

"We now found ourselves in a deep narrow ravine, filled with beautiful groves, with a steep avenue, and various footpaths winding through it, bordered with stone seats, and ornamented with fountains. To our left, we beheld the towers of the Alhambra beetling above us; to our right, on the opposite side of the ravine, we were equally dominated by rival towers on a rocky eminence. These, we were told, were the Torres Vermejos, or vermilion towers, so called from their ruddy hue. No one knows their origin. They are of a date much anterior to the Alhambra: some suppose them to have been built by the Romans; others, by some wandering colony of Phoenicians." Washington Irving, Tales of the Alhambra



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Pebble mosaic steps with a pomegranate design leading to the Pista de Carlos V

When you reach a broad set of lovely pebble mosaic steps below the Puerta de la Justicia, or Gate of Justice, there is a large fountain called the Pilar de Carlos V.  This is a Renaissance style wall fountain topped with a large stone pediment.  Three masks spout water representing the three rivers of Granada.  Above them angels hold spouting conch shells.  It is not the most beautiful composition but it is dramatic and something to behold from the long stone bench opposite the plaza, which has a large imperial coat of arms depicted in pebbles before it.

Pilar de Carlos V and a heraldic pebble mosaic

The traditional entrance from this point is the Puerta de la Justicia, the Gate of Justice.  This massive gate was built for the Emir Yusuf I in 1348.  The giant horseshoe arch towers over a smaller iron clad gate in the same form, entering a vestibule with two 180 degree turns to ensure security.  There is a carved hand on the keystone at the top of the arch with the five fingers representing the five principal commandments of Islam.  The name Justice refers to the fact that petty crimes were traditionally administered to here.  This is an open entrance to the Alhambra complex but you need to proceed farther up the hill to the main ticket offices to officially enter the citadel.

Puerta de la Justicia

Near the ticket offices the road links up with another wonderful path called the Cuesta del Chico Rey that follows the ravine between the Alhambra and the Generalife taking you back down to the Rio Darro and the Albayzin neighborhood.  You pass beneath two arched bridges, one that carries water to the palaces in a narrow canal, and the other pedestrians leading to the Alhambra itself.

Cuesta del Chico Rey

The palaces are approached after passing a long curved alley of clipped cypresses with arched windows framing views of the ruins of the Medina and Hotel El Parador, once a Franciscan monastery built on the site of a former Nasrid palace.  The Alhambra was once a fully independent town with a Medina that contained residences and workshops and a market, inhabited by people from all economic levels.

Cypress hedges with arched openings

A flowering almond tree viewed through a cypress arch

The Hotel del Parador has an entry court with fairly modern pebble mosaics done in a body of white pebbles with black designs, forming a long axis and framing small marble fountain basins.  The pebble mosaics of the Alhambra are some of the original inspirations for the work that I have been doing over the past 25 years.

Pebble mosaic axis at the Hotel El Parador

You can have a romantic meal of Nasrid inspired cuisine or a glass of wine on a lovely shaded terrace at the El Parador while looking out over the Jardines del Portal, a highly civilized thing to do.  It is possible to enter this part of the garden through the Puerta de Justicia without buying a ticket, but you cannot pass beyond this area to see the majority of the palace complexes without one.

The garden patio of the restaurant of El Parador

8 pointed star skylights in the Arab Baths

Exterior detail of the Palacio Carlos V

This essay is a continuation of the last one about the Alhambra in Granada, Spain.  In that essay we accomplished the equivalent of two days exploring the citadel of the Nasrid Emirs.  We will now cross the small valley that separates the Alhambra from the Generalife, which is one of the world's great water gardens.

The Generalife from Carmen de la Victoria in the Albayzin

"HIGH ABOVE the Alhambra, on the breast of the mountain, amidst embowered gardens and stately terraces, rise the lofty towers and white walls of the Generalife; a fairy palace, full of storied recollections." Washington Irving, Tales of the Alhambra

The Generalife was once the summer palace of the Nasrid dynasty, which by being separate from the Alhambra was also considered to be something like a country estate, even though it is but a short walk away.

Patio de Acequia

The palace was commissioned by the Emir Muhammad III at the beginning of the 14th Century on the site of gardens that had been developed for 200 years previously as a playground retreat for the royal families.  They were considered to be outside the jurisdiction of the Alhambra city complex.  These gardens are located on a slope at a higher elevation than the Alhambra and encompass fine views of that fabled citadel.  The Generalife was subsequently remodeled by his nephew Abu l-Walid Ismail a decade later, adding additional palace structures and garden patios.

A dotted winter planting of ornamental kale

Crossing the ravine via an arched stone bridge that connects the tops of high defensive walls, the wide path skirts a broad modern plaza that is the site of of the Generalife Theater and the Festival of Music and Dance of Granada.  This outdoor auditorium was built between 1952 and inaugurated 1954.  It has undergone several renovations to improve the quality and range of performances but feels rather unworthy of the glorious space it inhabits when not in use, which is most of the time.  On the slopes below are orchards and beds of row crops consisting of artichokes and kale and fava beans in winter.

At the bottom of the ravine runs the road leading down to the Rio Darro and the Albayzin neighborhood, on the Cuesta del Rey Chico.

Cuesta del Rey Chico

Once past the theater, steps lead up to another terrace and the cypress hedged lower gardens of the Generalife.  The first part that you enter was built in 1951 as an extension to the hedged gardens further on that were built in the 1930's.  The gardens were designed by the architect/politician/preservationist Francisco Prieto Moreno in the Muslim style.  The state acquired ownership of the palace from the last private owner, the Marquis de Campote'jar, after a long legal battle.  He was a descendent of Familia Venegas, of whom a high ranking member of the family was deeded the property in 1631.  The site was formerly an alley of walnut trees and vegetable gardens to provide fresh produce for the palaces.

Interlocking circles in pebble mosaic in the lower gardens

The first thing you notice are the wonderful pebble mosaic paths framed by clipped cypress hedges that form rooms and alleys leading up to the palace on a long terrace.  The first part of the lower gardens of the Generalife are divided by a brick framed water channel in a style that is mimicked in gardens of this type throughout the world.  Two low marble basins anchor the ends of the long narrow pools, with another basin at the center in which thin arched jets of water splash.  The brick coping on the pools are ornamented with potted Pelargoniums in the summer.

Axial pool in the lower garden of the Generalife

At the center of the garden, dividing the two sections of the axial pool is the small round pool with four square cornered bays and a marble basin at the center.  This is the intersection of a perpendicular pair of shorter linear pools.  Fountain jets arching through the air shimmer like sparkling diamonds splashing in to the basin from all sides.  The four linear pools represent the Four Rivers of Paradise, water, milk, honey, and wine.  Everything in this garden is connected by water, as in the Alhambra.  Cypress trees frame the fountain and this is a popular place for people to stop to look up and down the long pools and pose for photos.

Central fountain in the lower gardens of the Generalife

Beyond the garden with the long pools are several intimate rooms created by the hedges on either side of the central axis.  The hedges are densely planted rows of clipped columnar cypress trees.  When they plant a hedge row, they place steel poles near either end with taught cables stretched between them at different heights to prevent the hedges from leaning.  Over time they fill in, covering the armature.  You can see an example of the cabling on the lower left side of the photo below.  The tops are clipped at different levels like towers framing the arched gateways carved in to the hedges that connect the garden rooms.

Cabled armatures provide stability in new Cypress hedges in the lower gardens

Hedged room in the lower gardens

Each room has a different pebble mosaic pattern.  On some of the paths there are wonderful mosaic vases with bouquets of flowers.  Another is a ring of birds, probably swallows.  Others are  tessellated geometric patterns like simpler versions of those carved in the stucco on palace walls.


There are fine views of the Alhambra across the ravine from here.














As you approach the palace of the Generalife there is another lovely fountain in the shape of a square with rounded bays on each side, and tiny arches of water splashing in to the center.

A brick edged fountain near the entrance of the Generalife

Below this is a narrow walled pathway that leads up from the ravine that was the old medieval access ramp to the palace.  This entrance is now closed to the public.  The entrance to the palace itself is through a courtyard called the Patio de Descabalgamieno, or Court of Dismounting.  There are footrests here that would have been used for mounting horses, hence the name.  The courtyard is a simple walled enclosure, with arched niches which might have been the stations of guards.  The floor is now a mosaic of pebbles with lines running from the four corners to a central fountain basin.  There are four orange trees planted in the corners of the patio that would fill it with the sweetest fragrance when in bloom.

Patio de Descabalgamieno

Espaliered orange trees frame arches on a patio off the Patio de la Acequia

From here there is a flight of steps to another small guard room and then you enter the Patio de la Acequia, or Court of the Water Channel.  This is the patio for which the Generalife is famed.  Two elegant pavilions anchor the ends of a long rectangular space, with an open arcade of white stuccoed arches along the south side that afford beautiful views of the Alhambra and the vegetable gardens below.

Patio de la Acequia

A long water canal bisects the courtyard into which a great many high arched narrow jets of water shoot through the air.  This makes a lot of delightful splashing sounds and cools the air on hot summer days.  The canal is flanked by flower beds and is bisected by a perpendicular path creating a symbolic four part paradise garden.  There are two of the very comfortable style Nasrid folding chairs on either end of the patio to sit and absorb the ambience of the space and it is well worth indulging in taking leave here.

Arched fountains in the Patio de Acequia

The Generalife has undergone a great deal of alteration over the years, in part because of the poor state of condition that resulted from years of neglect.  While doing archeological excavations after a fire in 1953, clay pipes were found that would have run 12 fountain jets in to the canal, but not so exuberantly as the many fountains that line the pool now.  The Nasrid preference seems to be rather more peaceful. The system that you see today was added in the 1,800's, and is considered a classic example of Andalusian waterworks that is often replicated in ambitious gardens around the world whenever a Moorish influence is desired.

The southern arcade of the Patio de Acequia

The patio was once entirely enclosed except for the mirador (viewpoint) in the royal chambers at the west end of the court.  The narrow open arcade along the south side was added after the reconquista.  The opposite side contains royal bedchambers and a high terrace wall.  The rooms on the west end are graced with elegant carved stucco and stalactite muqarna ceilings.  The mirador windows are low so that people could recline on cushions on the floor and gaze out over the gardens below and the city across the valley.  Unfortunately the mirador is roped off now for the sake of perservation, and it is difficult to get a good view of the parterres and fountains below the walls.

Facade of the royal chambers on the west end of the Patio de Acequia

The sculpted arch leading to the mirador

The beautiful mirador looking out to the Albayzin, with fretwork windows above.

A small muqarnas dome in the royal chambers

Arabic calligraphy in a doorway in the royal chambers

From the royal chambers on the west end of the patio there is a passageway that leads to another arcade opening on to the Patio de la Sultana, which was built in 1584 after the reconquista by Catholic monarchs.

The royal chambers

16th Century arcade opening on to the Patio de la Sultana

The patio contains a rectangular Myrtle hedged U-shaped pool with a square pool and a simple stone fountain at the center.  Several slender, tall water jets arch in to the pool from all sides.  The pool was drained for restoration this year but was opulently splashing away last year so I have photos of it in its full splendor.  It is quite deep and holds a great deal of water, being connected to the royal canal that is diverted from the Rio Darro far up the hill.  This water supplies all of the fountains in the Generalife and the Alhambra.

Patio de la Sultana with the ancient cypress tree of legend to the right.

The patio is named for the ancient cypress tree that dates from the time of the Moors.  Legend tells the story that the last Nasrid Emir, Baobdil's Sultana had secret rendezvous with a knight from the Abencerrajes family in a hollow in the tree's trunk.  On discovering this potential infidelity, Baobdil had the knights of the family summoned to the Patio de los Leones, where they were beheaded one by one in the hall that bears their name to this day.  This tale was immortalized by the writer Gines Perez de Hita, a 16th century Spanish writer who's historical novel, 'Guerras Civiles de Granada' was perhaps the first of its kind ever published and widely read.

Central fountain of the Patio de la Sultana

Two pebble mosaic paths with diamond patterns lead around the pool with a coat of arms of the Venegas family at the base of a handsome staircase that leads to the upper gardens centered on the far end.

Pebble mosaic path in the Patio de la Sultana

Coat of arms of the Venegas family in the Patio de la Sultana

I will be giving my presentation called 'The Pleasure Garden' in Eugene at the Willamette Valley Chapter of the Hardy Plant Society on April 10.  Eugene is my home town, so it is a pleasure to bring some tales from my adventures back to my roots.  I first gave this talk at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Madrid, Spain last year, and later in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Bellingham, Washington.  It covers the history of gardening from its roots in the deserts of Persia, to the Phoenicians and Romans, Pompeii, the Arabs in North Africa and Spain, the Moghuls in India, and the colonization of the New World.  I follow a thread that binds the gardens that most resonant with, which just happen to be those that inspire pleasure.

A blurry image of the flyer Growing up in Eugene and camping and fishing in the surrounding mountains instilled in me an intrinsic bond with nature.  We are not separate from nature but we are all too often divorced from it.  True paradise to me is one where the connection to the forces of nature are strongest.  What better way to awaken that connection than by lying down on a comfortable bed with pillows, or to soak in a hot scented bath while tricking fountains sing the song of snowmelt brooks and the sweet scent of jasmine drifts through the air.  The man made structure around it can invoke divinity through symbolism, numerology, and orientation to the sun, moon, and stars.  When the atmosphere is divine, the energy that is cultivated reinforces it.  Birds become trusting hop around while you blend in, and a joyous coexistence results.  To garden is to play with life.

It will be at the Campbell Senior Center at 155 High Street, at the edge of Skinners Butte Park (a place I love dearly).

If you are in the Eugene area and can come, I'll try to make it worth your while.  Ciao, Jeffrey

Glass floats in the pool in my garden

Hundred year old magnolias planted as seeds or cuttings in the Bishop's Close Garden in Portland

Arbor Day is a national holiday in the United States that falls on the last Friday of every April.  It is a celebration of trees.  Arbor Day's original founder was a man named Sterling Morton.  He was a pioneer who moved to Nebraska in 1854 and as a journalist, become the editor of the Nebraska City News.  He and his wife Caroline were great lovers of nature.  On arrival to Nebraska, like many pioneers, they were affected by the lack of trees there, and began advocating the planting and preservation of trees by writing an article for the paper.  He went on to become Secretary of the Nebraska Territory, and later the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.   The first Arbor Day in Nebraska was celebrated on April 10, 1872.  Prizes were awarded to counties and individuals who planted the most trees, which inspired the planting of more than a million trees in the state on that day.  Arbor Day became a legal holiday in Nebraska in 1885 and the official date chosen was Sterling Morton's birthday on April 22.  Students in schools planted trees that were marked by their respective grades and were then cared for by each class, instilling in young people the idea of planting and tending trees.  The tradition of planting trees began nationwide shortly afterwards.  When I was in grade school we were given tree seedlings to take home and plant in our gardens on Arbor Day, which was instrumental in my wanting to become a garden designer later in life.

Tree planting ceremony with the children of my clients.

Rare old growth Caribbean coastal forest in Colombia

Trees are essential for our survival on Earth.  They create the stable balance of elements in our atmosphere to make life possible.  They mitigate temperatures, regulate moisture, and bind the soil.  Their symbiotic relationship with a host of other organic components makes this planet hospitable for us as a species to survive.  Yet as a species we tend to strip away life from the Earth's surface and replace it with dead space for short term economic benefit.  It is believed that 30% of all tropical hardwoods used in furniture, and our ever more popular Ipe decks seen in gardening magazines is illegally logged.  That doesn't take in to account that what is legally logged is usually not environmentally responsible.  Plantation trees are grown on what was formerly wild forest.  I've seen vast areas in the tropics turned in to plantations. That teak bench with the seal of approval that makes you feel better came from wood that was grown in eroded monoculture rows of trees with no understory and little benefit to wildlife.

Old Growth Forest on the Rogue River in Southern Oregon

When I was growing up, Eugene, Oregon, my home town, was called the 'Timber capitol of the World'.  In my lifetime, vast areas of virgin forest were felled to supply the state's economy with lots of money.  When the trees were gone, the mills were automated and the economy became stagnant as thousands of timber industry workers were laid off.  Today only about 5% of the original old growth forests remain in the state.  Eugene is no longer the 'Timber Capitol of the World'.  It wasn't sustainable, although the industry still logs as much as it legally can.  In the Northeast of the United States, less than 1% of the original old growth forests remain.  It is far less than that in the Southeast and Southwest, and Great Lakes region.  We've cut it all down.  It is our duty, and essential for our survival that we plant trees and restore our forests.  Planting native trees will have the most benefit to native species, but there are many non native trees that can provide for a diversity of life as well.

Me sitting by the world's largest known Sitka Spruce Tree, Olympic National Park, Washington

Polly Hill Arboretum on the island of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts is a prime example of how one person planting trees can have a large scale impact.  Polly Hill was a woman who planted seeds, collecting species of native and rare exotic trees from around the world to create a garden that now covers 20 acres.  She preserved another 20 acres of her land as wild forest.  Growing trees from seed requires great patience, and she didn't start doing this until she was 51 years old.  In some ways what is most impressive about the arboretum is the ways the trees are arranged, so that they have room to mature to their best potential.  She had the vision to not pack them too close together so that they would become problematic or competitive with each other later on.  She passed away in 2007 at the age of 101 years, and her seedlings will live on for future enjoyment.  The Big leaf Magnolias (Magnolia macrophylla) and Stewartias, with their beautiful peeling mottled bark are the largest I have ever seen.

Inhaling the fragrance of a Bigleaf Magnolia blossom at Polly Hill Arboretum

Urban areas tend to be heavily paved.  The amount of area that actually contains living organisms tends to be rather small in comparison to the amount of space we need for housing and to drive and park out cars.

An aerial view of a section of the city of Los Angeles shows how trees are the only spots of green, and there aren't enough of them.

Street trees can help mitigate the lifeless lids that street pavement creates, shading the otherwise hot asphalt and reducing temperatures.  Do you have street trees in front of your house?  This could be a good place to consider planting a tree.  It is important to take into account the conditions required to grow in the strip between the sidewalk and curb.  How much space is there?  Will you be watering it?  Are their power lines overhead?  Be very thoughtful and do your research if you don't know what kind of tree to plant.  The city of Portland where I live has an active and successful program called 'Friends of Trees' that has instigated the planting of hundreds of thousands of trees along city streets.  I am not always thrilled with the species on the list, or the predominance of small trees over large ones, which eventually will change the look of streets that now have grand canopies of towering giants, but it is important to take seriously the scale with which a tree will attain with age.  Some trees, like Gingkoes, which I use a lot, will be able to adapt to increased pollution and temperature increases due to Global Warming.  Your town may very well have an organization that can help you make a selection, acquire the tree, and plant it properly.

A Koelreuteria paniculata tree I planted in the parking strip for my next door neighbors this spring.  I grew it from a seedling that I dug up from a clients garden 12 years ago.

Arbor Day is a symbol to remind us of the importance of planting trees.  The pink flowering dogwoods I bought for $10 each 30 years ago when I was quite poor and planted in front of my little house as street trees are in full bloom right now.   They are so beautiful.  Before that there were only two trees on my street.  I've since planted 5 more for my neighbors.  It is one way that I can make the street I live on a more beautiful and environmentally viable place to be.

Cornus florida 'Rubra' trees blooming on Arbor Day in front of my house in Portland

Happy Arbor Day.  Plant a tree!

Trees often outlive us and can become part of our legacy

A carved stone niche in the First Wall

Lately I have been a stone mason.  There is a line in a song by the band Cake that we listened to today with the line;  "The Stonemason does all the work".  Stone work is hard work.  Recently I've been working on a job in Sonoma County, California just up the hill from Western Hills Nursery outside the little town of Occidental.  I'm building curvaceous walls first that frame the patio.  Later we will lay a bluestone patio with veins of flat river rock.  The intended goal is for the space to be magical.

Mock up of the wall

There will be an altar to the Hindu deity Ganesha surrounded by a bed of fragrant herbs.  I'm currently trying to tint a 3 foot tall stone carving of Ganesha that my clients bought in Batubulan on Bali.  I want to use pastels and powdered pigment to color him blue at their request.

Building the First Wall

Footing for the Altar Wall and the basin for the fountain

The altar will be supported by an old carved sandstone arch from Jodhpur in Rajasthan, one that I didn't use in my own wall at home where most of the other carvings I bought in India wound up.  We will build a form, and I will cast a pebble mosaic inside the arch with a hole for copper tubing that will connect to a fountain pump.  Then we will stand it up and mortar it to a small concrete block wall against the house.  There will be a sealed concrete water basin with an automatic refill spigot to keep it full.  A grille will fit over this that is covered in pebbles with a carved stone bowl that the fountain spits in to and then overflows.  It is simple and easy to maintain, and seems to be the style of fountain I prefer to build.  They're fairly raccoon proof, are easy to clean, and wont become a breeding ground for mosquitos.  This type of fountain reminds me of places in Nepal where villagers would collect water for their homes from a source trickling out of a pipe projecting from a wall.

Spitter Fountain in my garden

I am currently building the walls.  The first one, running 75 feet, took 8 days to construct.  The second is covering an existing concrete wall that runs deep in to the steep slope for stability.  I have a very knowledgeable assistant who has great equipment, including a walk behind Bobcat tractor that can carry heavy loads up the steep slope to the site.

Bluestone, from Connecticut for the Patio

The new house is under construction, so there are lots of workers around.  The general contractor gets me what I need.  A concrete sub-slab was poured and some walls, with a cut out for a fire pit and a drain.  Lines were set for electricity for lights and gas to the fire pit, and water for irrigation and to wash the patio.  I had suggested a design with 18" high walls on both sides that you could sit on or use as a buffet during alfresco meals.  If there are large parties everyone will have a place to sit without having to have a lot of chairs.  The walls have lots of niches built in to them for placing precious objects, and candles at night.  Each space can become its own little altar.

Niches in the wall

The walls are built with four tons of salvaged old street cobbles from San Francisco that were available at a local stone yard.  I also hand picked some river rock and smaller pebbles that I was told are from Colorado.  The rest of the stone I have gathered from various rivers in Southern Oregon and Northern California.

Collecting stones on this magical stretch of the Smith

I collect discretely, but if there is a large rock bar, like the one I found on the Applegate River outside of Grants Pass in Southern Oregon then I carefully select a lot of pieces I know I can use to build with.  I look for  flat surfaces and squared corners and lots of little triangles.  I like a variety of colors and love white quartzite lines.  Serpentine is the predominant stone with character in this part of the Pacific Northwest and has a swirly green structure.  There is some jasper that is a rich red, black basalt, white quartzite, and a number of metamorphic minerals I can't identify but recognize.  I find long finger like stones that work nicely in mosaic.  The Eel River has lots of red stones with white quartzite veins.  I collect the rock trying not to make its absence noticeable.  There are so many beautiful river beaches in this region.  It really is the gentlest form of mining, and I honor the stones with artful placement in a beautiful composition.  The story that goes with them is an important part of the magic that this space will have.

The fire pit in the Second Wall

Building these things is very hard work.  I often do 10 hour days, with William mixing mortar in a mixer and delivering double loads in a wheel barrow.  That keeps me bent over all day.  I am setting all of the stone and tucking pebbles in to all the cracks.  I start by staging the stones to decide how it will be composed and sometimes trimming them with a saw to fit more tightly.  I don't like to see mortar.

What a mess!

The composition is generally very natural, in the framework of a rectangular curving conglomerate of stone.  I feel like the stones are arranged as if they were caught in the in the current in a stream, tightly fit together by the force of the water, but in an architectural format.  I really want to speak to the places from which they came, which includes a long journey traveling downstream.   Then I come along...

Wall Cap detail on the Second Wall

Niche in one end of the Second Wall

I've always built seat height walls and spitter fountains.  Its just another version of the same idea.  In 3 weeks we have nearly completed the two walls, including the fire pit.  I think the walls look pretty busy but as they become more complete, I am liking them more and more, and feeling some sort of power in their very existence.  I like the squared edge from the sides to the wall cap using stones with nice 90 degree corners.

The Second Wall

William finishing the mortar joints on the fire pit

I'm taking a short break to go home and then returning for another 3 week intensive to build the patio.  I'm so sore but the body seems to be holding out!  I'm only pushing this hard because I am away from my own garden the longer it takes.  Sonoma County is stunningly beautiful.  The drive over Coleman Valley Road, which I take to work every day, to the coast, is a World Class journey.  And the trip down through the Siskiyou Mountains in Oregon and the Redwoods in California was wonderful.

I'll post more images of this project as it progresses.  I'll be visiting Western Hills Garden for the first time when I come back to Occidental.  The garden will be reopening to the public on June 9th.

I am also working on an essay on building altars that will take forever to finish and probably be long like the one I wrote on the Alhambra.  Make sure and read that one if you haven't.

A week later...

As of June 16th I have set about 1/3 of the patio and cut almost half the stones.  The slabs of bluestone are quite heavy and many are slightly to badly warped, meaning I have to do a lot of trimming.  This part of the job is much harder and not as fun as the walls.  I cut a half lotus for the front of the altar fountain, and am filling gaps and veins with river and beach stones I've been gathering.

A half Lotus cut with a rock saw in Bluestone

On a 99 degree Saturday I collected 600 pounds of flat topped stones from the lovely Austin Creek at Cazadores, and Dutch Bill Creek, which flows from Occidental to the Russian River at Monte Rio.

Austin Creek near its confluence with the Russian River

It is now June 27 and I have finished setting all the stone in the patio.  The walls have been done for some time so I started to do some cleaning with Muriatic Acid to remove mortar film that coats the stone.  We've tooled and scrubbed the stone with wire brushes so that hopefully they can be cleaned with just a rinse of diluted acid.  This is not a fun part of the job other than having the beauty of the stones revealed.  William is applying it with a hand pump sprayer and we wear respirators and cover our skin.

The Patio the day after Summer Solstice

Every stone is moved a dozen times before it gets set in mortar.  Some weigh as much as 250 pounds.  All of them were trimmed to fit tightly together using the best that each had to offer.  The lotus in front of the altar has a border of local river rock.  Veins between the slabs are filled with a variety of minerals that are naturally worn but that retain a flat surface.  Many are trimmed on a wet stone table saw of bumps that would make them difficult to fit tightly in the paving otherwise.

The Lotus completed

All I have to finish now is the altar, the fountain face of which I cast before going in to San Francisco for the weekend so it could cure.  It is a sunburst with a little pagoda like niche in the center.  It honors the beginning of summer after the longest day of the year.  We stood the panel up and mortared it vertical, but while I was eating lunch and staring at it I decided that it had to be raised up higher, so we took it down and I set a row of cobbles as a base underneath it.  I will try to build the fountain tomorrow.

The Altar fountain, cast on the drizzly day after Summer Solstice

On June 28 we installed the fountain and I framed it in San Francisco street cobbles, many of which were trimmed to improve their fit.  I still have to find a slab that will go on top for the Ganesha statue to reside upon.  There will be ample space to create an altar on the slab as it will be over 4 feet long.

William misted the walls with Muriatic acid, so we wore masks all day.  He will do the patio in a few weeks so that it can cure.  When I finished the fountain we cleared everything off the patio and I hosed it down.  This is the first time I have seen the whole thing at once.

The patio cleaned off for the first time

The bed behind he wall will be filled with light soil for an herb garden.  It will be interesting to see how my clients furnish it.  There are brackets being attached to the poles set in the wall for Moroccan lanterns to hang from.  The poles will be sheathed in brass.  A shade cloth will stretch between the poles to provide shade in the summer.

The fountain installed and framed in cobbles

Fire Pit

Ganesha tinted blue with pigments and pastels

I'll return in the fall and lay the paths and steps with terraces that will connect the patio to the surrounding area.  Time for a rest, and to return to my garden in Portland.

A candle illuminates a Khmer Buddha in a niche in my garden

Ganesha peers from a moss encrusted niche in my garden

Winter in the Pacific Northwest tends to be wet.  It rains a lot, so I leave my lovely home for sunnier climes in the winter.  While I am gone the moss grows, and when I come home, parts of my garden are covered in luxuriant green fur.  Mosses absorb moisture and nutrients through their tiny leaves rather than through roots, and are able to colonize bare stone, which in turn provides a base on which other opportunistic plants can grow.  Mosses have inhabited the Earth for millions of years and speak of their ability to adapt and thrive where nothing grew before.  And they garland my altars in the most beautiful way.  It is an odd statement about our relationship with nature that people always want to powerwash it away.  I love it.

Detail of a wall in my garden

My garden is filled with altars, places were I can place objects of meaning to me.  Most of the objects were collected during my travels here and around the world.  They remind me of the places they came from and the experiences I had there.

A large carved sandstone image of the Sarnath Buddha on an altar pedestal in my front garden

There are marbles I've dug up in gardens that remind me of my childhood.  There are treasures that belonged to my ancestors to remind me of my heritage.  There are statues of deities and Buddhas to remind me of the divine realm and meditation.  There are stones I've pocketed from glorious days by rivers and beaches.  There are things I simply find beautiful because I like to surround myself with beauty.   And there is water, which makes life possible.

I'm always preaching the need to lie down in the garden to fully appreciate it.  On warm dry days I roll out carpets on my loose pebble patio with a few pillows and recline in the midst of all the loveliness of my garden.  As the layers of preoccupation peel away to the siren song of trickling fountains, I start to notice the small details close at hand in the walls I've built around me.  Over time they have become harbingers of nature.

Lie down and relax

My walls are built of stones I have collected along the way, each one catching my eye due to some extraordinary character.  By the fate of encounter they are plucked from their path and carted off to my garden, where I try to be worthy of their abduction by using them in some kind of divine arrangement.  Mixed amongst these geologic wonders are carved sandstone relics I bought and shipped back from India many years ago.  Indian architecture at its best relates to divine rules of composition that are exemplified with the allusion of beauty.  Niches are an important component as they are a place for offerings to reside.  By demonstrating reverence on a repeated basis, I believe that a place can be collectively made sacred over time with the showering of intension and blessings of love.
As I lay there, gazing at the wall, where a small golden sandstone niche from the fabled Thar Desert town of Jaisalmer in Rajasthan is imbedded, I see how the moss has found the shaded porosity of the sandstone to be a fine place to prosper.  The stones in the wall are mostly from rivers and beaches, and the ones set on the cap of the wall have small valleys between them where water flows when it rains, making the channels down which the water trickles moist.  The moisture makes it possible for the ancient life form of moss to subsist.  A shell from some S.E. Asian beach I combed 25 years ago sits in a small niche, its spiraling form speaking to the same forces that shape galaxies.  A certain kind of shaggy moss has taken to this niche and a species of spider has made the shell and the space behind it a home for many generations.

A moss draped sandstone niche holds a shell behind which a species of spider has lived for many years

A tile mosaic spiderweb I made for a client we called 'The Weaver'

The Navajos have a story of the Spider Woman, who had been told by holy beings that she had the ability to weave a map of the universe and the geometrical patterns of spirit beings in the night sky.  One day while gathering food, she touched the branch of a small tree, and a string emerged, connected to the palm of her hand.  As she moved the string from branch to branch, she realized that she was weaving the patterns she had been told about.  On returning home, she showed her partner the skills she had learned and he built a loom for her on which to do her weavings.  People heard of this and came to see and learn these skills, from which the tradition of Navajo weaving began.  Men to this day build the looms, and women do the weaving.  Young women learning to weave are told to go out in the  early morning and find a spiders web bejeweled with morning dew.  They are told to place their right hand on the web without damaging it, and they will be gifted the skill to weave within their spirit forever.  We tend to have a neurotic fear of spiders, but they are divine teachers and we should never kill them.  My garden is full of them at various times of year, and I have never been harmed by one.

I was out in the garden just before the ancient holy day of Beltaine, lost somewhere between melancholy and bliss.  The warm light of a late April day made the luxuriant new foliage glow.  The bright white leaves of the Arctic Beauty Kiwi frames the fragrant bowers of a hundred year old lilac.  When the kiwi blooms it will eclipse the lilac with a spice drenched aroma that makes me stop and sit in the evening to inhale its divinity.

Actinidia kolomikta draped over Mahonia 'Charity'

Sort of buried underneath the tangle of vines and lilac is a good size Mahonia 'Charity' shrub laden with clusters of flocked blue berries.  A fat blue jay splashes in the stone lotus bowl I designed and had carved in Mahabalipuram in India.  Beside that is a beautiful Khmer style Hindu God Lord Vishnu, the preserver.  In my house I have a temple rubbing of a bas relief from Angkor in Cambodia depicting the great creation story of the Churning of the Sea of Milk.  The Nectar of Immortality, amongst other things, has been lost in the sea.  Vishnu conducts a tug of war between the dual forces of Nature, depicted as Devas and Asuras, dark and light, good and evil.  They pull back and forth on a seven headed cobra called a Naga, which is wrapped around the holy Mount Mandara, at the center of the universe in the Sea of Milk.  The mountain acts as a churn, stirring up the energy within the sea.  It churns for a thousand years, and as it begins to bore downward, an early incarnation of Vishnu arises to support it.   The action creates a foam of heavenly angels called Apsaras, and the Amrit, the sustainer of immortality in the Gods is released.  The entire process is a metaphor for creation of the dynamic whirl of the cosmos on every level.  Duality is a component of all things and the balancing of that duality is what makes everything work.  Altars can capture the essence of these concepts through symbolism and structure, and bless us with by making us aware of this great dynamic.

A charcoal rubbing of a bas relief of the Churning of the Sea of Milk from Angkor, hanging in my living room

A Bronze Khmer Vishnu statue in my garden

Frequently in my lectures I discuss the concept of triggering consciousness.   After the blue jay finished his vigorous bath and flew off, I removed my soiled gloves and reverently moved the statue of Vishnu out in to the sunlight to rest on a circle of stone mosaic where I grow salad greens.  He could now shower blessings down upon my kale and mesclune.

As I said before there was some melancholy in my psyche on this beautiful day.  I couldn't seem to shake it.  It seemed to be the result of some sadness brought on by the state of the world.  My mind had wandered in to the realm of Vishnu, and it made me think of an animated video I had seen which started with the smallest sources of energy that manifest particles, which in turn make up protons and neutrons, a form of duality in negative and positive energy, around which electrons spin.  As the scale of things increases by mathematical increments, there are elements, and molecules, and all the things that can become of that, eventually reaching the realm in which we perceive our reality, including ourselves.  Going outward, there is the garden, and the landscape, and the planet, and the solar system, and the Milky Way, and the Universe, and the expanding cosmos itself racing to its limits, where it may some day implode and begin again.  It seems we are in the middle of this incredible event, with everything smaller and greater than us pulling back and forth to churn the Sea of Milk, frothing it all up and making it go.  In the ultimate state of enlightenment I would imagine that one feels the connection to this churning magnificent process.

For Hindus in India and Nepal, stones are often regarded as sacred manifestations and are embellished to give them personality and to invoke divine spirit.  They are sometimes pigmented and dressed, and sometimes have eyes attached to them.  The one in this photo at left represents the almighty God Shiva, the Lord of the dance that created and eventually destroys and recreates the cosmos.  Sometimes the stone is left in its original condition as if its very existence is enough to invoke the intended state of consciousness it is meant to inspire.

In Nepal, they carve Tibetan Buddhist mantras such as one spelled phonetically as 'om manipadme hum', loosely translated to mean 'behold the jewel in the lotus', referring to the Bodhisattva of loving compassion.  In Nepal, I found miles of altar walls covered in stones carved with this mantra placed as offerings during auspicious festivals.  It is quite magical to walk along them knowing and absorbing what they mean.

Mani stones in the Langtang Valley of Nepal

An elaborate golden altarpiece in the Cathedral of Tarragona, Spai

Every religion seems to include altars within their architecture.  They are often at the heart of a temple or church, where sacred ritualistic objects are placed, as well as seasonal offerings such as flowers.  In a sense the sacredness of the objects within the altar space would be a lure to attract divine energy.

Altars are a place to invoke reverence.  In Chinese homes there is always an altar to honor one's ancestors.   There may be old portraits over a decorated red and gold shelf, and a statue of the Buddha.  A glass of water and some fresh fruit is often placed on the shelf to provide sustenance to the departed, along with a burning stick of incense to scent the air in ghostly swirls of smoke.  Lighting incense is a way to show conscious reverence through a simple ritual.  The altar is always kept above head height out of respect.  By keeping departed spirits content one helps assure peace and hopefully prosperity.  I frequently see statues of Buddhas in American gardens sitting on the ground, which could be taken as offensive by reverent Buddhists.  Take note.

The Grotto at the Sanctuary for our Sorrowful Mother in Portland, Oregon

Grottos are a geographical feature that have often become places of reverence around the world.  On Mount Parnassus in Greece, the Muses of poetry, art, and music were believed to have inhabited the cave from which a spring emerged, and many divine gatherings were held there.  The idea of a holy spring emerging from a grotto was stylized as Nyphaeums by the Romans, a ritual spring where divine maidens resided inspiring creativity and beauty.  For the Catholic church, these became a place of refuge for the Virgin and miracles have been attributed to visions of the Virgin Mary at the mouth of caves and springs such as Lourdes in France.

A Thai Buddha high up on the wall in my garden

Occasionally I am commissioned to build an altar in a client's garden.  Usually it is meant to be a focal point, some times including a fountain for providing the sound and sparkle of water and honoring that element which makes it possible for us to exist.  In a recent ritual I attended a woman spoke of about the property water molecules have of changing shape in response to thought and emotion, suggesting that since we are made mostly of water, that we are in fact directly affecting our very being in the immediate moment by our feelings and actions, and can therefore manifest who we are by being consciously aware of the fact and giving the molecules a beautiful harmonious form by being in a state of peace.

The idea was developed by the Japanese doctor Masaru Emoto after he conducted studies photographing water molecules after addressing them with various words, both positive and negative.  The results are startling.


From experience the most powerful work I have done is when I have had the opportunity to work in time and space, along the lines of Vastu Puranic architecture, which is a method applied to the construction of Hindu temples, but also applies to many other religious practices of constructing sacred structures.  The project is organized and commenced by determining times that are auspicious and working around them.  There isn't a rush based on deadlines, but rather the construction is performed around the cycles of nature and the cosmos, so that a relationship is developed connecting them to the work being performed.  Building something on an equinox or solstice connects it to the cycle of the Earth's circuit around the Sun, and links it to all other sacred spaces that connect to the same principals.  The body of a serpent forms on the terraces of a Mayan pyramid at Chichen Itza on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico on Spring equinox, the same day that light is cast on key sections of the bas reliefs at Ankor Wat in Cambodia.  Light penetrates the interior of Hindu temples in India in the same way they align with a mosaic I built on the Olympic Peninsula on the Summer solstice.  By creating those relationships you can connect your creation to a network of sacred sites through mutual intention, and the awareness of that connection can alter your consciousness in subtle or profound ways.

The Council Ring at Windcliff has a mosaic of a Giant Pacific Octopus, native to Puget Sound who's arms point to the cardinal directions.  There are alignments with the sun on Summer Solstice at sunrise, high noon, and sunset.  The colors in the stones correspond with the colors of the seasons of the year.

Marigold garlands in the Howrah flower market in Calcutta

An altar can simply be a platform on which special objects can be placed.  It can be a nice driftwood plank carried off the beach, or a flat slab of stone purchased at a stone yard.  Sometimes a client will buy a beautiful statue of an Asian deity to give the altar a focus.  I have made marigold garlands to drape around the neck of a Buddha statue in my garden on special occasion as a display of reverence.  This is a practice common in India, where flower markets can be piled with tons of golden strands of these fragrant flowers.

The ceremony gives a history of positive attention to the altar.  The more you use it and focus attention on it the more sacred it becomes.  I've noticed that animals are often attracted to the energy of altars, as if there is some kind of alluring draw that they are capable of perceiving.  While I was building a memorial altar in Southern Oregon, it was visited by a rattlesnake, a huge colorful lizard, and a cougar.  During its dedication a flock of birds circled directly overhead, as if blessing the event.

Tiny ceramic bottles built in to an Memorial altar for men who died of AIDS at a sanctuary in Southern Oregon.  I meditated and began work on this altar daily as the sun rose over the mountain and completed the days work with a meditation at sunset, taking a siesta during the heat of the afternoon.

The first altar I built for a client was for a wedding.  I had traveled to Barcelona, Spain that Spring and returned with a head filled with images of the work of Antonio Gaudi.  My client had never seen his work previously but was profoundly moved by images that I showed her and asked me if I couldn't build her a 'Gaudiesque' garden for her wedding ceremony.  So I built a large tiered altar that wraps around a small round mosaic patio tucked in to the steep slope at  the back of the garden. There are two towers inspired by those at the Cathedral of La Sagrada Familia framing a large round medallion encrusted in broken mirror.  It was quite an extraordinary achievement for me as a young stone mason.  Today, like the marriage, it lies in ruins, but it retains an atmospheric quality to it even in its degraded state.

An old photograph of Faviana's wedding altar

One woman I've worked for over the years found a lovely bronze Quan Yin statue at a local import shop that became the centerpiece for an altar platform.  It rests above a fountain embedded with a antique carved stone niche from India similar to those found in my garden.  I veneered an ugly concrete block wall with stone that matches a patio I built for her several years prior, with some lovely hand gathered river rocks from my collection that form an inverted pyramid.  My client wanted to honor the feminine energy she summons as a single mother and pediatrician.  Quan yin is a female Bodhisattva, a being with ultimate compassion for all sentient beings.  She is sometimes referred to as the Goddess of Mercy.  Her presence in the garden is one of peaceful contemplation and compassion, something we can always use in our lives.  I elevated the platform on which she sits above that of the rest of the wall to honor her divine strength and beauty.

An altar to Quan Yin creates a focal point over a fountain as part of a wall remodel for a client

In my last essay, called My Work, I built an altar for a statue of the Elephant headed Hindu deity Ganesha, who in the pantheon is referred to as the 'remover of obstacles'.  He is the one you pray to first, who by removing obstructions from your path, enables you to proceed unimpeded.  I used a stone arch way that I brought back from Rajasthan in India several years ago and made a sunburst of slender pieces of slate that I found in local streams to form a sunburst.  This was erected on June 22nd, the first day of summer after the Solstice, on the longest day of the year.  It faces south, and supports a platform on which the Ganesha statue will eventually rest.  A fountain will spill water in a thin stream in to a bowl where flowers can be floated on special occasions.  There is a stone niche in the center of the slate sunburst for additional offerings.  I created a number of niches in the seat height walls where candles and objects can be placed, giving the long curving walls the ability to become a series of altars in themselves.  I was very dismayed to learn that after I left, the patio and walls had been sealed with several coats of a glossy sealer.  While this brings out the color of the stone and makes it always look wet, which appealed to my clients, it also gives the stone a plastic quality that is unnatural.  The stone will never change color now when it rains.  The stone cannot breath, and the life force of ancient mosses and lichens will not add their patina to the veins between the stones.  The plastic sealer has a toxicity that violates the natural relationship I had hoped the patio and altar would have with the surrounding environment.  A big sigh.

A fountain altar centers a curving seat height wall indented with several niches in a garden in Sonoma County, California.  This photo was taken before the patio was cleaned and sealed.  I was not consulted before several coats of gloss sealer were applied to the stone work.

Another fountain altar that I built last year is something that I cast in a form that I built from scrap wood and flexible lawn edging.  I filled the mold with mortar and did a pebble mosaic, with a central niche in which made of cut sandstone for placing special objects.  The fountain has a flexible copper tubing cast in to it that runs from a small recirculating pump up to where the water arcs down in to a ceramic bowl.  I left the niche bare for my client to embellish with objects that have meaning to her.  It is once again the centerpiece of the garden, the spring of life.  The sound of the water splashing in to the bowl completely transforms the ambience of the garden in to a magical oasis.

Fountain with a small altar niche

I attend a few grand festivals every summer where altar building has become a tradition.  The sweetest of them all is called "Beloved Sacred Arts and Music Festival".  A number of artisans build temporary altars using objects they have brought that are mixed with natural materials gathered from the surrounding forests.  Forest mosses are frequently used to make soft frames and cushions on which to place things to create sacred patterns and symbols.

An array of objects waiting to be assembled by an artist in to an altar at the Beloved Festival

Artists assembling an altar from natural materials around a tree stump at the Beloved Festival

The altars are sited at places where energy is focused and thoughtfully honored.  We wonder as a society why there are so many ills.  A simple case could be made for the fact that we have violated or obliterated so many powerful energy sources in our haste to develop them for some kind of economic or convenient benefit.  There are parking lots where at one time there might have been an artesian spring or ancient grove of magical trees or a rock outcropping.  By building altars to mark places of consequential import and honoring them we can inspire blessings that might otherwise be lost to us.  This may all sound rather woo woo but I know from personal experience that what I am suggesting is important and real.

A playful collection of carefully arranged objects creates a temporary altar at the Beloved Festival

Some altars are like mandalas viewed from above, or stand on platforms and shelves in the more traditional sense.

A Medallion of cut branches set in moss at the Beloved Festival

The altar by the Temple of Light and Sound stage at Beloved

Some are more like a collection of decorative elements that can border on kitsch that is tempered by the sweetness of their intention and thoughtful arrangement.

A blue altar by Trinity Domino at Beloved

Rolling a mobile altar to the temple for the White Procession

The largest and craziest festival that I attend annually is Burning Man.  In recent years more than 50,000 people converge on a dry alkaline lake bed in the Nevada desert to create a city where just about anything goes.  It is a place where people can recreate themselves with abandon.  At the apex of a giant circular plan of streets is an open wedge of space in which sits a Temple of Memory.  A number of groups guided by artist/architects have designed and overseen the construction of magnificent wooden structures that become laden with memorabilia and sentiment by the week's end, usually in regards to loved ones who have passed on.  Numerous wedding ceremonies take place here as the site is truly used as a temple, one that is burned on Sunday night, sending a massive outpouring of love and remembrance in to the transition of flames to ashes.

A magical pavilion built from found objects in 2008 by an artist named Shrine

This year's temple, designed by veteran temple builder David Best, was perhaps the loveliest yet conceived.  Every year something beautiful and magical is constructed, some humble, others grandiose, but this one was taken to an intricate pinnacle with cosmic proportions that were so carefully refined as to be exceptional on every level.  The structure had elements of a South Indian, Balinese, and Burmese and Thai temples.  It was named the Temple of Juno in honor of the Roman goddess who is attributed to fertility, which was the theme of this year's festival.

The spire of the Temple of Juno seems to touch the rising moon at Burning Man

The wood was plasma cut in to lacy screens with the cut out portions assembled in to ornaments that gave the building a rich level of decoration.  Hanging from the steep sided central tower was a similar shaped inverted pyramidal pendant which centered on another sharply pointed pinnacle that rose from a low, stepped square platform on which objects could be placed.

Looking up inside the Temple of Juno

As objects accumulated, the platforms became wonderful altars of remembrance and spiritual focus.  Large numbers of people would gather in contemplative meditation while musicians gently played beautiful music, all basking in the divine light filtering in through the perforated screens that made up the ceilings of the structure.  It was a truly marvelous and moving space to inhabit.

The Temple of Juno on Thursday morning

The Temple altar on Saturday afternoon

As the week went on, the altar accumulated more and more objects of reflection and remembrance, so that over time it became a great collective shrine of mutual intention expressed by individuals and groups, basically creating a society bonded by symbiotic love and loss.

A detail of objects assembled on the alter in the Temple of Juno at Burning Man

On Sunday night, as is the tradition, the temple was burned.  It is a remarkable gift to be able to experience something so profoundly magical that is here for such a short time and then burns to ashes so quickly.  I can honestly say that this was one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen in my life as a traveler.

Burning the Temple of Juno at the Burning Man Festival Build yourself an altar!

Thanks for reading, Jeffrey

My altar to travel by the front door to my house

This afternoon on October 29, photographer Scott Belding came to my garden to capture images of two belly dancers, one who has become a much loved friend named Nagasita, and the other an instructor named Moria Chappell, who specializes in Odissi Dance, an ancient form from the eastern state of Orissa in India.

Odissi Dancers carved on the 13th Century Konarak Temple in Orissa

After arriving at my house, the two women dressed in extraordinary hand made finery and emerged as Goddesses in to what was an unusually warm dry day for the end of October.  The light was fully saturated and magnificent and the humidity from previous days of rain gave the stonework in the garden a rich hue.  The Gods were being very supportive of this event because it is pouring rain again as I write this.

Reflective white panels even the light for photography

The photographer set up white umbrellas on tall stands to diffuse the light of mounted flash mechanisms that reflected off of white panels to illuminate the niche wall and pool in my garden.  Moria and Nagasita gracefully styled a variety of poses based on Odissi dance positions, of which there are 52 basic hand positions called mudras, in combination with a number of others for telling a gestural narrative.  Every part of the body is incorporated in telling stories based on stories about people and their relationship to Gods of the Hindu pantheon.

Photographer Scott Belding showing an image to Moria Chappell

When I built this part of the garden I was basically manifesting the idea of a harem, inspired by those I have seen in palaces in India and Turkey.  What struck me about these harems is that they were the most intimate and beautiful part of those incredible palace complexes, sumptuous halls and pleasure gardens for relaxing and communing amongst fountains and pools.  I had shipped back a number of salvaged stone architectural pieces from demolished old buildings in Rajasthan collected during my travels in India in the 1990's.  I used these antique sculpted sandstone window frames and panels mixed with special stones I had gathered from around the world to ornament the facade.  The wall for me is also meant to be a shrine in which to house a collection of bronze and stone Buddhas and Hindu deities that I wanted to give proper placement.  The wall and pool allude to a number of ancient palaces, temples and tombs I have visited throughout Asia, South America, Europe, and North Africa bringing the essence of these places in to my living environment and blending them with nature.

Nagasita Tiare Tashnick

I have had, since I built the garden, the fantasy of throwing a party with a harem theme, reconstructing something like an Orientalist painting where richly attired guests lounge on cushions while music and belly dance are performed.

We have had many wonderful Bacchanalian parties here, including one that lasted 3 days, but the harem theme has never been realized.  Nagasita had been to my house years before when a fellow dancer Aradia Sunsari was wintering here while I was traveling.   Nagasita has become a pivotal performer and teacher of Tribal Fusion Bellydance in Portland and performs at a great many events around town.  Her presence has brough an element of profound spiritual beauty to the shows.  I've had the opportunity to dance with her on the floor and every time we seem to move to another level of interaction, as if we are speaking to something divine through our bodies and hands.  It is a truly sublime thing to experience.  I was thrilled when she agreed to do a photo shoot in my garden.

I've seen a number or Indian classical dances performed in India and here in the U.S.  Traditionally they are meant to inspire divinity in the dancers and through them, the audience.  From experience, this really happens and the way I move on the dance floor to this day is profoundly influenced by what I have taken away from watching these amazing performances.  To behold these two women enacting various poses and holding them with great skill and grace while being captured on film was and ecstatic event.  I used my little Lumix DMC-LX5 camera to shoot images over the photographer's shoulder, often trying to synchronize with his countdown to try and capitalized on the flash.  This rarely worked but the light was so beautiful it didn't seem to matter.  I also took images from down low and off to the sides in order to stay out of the way.  But I was able to capture some truly wonderful images of great beauty.


I love beauty.  It gives life meaning for me.  To watch these beautiful women artfully creating classical vignettes on the stage of my pool and wall was incredibly uplifting.  Never has my garden been so divinely blessed through ritual gesture.  It was as if they were manifesting a dream.

Blessing the waters

What a wonderful day it was!   Fantasy truly can become reality!  Thanks for reading.

A Cleopatra pose

Moria Chappell in the bathtub

Repose

Nagasita, keeper of the Spring

Entwined

Adoration

The Spring of Life

Needless to say, I'm inspired!

A face emerges from a hedge in the Cementerio de Tulcan

In December of the year 2000 I made my first of what would be 11 winters spent in South America.  An old college friend of mine and I flew from Guatamala City to Quito via Houston as there are no direct flights between the two countries.  Ecuador is small by South American standards but it is incredibly diverse, so I would have to return the following year to revisit and explore this magical country further.

A water channel and pool at 400 year old Hacienda Ocampo in Cotacachi

From Quito we made our way north, via Otavalo, Ibarra, El Angel, and Tulcán.  Excursions to high altitude Andean reserves near the Equator in terrain called Paramo required tall rubber boots and good rain gear, but the duress was greatly rewarded by otherworldly landscapes.

Frailejones, of the Genus Espeletia in Reserva Ecologico El Angel

Burning Tires block the Panamerican Highway outside El Angel

There was a general strike over an increase in fuel costs and the Panamerican Highway, which is the main north-south artery of the country became the main target for the protests.  Block this highway and you slow the country down considerably.  After the windshield in a taxi we had hired to take us from Otavalo to Cotacachi was smashed by a rock we had to walk several miles around lines of rocks and logs that had been rolled on to the road.  The army would chase people off, and roll the rocks out of the way.  The people would just roll them back as they moved along.  Whenever a section of road opened up we would advance our way north.  Needless to say there were very few tourists along the way.  The last leg of the trip north from El Angel to Tulcán was blocked by a line of burning tires.  Trucks and buses needed to get through took insane detours down mud mired dirt roads with the assistance of the army.

Just 7 kilometers from the Colombian border lies the hill town of Tulcán.  It is the highest town in Ecuador, and has a climate that qualifies as an eternal Spring, which pretty much means cold and wet a lot of the time.  Our primary reason for coming here were pictures I had seen years earlier of a fantastic cemetery festooned in clipped topiary, acres of it.  This is one of the largest topiary gardens in the World.  But what really makes this place special are the unique forms that result from the influence on its creator by the culture of the Ecuadorian Andes.

Sculpted arches and tunnel invite exploration

The cemetery was commenced in 1932 to replace another on that was badly damaged by an earthquake.  Built on 8 hectares of land, the calcareous soils on the site make it perfect from growing Cypress, which were trained and sculpted by a man named Josè Maria Franco in to hedges and archways, animals and people, and giant heads.  The designs range from local indigenous folklore to the exotic with figures from Roman and Egyptian mythology.   The topiary in the cemetery has been called 'Esculptura en Verde del Campo Santo' which translates to mean 'Sculpture in the Green of the Holy Field'.

Poles and lines are used to guide the trimmers

Topiary requires clipping at least twice a year, and in a garden of this size a small crew pretty much has to start over once they get to the other end.  Sr. Franco did a lot of clipping over the decades as the cypress grew larger and fuller.  Thus his relationship with the garden was all encompassing.  He is buried here and the epitaph on his crypt calls his creation "a cemetery so beautiful it invites one to die." We opted out of that idea and instead spent the better part of two days going over and over the many paths marveling at the work.

His son Benigno Salvador Franco Carranco and a man named Lucio Reina took over after José Franco took his own invitation seriously and passed away in 1985 at the age of 85.  Sr. Reina was quoted as saying "This has been my life.  Each figure I do is part of my life.  I am very happy to have done something for my Tulcan.  This is not an artificial thing, even the dead are happy here."

The signature pieces in the cemetery are the giant heads of indigenous people created by his predecessor.  They are unlike any I've seen in other parts of the world and were the principal inspiration for me wanting to come here.  There are also wonderful hedges carved with bas reliefs of cornucopias and flowers, connected by soaring arches and dark tunnels.

Giant heads line the main road dividing the cemetery.

A row of fantastic shapes

We came upon a crew of three men with tall ladders and old fashioned clipping sheers working hard on a towering hedge.  They erected poles at the corners of hedges and strung lines to guide the trimming.   From the quiet and methodical way they worked it looked as if they had been doing it for a very long time.  Perhaps someday they will be invited to die here.

A view from the roof of one of the crypts

This magnificent hedge contains a dramatic series of high arches creating a tunnel like passageway

The hedges in places are deeply incised with meaningful designs

In the newer part of the cemetery the hedges are thinner and there are topiary statues of people performing tasks from every day life.  It isn't as exciting as the older parts but isn't that true of cemeteries all over the world.  With time they will change and perhaps become more venerable, but I think I was being jaded after spending hours in the older areas.

A later part of the cemetery

A group of thickly dressed people gaze off over the valley to Colombia

A crouching figure perhaps trying to stay warm

 A menagerie of totemic animals from the region emerge from many of the hedges.  There are birds and amphibians and even a giant Armadillo.

A stylized Parrot

The hind end of an Armadillo

A giant Turtle sits on a hedge

And what's a topiary garden without one of these?

Another dream fulfilled

I feel blessed to be crazy enough to make the effort to get to visit such places.  I have one very tall and neglected topiary boxwood in my garden that is lucky if it gets trimmed once a year.  I bought an old photograph of the cemetery in a time warped photography studio in the town from an old man who makes large scale prints from the original negatives.  It is framed and hangs over the desk in my office.

An old photo of the cemetery hanging in my office

Santuario de Nuestra Señora de las Lajas

The Grand Canal at sunset

Travel is the stuff of dreams manifested in to reality.  When I was a child watching the old game show 'Lets Make a Deal' on television, for me, the greatest prize one could possibly win was a week in Miami at the Fontainebleau Hotel, which seemed like a dream come true compared to winning a new washer and dryer or a donkey cart.  I was destined to become a world traveler.

Lets Make a Deal, with Monte Hall.....Door number 1!

I have since made it my goal in life to close my business and travel every winter to places that might have been mere fantasies before I realized them.  This year I flew to Rome on frequent flier miles, stopping in Paris for a week on the way.  I had never been to Paris and I am definitely going back to that magnificent city for more if the Gods allow.  I house sat for friends in Rome for 2 1/2 weeks and then was coaxed north to celebrate the New Year with a friend who lives in Venice.  I had always thought it would be too cold in the winter to visit this fair city, but I figured I could survive a week ducking in to churches and palaces to escape the chill and at least get a taste of this legendary city.

Winter's blue light on the Canal San Marco

I found an apartment online in the Cannaregio neighborhood, which is a quiet area away from the tourist mecca that Venice has become, and ended up postponing my departure 3 times and staying a month.

A fresco dining in Cannaregio

Venice is understandably famous as it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  And perhaps I was lucky, because the weather for the most part was bearable, with lots of sunny days.  Once the New Year holidays were finished, the city was surprisingly quiet and intimate.  Traveling in the winter has the advantage of beautiful and mysterious light and fewer tourists.  And on a foggy day Venice can be absolutely surreal.

Portico of the Palazzo Ducale on a foggy evening

Night fog in the Giardini Publico

Venice was built on 117 small islands and has something like 150 canals.  The islands are connected by 410 bridges, the most famous being the Ponte di Rialto, which crosses the narrowest point in the Grand Canal in the oldest part of the city.

Ponte di Rialto

One of the things that makes Venice truly unique is that there are no cars.  This is the largest pedestrian area in all of Europe and is only surpassed in size by the Medinas of large cities in North Africa, such as Fez in Morocco.  Cars are the bane of the urban landscape.  Rome is beautiful but its lovely lanes and piazzas are often filled with cars, which is a visually degrading thing.  The air pollution turns everything brown or black, and the noise is relentless. But Venice shimmers quietly in its reflection on the water.  A gloss black gondola glides by silently with its entranced passengers nestled in red velvet upholstered seats between gilded finials.  The elegance of living on water seems to have been transmitted in to the very embellishment of the city.  Beauty is paramount here.

Gondolas at Ponte dei Sospiri

Gondolas, Zaccaria

Venice was originally settled in the fourth century AD by refugees from the mainland escaping the raids of invaders from the north and east.  They built houses on wooden pilings on the marshy sand bars of the lagoon and developed a thriving economy in the production of salt.  As the city grew, so did its influence throughout the Adriatic region.

A marshy undeveloped canal in Torcello give an indication of what the islands looked like before being built upon

In it's heyday, Venezia was a maritime powerhouse, a cosmopolitan trading center with a diverse population, each with its own neighborhood.  Artisanal riches from the furthest known reaches of the globe poured in to the city.  Venice was also a major manufacturer of fine goods, textiles, glass, and boats.  By the mid 15th Century, the Venetian fleet had over 3,000 merchant ships, which were rowed by oarsmen.  Oarsmen were either drafted from the general public, or indentured as a means of labor to pay off debts.

The Arsenale, where many of Venice's ships were built

The city's prestige increased when the remains of Saint Mark the Evangelist were stolen from Alexandria and placed in the new basilica.  Saint Mark became the patron saint of the city, who's symbol is the winged lion.  The Piazza San Marco and the adjacent Basilica di San Marco are the best known landmarks in the city today.   When Napoleon overtook Venice he called Piazza San Marco "the finest drawing room in Europe".

Piazza San Marco, the Campanile, and Basilica di San Marco

It opens on to the wide Canal de San Marco at Piazetta di San Marco, bordered by the Palazzo Ducale and the Libreria Nazionale Marciana.  The waterfront is framed by two high columns with a statue of the Lion of San Marco on the left and Sant' Teodore on the right.  The beauty of Venice and its watery setting were a favorite subject of the painters Turner and Guardi.  An elevator takes visitors today to the top of the bell tower in the Campanile, providing a spectacular view of the surrounding islands.  I was fortunate enough to go up on a quiet afternoon just before closing and was the only person up there amongst the bells.  There is another view point in the Campanile at Isole di San Giorgio Maggiore that is worth visiting as well for its vantage point taking in the whole of Venice from a distance.

Piazzeta di San Marco, with the Palazzo Ducale on the left and Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore in the distance

Sunset over Venezia from the Campanile di San Marco

In 1204, during the fourth Crusade to liberate the Holy Land from Muslim rule (a task never actually executed), the Venetians and their Francophile tenants sacked the city of Constantinople and brought a considerable quantity of valuable plunder back to the Venice, including four magnificent gilded bronze horses.  These were placed on the balcony of the Basilica di San Marco.  The originals now reside inside and fine replicas prance over the square.  This influx of Byzantine treasure added considerable wealth to the city's coffers.  It also hastened the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans.

Replicas of the Constantinople Horses on the balcony of Basilica di San Marco

The original gilded horses taken from the Hippodrome of Constaninople during the 4th Crusade

The Basilica di San Marco is lavishly decorated with golden mosaics depicting various scenes from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, as well as portraits of Apostles, Evangelists, and high ranking officials.  It was originally built as a private place of worship for the Doge of Venice, who was the leader of a democratically elected senate.  He resided in a magnificent palace, the Palazzo Ducale, which is adjacent to the Basilicia.  The embellishment of the interior spaces of the Palazzo are spectacular.

Green and gold glass mosaics depicting scenes from Genesis in the Old Testament

A mosaic of Christ with the Crown of Thorns in the Basilica di San Marco

The grandiose Sala del Maggior Consiglio in the Palazzo Ducale

The Venetian Gothic exterior of the Palazzo Ducale

The Catholic Church plays an important role in Italian society and there is no shortage of magnificent religious edifices in Venice.  It is interesting to note that during the Inquisition, Venice did not carry out any executions for heresy, perhaps because of its cosmopolitan population and economic ambition.

The Gothic altar of Chiesa di San Zaccaria with Giovanni Bellini's La vergine in Trono col Bambino

The Gothic style of architecture found its greatest expression in the Franciscan Chiesa di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, one of my favorite churches in the city.

The main entrance to Chiesa di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari

The lofty interior is decorated in a variety of dramatic monuments to illustrious citizens, including the artist Titian.  The heart of the sculptor Canova is interred in a beautiful pyramid that he designed for Titian but it was dedicated to Canova after his death.

Pyramidal monument dedicated to the sculptor Canova and the extraordinary monument to Doge Giovanne Pesaro

Like most Italian cities Venezia is rich in Baroque churches.  The Chiesa di San Giorgio Maggiore was designed by the Renaissance master architect Andrea Palladio to replace a Benedictine church that was destroyed by an earthquake.  It sits picturesquely on an island close to the Giudecca that can be seen from San Marco.  The view from the Campanile bell tower is breathtaking.

Chiesa di Santa Giorgio Maggiore

A maze seen from the Campanile di San Giorgio Maggiore

Some churches were built to beseech the Virgin Mary to deliver the population from the miseries of the plague.  In 1630 approximately one third of the population of the city succumbed to the disease, which may have ultimately brought about the demise of the Republic.  The Chiesa di Santa Maria della Salute was built in hopes that divine intervention would save the people.  A landing was built so that the Doge could make a ceremonious annual procession to pay homage to the Virgin there.  The church is a significant landmark on the Grand Canal, unusual for its octagonal shape, designed by Baldessare Longhena when he was only 26 years old.

Chiesa di Santa Maria della Salute in Dorsaduro

I visited as many churches as I could gain access to.  Venice was a center for the arts and a great many masters embellished the interiors of religious institutions.  Tiziano Vecelli, known as Titian was perhaps the most highly regarded Venetian artist.

The Assumption, by Titian, in Chiesa di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari

If you aren't playing a rating game it is hard to beat the prolific works of Jacopo Tintoretto, who's over the top decoration of the Scoula Grande di San Rocco boggles the mind.

The Scoula Grande di San Rocco is covered in paintings by Jacopo Tintoretto

Paolo Veronese's work is breathtaking to behold, in its richness of color and softness of rendering.  His patron church of San Sebastiano is covered in magnificent works by the artist.

Chiesa di San Sebastiano features masterpieces by Paolo Veronese

My favorite is perhaps the painter Vittore Carpaccio, who studied under the master Gentile Bellini.

A detail of a painting by the artist Vittoreo Carpaccio in the Gallerie dell'Accademia

Bellini's work is delicate and perfect in its rendering.  It would require weeks to cover all of the great artists who blessed Venice with their masterful skill, so I will give it a rest.

Giovanni Bellini

Venice was also a leading center for music and literature.  With the invention of the printing press, the city became one of the first in Europe to publish manuscripts and sheet music.  This attracted great writers such as the amorous gambler Cassanova, and musicians, including the composer Antonio Vivaldi.  The world's first opera house opened here in 1637.

A chamber ensemble practices in a church.

As the Venetian empire expanded to include the islands of Cypress and Crete, a wealth of goods flooded in and out of the city from Arab and Byzantine sources.  Venice was the richest and most socially refined city in Europe for some time, and grand palazzos were built along the grand canal in an almost competitive manner.

Palazzos large and small on the Grand Canal

The style of 14th Century Venetian Gothic architecture used a blending of the Gothic lancet arch combined with Byzantine and Moorish motifs to create a fanciful and distinctive inflected frame for doors and windows.  Quatrefoil shapes set between the arches give a lacy elegant line to balconies like those found on the Ca d'Or. The delicacy of the architecture was in part to reduce the weight of the buildings, as they are built entirely on tightly packed wooden pilings buried in the mud and sand of the islands.  Alder was the most common tree used as it is rot resistant when submerged in water.  Entire regions were stripped of their trees in order to create the piling base for building foundations in the rapidly growing city.

The Ca' d'Or

The ornate Venetian Gothic Porta della Carta, Palazzo Ducale

While the Renaissance made substantial changes to architectural style in Italy, Venice continued to favor the Gothic form in addition to the resurgence of the classical round arch.

The Renaissance style 16th Century Palazzo Barbarigo was decorated with Murano glass mosaic in 1886

Palaces built in the Baroque style, such as the magnificent Ca' Rezzonico abandoned the Gothic form but retained the lightness of multiple arches and numerous windows.

The Baroque interior and large windows in Ca'Rezzonico

The spiral staircase of the 15th Century Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo

One of my favorite buildings for its aquatic carvings is the Borsa

A boat trip down the Grand Canal reveals a diverse mix of architectural styles, many of them clearly intending to display the wealth and taste of the families who built them.  A few even have gardens.  I had the pleasure of meeting the delightful author Tudy Sammartini, who wrote 'The Secret Gardens of Venice' and a number of other books, and has been responsible for the refurbishment of various gardens throughout the city.

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Because the palazzos were approached from the water the principal facades face the canals rather than streets.  Like so many visitors to Venice I began to fantasize having a palazzo of my own, although I tended to be most attracted to ones of more modest size like this charming place with a lovely little garden fronting the canal.

Shopping for a Palazzo

Even the more humble abodes of Venice have great character, and wonderful chimneys

A grand gallery featuring works by Titian and Tintoretto

Liberia Nazionale Marciana

The entry courtyard to Ca'Pesaro

Sculpture of a nude by Adolfo Wildt

Edo period horse bridles in the Museo d'Arte Orientale

Ultima Cena (the Last Supper) by Giovan Battista Pittoni

African animals artfully displayed in the Museo di Storia Naturale

Albino deer, two headed calves and complimentary colors in nature

Palazzo Venier Leone, home to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection

Contemplating Jackson Pollock

Gino Severini, Sea=Dancer

Jeff Koons iconic pink balloon poodle in the Palazzo Grassi

Boy with Frog, by Charles Ray, on the Punta del Dogana

Cannons, a snake, palms in plastic pots, and a gun on astroturf carpets.  The man is alive.

The Palazzo Fortuny is a wonderful museum housed in a magnificent Gothic palace that was owned by the textile and theater magnate Mariano Fortuny.  The walls are draped with sumptuous cut velvet brocades.  At the time of my visit the museum was hosting an exhibition relating to the operas of Richard Wagner.   Fortuny staged a number of theatrical productions and the museum displayed several  paintings, sculptures, and set designs relating to Wagnerian operas.  One room had beautiful scrim sets painted by Mariano Fortuny for the opera Parsifal.

A Fortuny scenery painting for the opera Parsifal

The Fortuny factory on the island of Judaica still produces beautiful fabrics, accessories, and light fixtures which are sold in their Venetia Studium shops throughout Venice.  The company was founded in 1921 by Mariano Fortuny, who also worked in theatrical design, book binding, and painting.  If I was rich I would be coming home laden with beautiful Fortuny creations.

Venetia Studium shop in San Marco

Fashion in Venice has always been flamboyant and stylish.  In the 14th Century, men wore pants with two different colors of stockings as an indicator of which societal club they belonged to.  These were called 'Companie della Calza', literally a 'Trousers Club'.  Over these they wore fanciful pleated jackets, robes, and hats to a degree of show usually reserved for women, with rich silk velvet brocades and lace from Burano.

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The festival of Carnevale became a vehicle to express the decadence of Venetian society.  Masks were worn as a way to disguise one's identity, enabling promiscuity between different levels of society.  During times of plague, which ravaged the city, masks could be used to hide lesions caused by the disease.  The characteristic long beaked mask commonly seen today were worn by 'Medico della Peste' or 'Plague Doctors'.  These came about as a way to counter the stench of death by packing the beak with Eucalyptus leaves or scented rags.  There were worn with a long black cape and matching hat, and a cane was used to avoid physical contact with the diseased.

Masks are produced in great quantity today.  The long beaked Plague Doctor masks can be seen on the lower left

Carnevale Masks

Bodies during plagues were frequently left to rot in 'dung piles' in the city's piazzas.  When Napoleon arrived he took it upon himself to have the piles removed to the island of San Michele, which to this day is the municipal cemetery.

Isola San Michele, Venice's island cemetery

Nostalgia for sumptuous dress was revived in the present day Carnevale, where opulent garments based on historical styles are prominent.  It had waned in popularity in the 18th Century and was only reenacted in the 1979 by the Italian government as way of promoting Venetian culture to the tourist industry.  I was only in the city for the beginning of the festival, which I found to be vain rather than lively, with lots of justifiable posing under the burden of such extravagant costuming and heavy wigs.  I was told by Venetians that Carnevale is most popular with French tourists and that many locals leave the city to avoid the huge crowds of people who descend on the city during the second week of the festival.

Period costumes of extravagant opulence are a favorite during Carnevale

The burden and weight of vanity invokes a serious demeanor

 I have participated in three Carnevales in Brasil, where it is tropical and warm.  It is an entirely different affair, with the vibrancy of African dance and music, and a great deal of nudity.   I wanted very much to participate in the festivities here so I decorated masks with colored pencils I brought to brighten the drawings in my journal.

Masks I decorated in a lighter vein

The opening event was a lovely event on the Fondamente in Cannaregio very near to the little house that I rented.  It was presented by a French performing arts organization called Ilotope.  There were beautiful and surrealistic boats including a woman in a large red dress under which a person turned a wheel that propelled the float...lovely.

A performance by Iliope in on the Fondamente Cannaregio

The next day I was lucky to watch from the Ponte di Rialto, a regatta of decorated boats being rowed by people in costume.  After that I fled the city on a cold rainy day.  Venice had gone full circle for me and it was time to go.

A regatta of colorful boats on the Grand Canal at the beginning of Carnevale

There are wonderful islands surrounding Venice that are well worth visiting.  Visible from Cannaregio and the Fondamente Nuovo is the island of San Michele, which where the city's cemetery is located.  Igor Stravinski and his wife Vera are buried there in a humble grave amongst the masses.

Cimitero di San Michele

Beyond Isola di San Michele is Murano, which has been famous for the production of fine glass since 1291, when all of the glass makers of Venice were forced to move there to reduce the risk of fires.  Murano glass is famous throughout the world for the richness of its color and ingenuity of design.  Magnificent chandeliers and volumes of kitche produced in the foundries fill shops all over Venice.

Murano has been a famous center for the production of fine glass for centuries

Contemporary Glass vessels designed by the architect Carlo Scarpa

A delicate and kinky Murano candelabra celebrating the excesses of Carnevale

 Further away is the island of Burano.  Fishermen seem to be attracted to bright colors, perhaps because of the monochromatic days at sea.  Lacemaking became an important industry in the 16th Century.

The fishing village of Burano is known for its colorful houses and the tradition of lace making

Lace makers in Burano

Torcello is a short boat ride from Burano.  Once a city of 20,000 inhabitants and was much more powerful than Venice.  It was a major producer of salt and had strong connections with the Byzantine capitol of Constantinople after the fall of the Roman Empire.  The city went in to decline as the lagoon around the island became a swamp and the city was plagued by malaria.  Torcello was plundered for building materials as Venice grew, and all that remains are a few buildings, including the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta, which contains magnificent Byzantine mosaics.  It makes a peaceful trip from the tourist masses of Venice.

Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta, Torcello

Remnants of the ancient city of Torcello

Lido di Venezia is a barrier island known for its long sandy beaches.  I made a trip there one day to see the interesting villas and quiet canals, and to walk the long sandy beach, which is covered in shells in the winter and tourists in summer.  I left with a pocket full of shells, and could mosaic a significant grotto if I lived here.  Lido was known for its brothels in the early 20th Century.  Hmmmmm.  Now it has cars, something of a shock when arriving from Venice.

The shell covered beach of Lido di Venezia

And so ends our tour.  There is so much more than I could possibly describe that makes this extraordinay island archipelago the precious jewel that it is.  It is hard not to be enchanted by Venice.  If you have ever been there you know what I am saying.  I look forward to returning, as it seemed impossible to leave in the first place.

Thanks for reading, Jeffrey

An abandoned garden in Castello

Looking down in to the Kolymbetra Garden

Paradise is one of those elusive concepts we tend to stereotype as a tropical beach at sunset or the Garden of Eden, from which Adam and Eve were kicked out for wanting to know more.  It is a place of positive, harmonious energy in bountiful quantity.  The air is sweet, the water pure, and all is good.  In the Bible and Koran it is a place free of the miseries of Earthly existence, where clear waters flow freely and sustenance is abundant.  For the Greeks there was a place called the Elysian Fields, an idyllic island landscape where the souls of those chosen by the Gods would reside in eternal happiness and fulfillment.

The ruins of the Dioscuri Temple (Temple of Castor and Pollux) above the Kolymbetra Garden

In the 6th century BC, the ancient Greeks built the city of Akragas on the southern coast of Magna Graecia, on the island today known as Sicily.  Akragas lies on a ridge overlooking the sea bordered by two rivers that were rich with crabs, or Akragas, which lent the city its name.  In its heyday the city had a population estimated to be as many as 200,000 people.

An illustration of what the ancient Greek city of Akragas looked like

The city became one of the richest in the empire, especially after the defeat of the Phoenician Carthaginians in present day Tunisia in the battle of Imera in 480 BC.  The ruins of this ancient city are now a UNESCO world heritage site near the city of Agrigento, famed for the remains of its many temples.

The Temple of Concordia is the best preserved of Agrigento's Greek Temples

The Kolymbetra garden was built in a ravine between sandstone cliffs leading down to a river valley.  The protected area creates a microclimate perfect for growing crops, shielded from cold winds in the winter, and providing shade from the intense heat of summer.  The garden has been at times associated with the Garden of Eden in historical texts.

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The tyrant Emperor Theron (he must have been cruel because he is always referred to as a tyrant in the texts I have been reading) used Carthaginian slaves to construct an extensive hydraulic system to bring water to the basin called Colimbetra, which filled an enormous reservoir 'a circumference of seven stadii and a depth of twenty cubits'.  This was used as a fish farm and became a refuge for water fowl until it fell to neglect and silted up by the first century BC.

A restored tunnel aqueduct, a hypogeum, excavated by Carthaginian slaves still provides water for the gardens today

An almond tree reflects in a small tank holding water that can be diverted to garden terraces.

An irrigation system using small canals of compacted earth and flumes lined with clay tiles distribute water throughout the garden today, based on the system used here for centuries.  These could be diverted to flood tree wells and ditches surrounding vegetable beds.

Clay tiled channels distribute water by gravity flow throughout the garden

The silt that collected in the reservoir provided a rich layer of alluvial soil on which to grow crops.  The calcareous sandstone cliffs on either side of the ravine provide an ideal protected microclimate for growing crops and so it was natural for a garden to be developed over the following centuries.  And so began a tradition of farming that has lasted over 2,000 years, making Kolymbetra on of the oldest gardens still existent in the world.  There is an ancient olive tree here that has been estimated to be over 800 years old!

An olive tree estimated to be over 800 years old

The knarled trunk of this ancient olive tree

Antonietta at the entry kiosk

Descending a flight of stone and earth steps through thick vegetation from the Temple of Dioscuri I came to a kiosk, where I met a veritable goddess, Antonietta, a charming woman with a cascade of henna red hair with whom I bonded immediately.  She made me an Italian espresso and we talked about the garden at length.  IN 1999, the National Trust of Italy (FAI) began an inventory of what remained of the garden.  They were able to restore terraces, the ancient aqueducts and irrigation systems, and renew cultivation practices.  The overgrowth of weeds were removed, and the orchard trees pruned by experts to rejuvinate their productivity.  70% of the existing orchards were preserved and new trees were planted in areas to replace the original plants that had died.

The gardens have been beautifully and sensitively restored retaining the rustic character of the place.  The signage is excellent, in Italian and English, eloquently explaining the history and significance of the garden and the plants.

A detailed plan of the garden

A Sicilian garden traditionally is a place to grow food rather than ornamental plants.  In February there is a festival of the Mandorlo, or Almond trees as this is the time of year that they bloom.  The pale pink flowers lighten the green hillsides and scent the air with a delicate fragrance.  The fruit ripens in August and is harvested by knocking them from the branches with long canes which are harvested from the banks of the stream that runs through the valley.  Almonds are used in a number of delicious Sicilian pastries and Marzipan.  There are over 300 varieties cultivated at the Living Museum of the Almond, near the Temple of Juno. preserving the biological diversity of this valuable crop.

An Almond tree blooming by the Temple of Vulcan

In the 9th Century Arab conquerers brought the first citrus to Sicily.  These were at first bitter oranges which had to be sweetened to make them palatable.  The vitamin C in the fruit was essential for the treatment of scurvy, a common affliction of the time.  The bark also has beneficial medicinal properties.  Sweet oranges were introduced in the 16th Century.  The garden was planted with extensive orange and lemon groves and the trees were laden with fruit at the time of my visit in February.  Citrus groves make up 30% of the garden.  There are nine varieties that are heirloom relics not seen in cultivation anywhere else.  The beauty of these evergreen trees, the cool shade they cast, the fragrance of their flowers, and the sweetness of their brightly colored juicy fruit, make them an essential element of a Mediterranean paradise garden.  Antonietta made me a glass of delicious fresh squeezed juice when I first arrived at the entry kiosk, and I gorged myself on a dozen different types and left with a full bag.  She told me I could stay as long as I wanted past the closing time so that I could fully appreciate the beauty of the garden.

Numerous varieties of oranges are laden with fruit in winter

Luscious oranges

Lemons were introduced by the Arabs in the late ninth century AD.  Unlike oranges, lemons bloom almost continuously and provide fruit throughout the year.  The most common variety is called Femminello, referring to its seemingly boundless fertility.  Lemons can be forced by withholding water until July, triggering a bloom that results in summer fruit.

A slender variety of Lemon

A old photo of a girl and donkey in the garden

Many other varieties of orchard trees are grown in the garden.  Black Mulberry, Morus nigra, an Oriental tree, has been grown in Italy for centuries.  Mulberries are depicted in frescos in the ruins of Pompeii.  Japanese Loquat, Eriobotrya japonica, is native to Japan and Eastern China.  The sweet fleshy fruit is eaten fresh or made in to marmelade and nectar.  Pomegranates come from Western Asia and have been grown in Italy for millennia, as have domestic Figs.  These two trees are a symbolic tree essential to paradise gardens with succulent fruits that conjure divine bliss when eaten.  There are Medlars and Pistachios and Plums to add to the cornucopia.  This rich medley of fruits would have been a great luxury in ancient times.  We tend to take for granted the variet of fresh produce available to us today with fruit and vegetables imported from throughout the world.

The Nopale of Mexico, or Prickly pear, Opuntia ficus indica, is a Mesoamerican plant that grows to great size on unirrigated slopes.  The fruit is fleshy and sweet and is eaten fresh or used to make sweets.  The paddles shaped leaves were used to make plates and bowls for serving food in Sicily.  They thrive in this climate, growing to form huge clumps wherever they take hold.

Prickly Pear and a carpet of mustard surround an abandoned house by the Temple of Vulcan

Vegetable crops are grown in beds between the trees and along the winding paths.  In the winter there are artichokes and Fava beans and mustard greens.  Cow manure has been traditionally used to fertilize the soil for planting.  When the garden was restored, enormous quantities of weeds were removed to open up the garden, and expert pruners came in to teach people how to properly prune the orchard trees to regain their productivity.  70 percent of the original trees were saved and new ones planted to replace those that were lost.

A crop of Fava Beans improves the soil with nitrogen fixing nodules that form on the roots of the plants

Artichokes line the top of a rustic stone wall

As I strolled the different terraces, which are well marked simple dirt paths that span the stream via two new bridges, my consciousness was elevated by the peace and quiet, the trickling sound of water, the light fragrance of almond blossoms, and the rich array of colors.  The ground was carpeted in yellow flowers of oxalis and mustard.  Fragrant native rosemary hedges line some of the paths, covered in blue flowers in February.

Rosemary in full bloom hedging a path

Euphorbia is another native plant that was in full bloom on the edges of the wild parts of the garden.

Wild Euphorbia in bloom

Simple paths and steps lead invite the curious to explore what lies around the bend

I love the way the garden is laid out to follow the topography of the land rather than imposing a formality to the landscape.     There is always something to discover around every corner, like a walk in the wild, but instead in a cultivated space where nature is allowed to soften the hand of man.

An old stone bridge

The slopes of the orange sandstone walls are covered in native Mediterranean vegetation called Maquis.  The foliage of these plants tends to be thick and waxy in order to cope with the intense heat of summer.  The dense mixture of foliage makes good habitat for birds and small animals.  There are Carob trees, Ceratonia siliqua and Bay Laurel, Laurus nobilis, which have culinary applicatons.  Myrtles, Mirtus communis are usually a shrub in the wild but there are specimens in the garden that are so ancient that they have attained the size of trees.  Oleasters, which are wild olives, can be grafted on with domestic stock making trees that can grow to great age and size, evident in a number of trees that are several hundred years old.  The fruit of the Dwarf Fan Palm, Chamaerops humilis was an ancient source of food, and the fronds were used to make baskets that were used to collect the oranges.  They were also used to make brooms and the fiber, when pounded could be used to make rope.

The native and naturalized plants of the Mediterranean Maquis cover the slopes too steep for cultivation

A 400 year old Carob Tree, Ceratonia siliqua growing amongst the ruins of the Temple of Zeus

A Baroque door on a Palazzo in Ragusa Ibla

There are so many beautiful towns in Italy.  The country is justly famous for them.  Ragusa, on the island of Sicily is one of the most magical towns I visited on my recent 3 month adventure in Italy.  Sicily, that three pointed island being kicked by the toe of the boot shaped country is an entity in itself.  The island's history is ancient, going back to before the time of the Phoenicians more than 3,200 years ago when tribes from the north of Italy settled there, after which it became a major center for the Greek empire.  Sicily was then conquered by the Romans, the Arabs, and the Normans in later centuries, each leaving an imprint of great majesty.

A map of Sicily showing Greek settlements

Ragusa, a small city in the south of the island, near the Ionian sea, has a history that can be traced back to the 2nd Century BC when it was first inhabited by people called the Sicils from which the island takes its name.  The Sicil people came originally from Northern and Central Italy but were driven south by the advance of more dominant tribes.  They built a settlement on a defensible hill flanked by two valleys that prospered by trading with the Greeks at a nearby sea port called Camerina.

The Duomo of Cattedrale San Giorgio

The region was conquered briefly by the Phoenicians of Carthage in present day Tunisa, and then the by the Romans around the time of Christ, followed by the Ostrogoths who's capitol was in Ravenna.  Under Byzantine rule the city was fortified and a large castle was built on the crest of the hill.  The Arabs captured the town in 848 AD and remained for over 3 Centuries until the region was conquered by the French Normans returning from the first Crusade.  Under Norman rule Ragusa became a county seat administered by Count Geoffrey (my namesake), the son of Count Roger I of Sicily (my Grandfather's namesake, without the Count and the I), who ruled the island and the church without opposition.  Roger I's reign was one of tolerance, and Arabs, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Jews and Sicils lived together in a cosmopolitan society that flourished.  Count Geoffrey was born with leprosy and had no chance of inheriting the throne, so his position in Ragusa would have been a means of providing for him a role in the kingdom.  Once there he retired to a monastery until the end of his life.

An ivy covered staircase in Ragusa Superior

Rule of the town passed down to the Chiaramonte clan, who in the 12th Century became the most powerful noble family in Sicily.  Their reign lasted until the end of the 14th Century.  This medieval period was dominated by the Norman Gothic style of architecture.  During this time Ragusa's political rule was unified with that of the nearby town of Modica, which has a similar style of architecture.   In a popular revolt in the 15th Century, Ragusa lost its seat as the capital of the region to Modica.  After that Sicily passed to the Crown of Aragon of Spain in the 17th Century.  I visited Modica for a day and found it to be quite magical, except for having the intrusion of modern structures that diluted its historic character.  This is a primary reason for my focusing on Ragusa.  Of the four southern Sicilan towns I visited on this trip, this was the one that left the most lasting impression.

Chiesa Sant' Agnese

On January 11th in 1693, at about 9:00 PM, a powerful and devastating earthquake struck the island and the southern mainland.  The earthquake is estimated to have been 7.4 on the modified Richter scale and killed over 60,000 people, including 2/3rds of the population of the city of Catania.  It is believed that half of the 10,000 people living in Ragusa were killed and the city was literally flattened, as was nearby Modica and the city of Noto.

A view of Ragusa Ibla from the road to Modica

Extensive reconstruction efforts were undertaken by the governing Spanish Viceroy making significant concessions to the local Sicilian aristocracy, who controlled the agricultural economy of the island under a feudal system.  There was a comparatively small merchant middle class and the majority of indentured serfs made available an enormous labor pool for the rebuilding of cities and towns.  Some towns were relocated and others rebuilt on the same medieval plan.  Ragusa underwent both plans, with the majority of the population moving to a higher hill called Ragusa Superior.  This new town was built on a grid plan, while the original town of Ragusa Ibla was rebuilt using the existing Medieval layout of winding streets and stairways.  Building on a grid of wider streets made sense in terms of earthquakes as the toppled buildings filled the narrow Medieval lanes greatly increasing the loss of life.

Straight streets based on a grid system characterize the new plan for Ragusa Superior

The style of architecture favored for the reconstruction is now called Sicilian Baroque, which was an expression of the popular style at the time throughout Italy.  The massive rebuilding effort  allowed Sicilian architects, many who had trained in Rome, Napoli, and Florence, to create ornate edifices for the Catholic church and Palazzos for the wealthy aristocracy.  The Baroque style is characterized by complex facades with numerous cornices, niches, and statuary in great relief.  The depth and projection of the details on the facades create a chiaroscuro effect popular in paintings from that time, playing with light and shadow.  This effect is particularly evident in the winter light when I was there.  While the heavy detail is extravagant and potentially gaudy, there is a playfulness and curiosity that makes the buildings fascinating to contemplate.  "The buildings conceived in the wake of the this disaster expressed a light-hearted freedom of decoration whose incongruous gaiety was intended, perhaps, to assuage the horror" of the earthquake.

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Ragusa Superior, the new town, is dominated by the Cattedrale San Giovanni Battista, the Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist, which sits on the crest of the hill between the Valleta San Leonardo and the smaller Vallata Santa Dominica.  The Vallata is crossed by three bridges that connect the old town to the mostly modern part of Ragusa.

Vallata Santa Domenica with the mid 19th Century Ponte Il Vecchio and Ponte Il Nuovo completed in 1937

The Cathedral, built in the middle of the 18th Century has an imposing square campanile with four bells housed in small arched openings.  The second matching tower was never built.  The design is pure Baroque, with Corinthian columns, ornate window frames, and statuary.

Cattedrale San Giovanne Battista

The interior of the church has three aisles and columns made of locally quarried black asphalt, which were later painted white, significantly changing what would be a classic Sicilian detail of black and white contrasting materials.  The magnificent Serassi pipe organ was installed in 1858.  The elegant floor has white marble inlay with black asphalt tiles displaying their original color.

The Serassi pipe organ inside Cattedrale San Giovanni Battista

Black asphalt tiles inlaid with marble in the Cattedrale San Giovanne Battista

A typical detail in an Ottoman wall in Molyvos, with raised pointing

Each winter I travel for 3 months to different parts of the world.  I have been focusing on the Mediterranean region for the last 6 winters.  This time I am exploring the beautiful islands of Greece.

I have two adventurous English friends that I met over 10 years ago in South America who travel extensively on epic journeys usually spanning years rather than months.  We are kindred spirits in that regard, although my explorations are broken up in to shorter periods of the year than theirs.  They are currently cycling across Europe and Asia, having started in Norway above the Arctic Circle, with their ultimate destination being Japan.  This journey will take over 3 years to complete.  Last year I met up with them in Palermo, Sicily, and when they told me they would be spending the fall of the next year in Greece, I decided to meet them again before they moved on to Turkey.  They have been cycling in Greece now for 3 months and the island of Lesvos will be their departing point from the country since it is a short ferry ride to Ayvalik in Turkey, from where they will be cycling to Istanbul.

John and Gayle on hewn rock steps in the town of Petra

I spent a marvelous and far too brief week in Paris, stopping off as my Air France flight to Athens had a connection there.  It was my second time to Paris and I have fallen in love with the city.  I went to the Louvre on a quiet day for the first time and nearly wept in the Italian painting galleries.  I was amazed that they actually let you photograph the art so I catalogued everything that moved me.  I also spent a spectacular afternoon at Versailles and visited the wonderful Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, all deserving of their own essays.  The light in late fall is so magical and the crowds of tourists are smaller so it is a great time to visit the city.

Leonardo Da Vinci's stunning painting Madonna of the Rocks

In order to meet up with my friends I booked another flight from Athens to Mytilini on the island of Lesvos rather than staying in Athens, which I visited 4 years ago.  I'll spend more time there before I return home in March.  Gayle and John had based themselves in the beautiful town of Molyvos on the northern coast of the island, so I took a bus there the next day and met them at the bus stop.

Molyvos from the road to Petra

It is always wonderful to connect with them.  We can talk endlessly of travel and the many experiences we have had throughout the world.  All in all I have spent over 8 years of my life exploring foreign countries, almost always in the months of December through March.  These adventures have immensely enriched my life.  As an designer and artist I doubt that my work as a builder of gardens would be anything like it is without the profound influences of the places I've visited.

Lesvos is the third largest island in Greece, and was the home of the famed poet Sappho, who lived during the 7th Century BC.  She was one of the first women to attain fame as a lyricist, writing poetry that would be performed with the accompaniment of a Lyre.  Her poetry was considered to be so beautiful that Plato elevated her to the status of a Muse.  Her writings are best known as odes to other women.  The loving bond between the same sexes was believed to have been common and accepted at the time.  The words Lesbian and Sapphic are derived from the island and the poet.  "If you forget me, think of our gifts to Aphrodite and all the loveliness that we shared…all the violet tiaras, braided rosebuds, dial and crocus twined around your young neck…myrrh poured on your head and on soft mats girls with all that they most wished for beside them…while no voices chanted choruses without ours, no woodlot bloomed in Spring without song."

A statue of Sappho in the city of Mytilini on Lesvos

Molyvos is an ancient town that has been inhabited for many centuries.  The name has been changed back to the old one, Mythymna, but the locals still call it Molymos.  Just by the bus stop is an excavated area that dates from the 8th Century BC, with remnants of stone foundations and sarcophagi.

8th Century BC ruins in Molyvos

The town's hill is dominated by a fortress that takes much of its present form from the time of the Byzantine empire, which was centered in Constantinople, now the city of Istanbul in Turkey.  In the 12th Century it passed in to the hands of the Venetians who ruled maritime commerce in the region during Venice's golden era.  The island was then transferred to the control of a Genoese Lord after an arranged political marriage with the sister of a Byzantine ruler in the 14th Century.  Lesvos is known for its fine olive oil, considered to be the best in Greece, and Molyvos was an important port for exporting the product for at least 2,500 years.   Today the Island is known for the production the the Anise flavored liquor Ouzo, which we have taken to drinking nightly before dinner.

Inside the Fortress at Molyvos

A view of the Olive Press from the Fortress

A crenelated wall on the fortress

When the Ottoman Turks took control of the island the fortress underwent further expansion in the 15th Century for a period of more than 200 years.  The town on the slopes of the hill below the fortress is predominantly Ottoman in style, with handsome stone houses with red tile roofs and shuttered windows, which are often painted a wonderful shade of dark purplish red.

This shade of red is the predominant color of paint in Lesvos

An estimated 500,000 Muslim Turks were expelled from Greece in the population exchange that occurred after the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 while 1,500,000 Orthodox Christians were forced to leave Turkey.  It was one of the largest population exchanges in history.

Ottoman houses spilling down to the sea in Molyvos

Red Shutters on fine Ottoman building by the harbor

Much of the stonework in the buildings here is very handsome and artfully composed.  My favorite walls are those built with a mix of the pastel shades of volcanic stone found on the island's beaches.  There are pinks and greens and grays, with a rough texture that can be easily shaped.

A lovely wall in the nearby beach town of Petra

In America stone work is usually used as a decorative feature.  But in Europe and Asia stone and brick have always been the preferred material if you overlook the ugly concrete buildings that have become so much more common in modern times.  There is still a workforce of masons that build with stone.  Some of them are talented artisans with high standards.  One of the reasons we based ourselves in Molyvos for a over a week is because the town is so beautiful, and one of the main reasons the town is beautiful is because of its stone work.  There must be a building ordinance because new construction tends to blend fairly well with the older town.

Stepped stone lanes meander past handsome stone Ottoman era houses and shops

A cobbled street reflect light in the late afternoon

Molyvos is volcanic in origin and is quite rocky, but the soil is rich and fertile.  The beach between the comfortable Michaela's Apartments where we stayed and the town is made up of a variety of colors of stones.  Whenever I walk on it I catch myself scanning the stones for shapes and colors since I was doing this almost daily while I worked on the Labyrinth project on Bainbridge Island for the two months preceding this trip.

Pastel volcanic beach stones in the clear waters of the Aegean in Molyvos

Eventually I would give in to inspiration and compose a mosaic on a patch of sand on the beach by the apartments, just because I couldn't help myself.  It only took an hour to compose and I didn't aim for perfection, but the stones are so lovely that it turned out to be quite beautiful.

The mosaic I created using beach stone

As I become intimately engaged with the beach, I couldn't help but want to make it a better place by picking up the trash that had washed up along the shore line.  Greece is not a particularly clean country and there is garbage everywhere.  Plastic in our seas is one of the great environmental problems we face today.  I made a very small impact but I cleaned a good quarter mile of the beach near where I am staying and it looks all the more lovely as a result.  I encourage everyone to do the same on a regular basis and to teach your children to do the same.  Giving back to the gorgeous planet is the greatest gift we can give to ourselves and the environment we inhabit.

One colder day we were walking the four kilometers to the Eftalou hot spring, one of many on the island.  The baths at most of the springs date from the Ottoman era and this one is quite charming, being by the sea.  Just on the edge of town there is a large garden with stone terraces and tiled patios that were obviously built by an artisan with a great love for patterns and fine composition.  There is a bench near that road that I found to be extraordinarily beautiful in the way stone and brick were combined.

The back side of a wonderful stone and brick bench

One of the nicest stone benches I've ever seen

Passing lush green fields and well tended olive groves, the road follows the shore line and is collapsing in many places in to the sea as water levels rise and erode the coast.  So this charming old bath house may not be around in 100 years, but we spent a divine afternoon soaking in water that has chloride and radium in it (which makes it somewhat radioactive).  The springs on the island have been used curatively for many centuries and this one is believed to relieve a number of ailments ranging from arthritis and rheumatism to skin diseases.

Eftalou Hot Springs

Gayle and John and the resident cat at Eftalou Hot Spring

The interior of the simple whitewashed masonry vaulted enclosure has pierced holes in the ceiling to allow light to penetrate, and a nice stone ledge around the perimeter of the rectangular pool who's floor is covered in smooth black pebbles that feel lovely to wriggle your feet in.  The very kind old Greek sailor who was attending the place for his wife that day lit candles to set in the niches and a stick of incense which made the room atmospheric and rather idyllic.

The pierced vaulted ceiling allows atmospheric illumination of the room

A cat who loves to be petted kept us company while we soaked, and we did cold plunges in the sea, which is still relatively warm even though it is the middle of December.  It was a wonderful way to spend the day and we were so relaxed we wound up going to bed early that evening.

Even though Molyvos is very quiet in the winter and many of its inhabitants have gone to Athens for the winter I never seemed to tire of walking through the town.  The light is always changing.  Sometimes it is blustery and windy.  Other days are sunny and calm.  It must get quite hot and busy with tourists in the summer, but the streets in the center are covered with pipe trellises tangled in Wisteria, Parthenocissus, and grapes forming a shady canopy.  It must be extraordinarily beautiful in the Spring when the Wisteria is in bloom.

Twisted old Wisteria vines line a street in the town center.

Parthenocissus quincifolia with rich red fall color trailing over a wall

But in the mid December there are still brilliant red leaves on some of the Parthenocissus and clusters of grapes on the vine.   The streets are paved in stone cobbles, sloping toward the center to keep water away from the buildings.  On the steeper slopes the lanes turn to quiet steps devoid of scooters and cars.

Rustic stone steps climb the slopes between houses

The lanes twist and turn in the Medieval style, which made it harder for invaders to navigate if they were to raid the town during times when the population would retreat to the fortress for protection.

If a path is seldom used then lush growth may fill it like a garden, blending the man made with the wild.

An unused flight of steps becomes a garden

I love old towns where houses are sometimes abandoned.  If the roof collapses then a stone house becomes something like rock formations harboring an ecosystem of colonizing plants.  A view through a window can frame a wild garden that has taken over inside.  The town of Ragusa in Sicily is like that.  You can read about Ragusa in my essay from last year at: http://jeffreygardens.blogspot.gr/2013/03/ragusa-sicily.html

An abandoned house and garden turning in to a thicket of trees

Remnants of an old house wall

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When buildings are very old they often undergo many incarnations and changes.  Doorways and windows are sometimes filled in leaving a footprint of what was once there.  If the mason is talented the results can be interesting.

An old doorway is filled in creating a work of stone art

Old walls take on the character of the skill used by a variety of masons

The old Ottoman Mosque in the center of town is now an auditorium.  The minaret has been taken down and only the base remains.  On Saturday nights they show movies there, which in the winter seems to be the main social event.  We went to see "Lady Sings the Blues" this last weekend starring Diana Ross in a biopic of the singer Billie Holiday (a strange choice).  The building is large and the narrow street passes underneath it in an atmospheric tunnel that has windows piercing the outside wall that frames views of the sea.  It is artful details like this that add to the magic of the place.

The base is all that remains of the minaret of the old mosque

The street passes under the old Mosque in the town center

There are fine old Ottoman fountains scattered around the town that provided water to the houses before the advent of indoor plumbing.  They always have a pointed arch and a niche in the center and a basin for animals to drink from.

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The oldest known pebble mosaics in the world are found in Greece and I hope to see many fine examples while I am here.  They don't seem to be such a popular art form in Molyvos although there are a few to be found, usually a little vignette or pavement made by somebody who has the desire to try their hand at it.

Oil jars set in masonry are a common way to create a planter in a paved area

The logo for a Hotel Molymos is set in pebble mosaic at the entrance

There is a beautiful old house that has been turned in to a branch of the Athens School of Fine Arts which has an entry done in the classic white pebble mosaic with black details.  These pebbles were imported from another island where white marble pebbles are common.

The entrance to Molyvos' Athens School of Fine Arts

Greece is known for its cats.  They are everywhere, in every color and personality.  Sometimes they are wild and wary, or affectionate and wanting to be petted depending on how much kindness is bestowed on them.  They often cluster around the garbage bins waiting for appealing discards.  People often feed them so the majority aren't too dreadfully mangy although the population is huge.  Sometimes they want to follow you home if you indulge them with petting.  I like to interact with them but have never wanted to have one as a pet.

Cats with collars are relatively rare

Every day I go for a walk up in to the labyrinth of streets and always discover something new.  The views across to Turkey and to the north are beautiful and the Autumn skies in the late afternoon often have a divine quality to them, with Angel ladders descending from the heavens.  It will be hard to leave this wonderful place, but I have many islands to explore this winter.  Chios, to the south is my next destination.

One of a number of breathtaking skies that make it understandable why Greece is the home of so many Gods

Thanks for reading always, Jeffrey

I'm on beautiful island of Naxos now, the largest of the Cyclades group of islands in Greece.  This is the island where the King of the ancient Greek Gods Zeus was raised, in a cave on a mountain bearing his name.   Naxos is also where his son Dionysos, the God of Wine was born.  Dionysos later married Ariadne, the Princess of Crete here after she was abandoned by Theseus, who she helped escape the Labyrinth at Knossos on Crete after slaying the half man/half bull Minotaur.

It is the myth of the Labyrinth at Knossos that is a primary reason for my coming to Greece this winter after working on the Halls Hill Labyrinth Project for two months this fall on Bainbridge Island in Washington.  I am dedicating the inner 9 circuits of the Labyrinth I'm building to the 9 planets in our solar system, which are named after Roman and Greek Gods.  The 5th circuit, which I will be building when I get back in March, is dedicated to the planet and God Jupiter, who is the Roman incarnation of Zeus.  You can read earlier essays I've written about the 6 circuits I've already completed by scrolling down past this and the previous essay about stonework in the town of Molyvos.

The Labyrinth I am building on Bainbridge Island, Washington State

Chora, the capital of Naxos is dominated by the Portara, a massive gateway to what was once the Temple of the Delian Apollo.  Apollo, the God of the Sun was born on the sacred island of Delos, which I visited a week before.  Delos was a center of political and religious power in Greece for centuries and this temple was dedicated to Apollo's home there.

The Temple of the Delian Apollo

There is a pebble beach which stretches perpendicular to the harbor of the town from the peninsula where the ruins of the temple stand.  It is covered with the most marvelous pebbles, some of which I will be incorporating in to the Labyrinth mosaics when I return to my project.

A buried marble column from an ancient building on the beach of the Delian Apollo

The beach sadly is also covered in trash, as are most of the beaches throughout the beautiful Aegean Sea.

Trash on the beach of the Delian Apollo

We are ruining out oceans because we consume massive amounts of plastic in our daily lives.  The Greeks drink most of their water from disposable plastic bottles, and take away most of their purchases in plastic bags.  These are the two most prominent forms of garbage on the beaches, along with wads of  plastic fishing nets.

Even when technically "properly" disposed of, the volume of trash generated on the island of Greece is overwhelming

The caps of bottles number in the thousands on the beach of the Temple of the Delian Apollo.  There are disposable cigarette lighters, plastic cups, disposable razors, tooth brushes, boxes, detergent bottles, popped balloons, potato chip bags, cans, bottles, tampons, cue tips, every kind of wrapper, and thousands of cigarette butts.

Bottle caps nearly equal the number of stones on the beach in places

So today I went to the beach because I have been making mosaics using the beautiful stones I've been finding on beaches on many of the islands I have visited on this trip.  I'll post an essay with photos of the mosaics at the end of my journey.  These mosaics are dedicated to the Greek Gods, or to friends I am invoking, and I cannot justifiably do this work on a beach strewn with trash.  It is not in my nature as a lover of the environment.

Pieces of fishing nets that have washed up on the beach

So I have been spending a great deal of time cleaning up the beaches I have been on.  This can be a daunting task, especially on the beaches that face north, where the winds blow in the largest quantities of trash.  Plastic pollution is a disastrous consequence of the convenient lifestyles we have all grown accustomed to.  What washes up on beaches is estimated to be only 1% of what is in our oceans.  Every fish in the sea now contains tiny bits of plastic, and millions of sea birds have died from ingesting plastics that they mistake for food, even feeding it to their chicks.   If we are to survive with any integrity on this planet we need to make drastic changes in the way we live.  Unfortunately I don't see any sign of that happening on a level that does any good.  But it doesn't stop me from trying to do something.

We consume too much plastic.  Even as stewards of the Earth, garden clubs on tours to my garden have shown up with cases of individual water bottles, so handy and common and taken for granted today.  Individual servings of water dispensed in throw away bottles is a huge generator of garbage.  We think we can recycle them, but are they really recycled?  It is estimated that only a third of the plastic consumed in the United States gets recycled.  A third is burned in incinerators and a third goes in to landfills.  So I guess the gyre of plastic the size of Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean came from Canada?  The less we consume, the less we have to throw away, and this by far is the most proactive solution.

So today I arrived at the beach.  It was liberally sprinkled with trash.  A dead sea bird lay by the rocks, surrounded by plastic bags half buried in the sand, and the brightly colored caps of hundreds of water bottles and bits of rope.

A dead sea bird on the beach

I pulled the most durable bags from the sand to use to collect the garbage and went to work.  It took me all afternoon.  People would walk by and give me glances like I was some crazy eccentric, never imagining actually picking any of it up themselves.  This really pisses me off.  Nobody seems to be teaching their children the importance of the proper disposal of trash.  I see people leave the cup they just drained on a bench a few feet from a trash can.  Dumpsters usually have trash spread all around them.

Two bags of trash I collected at the beginning of the beach

Fishermen are huge contributors to the problem, throwing their trash overboard as if they owed the sea nothing for providing them with a livelihood.  There reward is that there are few fish to catch anymore.  The fisheries have been devastated by commercial trawling, ignoring regulations relating to spawning periods, and lazy ignorance.  How many people have I seen flick a cigarette butt in the sea in front of their children on this trip?  Its appalling.

Cigarette butts on a beach on the island of Paros

So here I am, an American, picking up thousands upon thousands of pieces of trash in a country I am not native too, out of desperation to do something.  I came here to walk on the beautiful beaches that fringe the Aegean, not garbage dumps.  But I have yet to find one that isn't.

Trash on a north facing beach on the sacred island of Delos, a UNESCO World Heritage Site

I wish I could make a proposal to the European Union.  There needs to be a change in the way plastics are distributed.  Water can come in large reusable jugs and dispensed in washable glasses in restaurants.  People used to bring shopping bags to the market.  It is finally becoming popular where I live in the United States and Portland and San Francisco and Los Angeles have instigated bans on plastic bags.  It is estimated that between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags are given out every year on the planet, more than half of those in the United States, and most of them are used a single time.  This doesn't need to happen if you bring reusable bags with you.  I estimate that I consume 5% as many bags as the average American because of the way I shop.  I don't lead a life deprived of convenience, I just make an effort to limit my consumption.  While traveling I bring bags to the store when I shop every time.  I doesn't do much good if you forget to bring them.  Good intentions are entirely worthless without acting on them.

Santa Maria Beach on the Island of Paros

A beach on Paros near Pariki

Plastic bags on another beach in Chora on Naxos

I had covered a good quarter kilometer of the beach and hauled three large bags of trash to a dumpster a considerable distance away, and was working my way to the second half of the beach.  By now I was getting angry.  I've been doing this every time I go to the beach, and it is starting to feel entirely futile.  Nobody else seems to care.  There are times when I don't honestly believe that we deserve to live on this planet.  Our disregard is absolutely disgusting.  People just walk by.  Only once has somebody said thank you.  And only once did I see a boy take a hook during a ceremony celebrating the holy day of Epiphany on the Island of Tinos to pull a large plastic bag from the water on to a boat.  It brought me a glimmer of hope and joy to see a rare moment of consciousness.

Debris in Naxos Harbor

So I bitterly plucked up hundreds of pieces of garbage off a beach in a town I only just arrived in yesterday, for the benefit of people who I will probably never know and who will never care.  Just then a boy came down the beach towards me, and he was picking up garbage.  He brought it to me and put it in my bag.  I thanked him in Greek, since that is one of the few phrases I've learned.  He didn't speak English.  I told him I was American as tears came to my eyes.

The best kid on Naxos

He then headed down the beach and started filling a plastic fruit crate he found with plastic bottles.  He came back with a heap of garbage half his own size.  When he wasn't looking I started to cry.
I carried the crate full up to the dumpsters for him.  When we got there he gestured that we needed to sort out the plastic bottles to put in the plastics recycling bin in the row of containers.  This kid is awesome!  I feel like I have met a true Bodhisattva.

My new friend carrying as much garbage as he could up the beach

Eventually his mother came along carrying an arm load of plastic bottles.  I thanked her and asked her if I could take her picture.  She said "I should take a picture of you, my son started picking up garbage when he saw you doing it."

The Mother of a very special young Man taking plastic bottles to the recycling bin

I told her about how frustrated I have been seeing so much garbage on the beaches of Greece and she said what I'd heard before, that beaches that face north collect the most debris.  She left her son with me, who I would guess is 10 years old, and we worked diligently cleaning up the beach for about an hour.


He even found a two liter bottle full of dirty motor oil that we carefully moved to the dumpsters so it wouldn't break.  We managed to fill a dumpster half way, and recycled about 50 plastic bottles.  It was hard work and he gasped under the burden of the heaped bin, but didn't complain.  He was happy to do it.

All of this was on the beach today

His Mother came back in a car later to pick him up.  He waved and said "Bye!" from the parking lot.  I carried on, deeply moved by the quiet and gentle and gracious gift the boy had given to the Earth.  I wasn't angry any more.  I even have a little hope for the world, although I'm sure that will be short lived.  Its just good to know there are people in the world that really care, and actually do something about it.  We can all do better to make the planet we live on a healthier more beautiful place to live.  I believe it is my duty, not just an option to consider.

There are still a lot of bottle caps and bits of plastic on the beach but if you don't look too closely it looks like a pretty beach instead of a garbage dump.  It was now late afternoon and I decided, even though I hadn't eaten since breakfast, that I would make the mosaic I had come to the beach to build.  I dedicated it to the boy and to the Delian Apollo.  Most of the mosaics I've been making on beaches in Greece are sunbursts.  I used all white marble pebbles since that is what the remains of the temple at the other end of the beach is made of.

I thought about Apollo's father Zeus as well, although I would like to make a mosaic specifically for him as well at some point while I'm here.  I'll have to make one for Dionysos too, since he is my favorite immortal of all…the hedonistic bisexual God of grapes and wine, and the protector of those who do not belong to conventional society, like me.

Lying next to the giant 7th Century BC Kouros statue, believed to be an image of Dionysos

And then I'll have to make one for the Princess Ariadne, who gave the magical thread, or 'klew' to Theseus so he could find his way out of the Labyrinth after slaying the Minotaur.  There is an organic garden two blocks from my house named for her where I get most of my vegetables from for several months of the year.


A couple and their two children came along as I was finishing for the day.  We had a lovely conversation about the things that seemed to make this Sunday special, caring for the Earth, creating beauty, and being compassionate.  Then they carried on down a beach that looked entirely different than it did before, and that made me happy.

Don't just walk by and ignore the world.  Make it better place.

Thanks for reading, Jeffrey

A beach on Mykonos Island before I picked up all the trash

A half hour later….

Postscript:  The next day I rented a car to explore the island.  I headed up the coast and just a few kilometers out of town I came upon something that put me in my place, the island's landfill.  Perched on a bluff directly above the sea is the massive pile of garbage where everything on the island winds up that is properly discarded, eventually including what we picked up yesterday on the beach.  The garbage dump spills over the sides of the hill directly in to the sea to the north of the Beach of the Delian Apollo.  Plastic bags were blowing around in the coastal winds, and some of them will wash up on the shore that we worked so hard to clean up yesterday.

The Naxos Island landfill

There is a sign stating that this facility is a joint project between the country of Greece and the European Union.  There is a shed with hogs in it that I assume they feed organic waste.  What is incredible to me is the siting of the landfill, not that there is a good place for such facilities anywhere on this lovely planet we are sullying as rapidly as we can.  We produce a lot of garbage and it has to go somewhere.  Out of sight, out of mind.  The land must have been available and far enough away from land owners with enough clout to halt such a project.  So there you go.  I went in to the survival mode I learned from a year of traveling in India, that of detachment.  It is a way to circumnavigate despair.

Like the mosaics I have been creating on the beaches of Greece, the work that incredible young man and I did with the hope of making something better is only temporary.  The mosaics wash away, and the garbage washes back in.  And so it goes.  My heartfelt apologies to the deities of this beautiful island.

The sea reclaiming a mosaic on the Beach of the Delian Apollo

A variety of beautiful beach stones combined to make a sunburst mosaic

This winter I am spending 3 incredible months in Greece, island hopping from north to south.   I started on the beautiful island of Lesvos, home to the Muse Sappho, and worked my way down to largest and most breathtaking of them all, Crete via 10 other islands.  Each of them has a different character, varying in their geology, climate, flora, culture, style of architecture, and cuisine.  And there is an ancient tradition of pebble mosaic dating back 4,000 years to the time of Alexander the Great in Greece.  The tradition continues to this day, having been influenced by cultures covering several millennium.

An ornate Ottoman mosaic at the entrance to a mansion in Mytilini, Lesvos

As I made my way from island to island I would visit various beaches for which Greece is justly famous.  Many are made up of fabulous pebbles.  Some even have tumbled bits of ancient civilizations, tossed by the waves of the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean in to smaller and smaller pieces.  There are bits of Minoan palaces dating back 5,000 years on Crete, mixed with Mycenaean, Dorian, Delian, Ionian, Genovese, Venetian, and Ottoman structures that have toppled in to the sea over the ages.   I've been collecting handfuls of special stones from historic and sacred places to incorporate in to the the mosaics of the Labyrinth that I am building at Halls Hill Park on Bainbridge Island in Washington.  I'll be completing that project when I get home this Spring.

Rain and autumn light enhances the colors of the completed circuits of the Halls Hill Labyrinth

This has been one of the most wonderful winter trips I have made out of the 30 or so in my life so far.  The weather has been decent, and there are virtually no tourists, so I have had incredible solitude in places that are mobbed in the summer season.

A mosaic I made on Komitos Beach on the Island of Syros, deserted on the day I visited

Lesvos has a geologic past and the stones I found on the beach in the beautiful Ottoman town of Molyvos are lovely pastel colors in a variety of nice shapes.  It was here that I started the first of what has become a series of temporary beach mosaics, mostly in circular designs dedicated to the idea of Apollo, the God of the Sun.  Others I've made are dedicated to different Greek Gods and to people I know or have met along the way.

My first beach mosaic in Molyvos on the Island of Lesvos

 This got me to obsessing on making mosaics whenever the opportunity arose.  If I was on a beach that had nice stones and I had the time and the inclination, I would set to work gathering and composing a mosaic, usually for Apollo, as I wanted to encourage as much sun as I could conjure in the winter months when I am able to travel for any amount of time.  It seemed to work, because when it rained it usually did so at night, and most days were dry or a brief drizzle.  If there was rain in the forecast it usually meant spectacular clouds in skies that could easily inspire the stuff of mythology.  I figure there is a reason all of these Gods chose to be born on these islands.

The sun framed by clouds on the island of Naxos, birthplace of Dionysos

The second island I visited was Chios, south of Lesvos within view of the Turkish mainland.  Chios is where the Mastic tree, Pistacia lentiscus grows so well and the first chewing gum was made from the resin of this tree.  It was a prized commodity that gave the people who harvested the resin a special status when invasions took place.  The production is still controlled by a consortium of Medieval villages which were fascinating to visit.  The most interesting of these is the fortress like town of Mesta, where I found the main church to be surrounded by pebble mosaic medallions and zigzag patterns.

Mosaic panels at the church in Mesta

I didn't make it to any beaches while I was on Chios and instead focused on the fantastic villages of hilly interior.  The last place I visited before catching the infrequent winter ferry south was the UNESCO World Heritage site of the Byzantine Nea Moni Monastery, known for the remnants of its fine religious mosaics.  Surrounding the restored chapel are bands of simple pebble mosaics probably dating from the 19th Century.

Crude pebble mosaics surround the Katholicon at Nea Moni Monastery on the island of Chios

From Chios I took a ferry to Samos, where I spent the Christmas holiday.  I was the only guest in the large hotel I stayed in there, but there was a party with a band every night in the bar downstairs, so it was socially the busiest place on the island.  The rest of the island was deserted and stunningly beautiful.  Samos was the birthplace of the Goddess Hera, the understandably jealous wife of Zeus.  She is an ancient Goddess and was worshipped at a magnificent temple near the town of Pythagorio that was 4 times that of the Parthenon, though practically nothing remains today.  A lot of pilfering has gone on over the centuries and everything gets recycled in to something else.

All that remains of the Temple of Hera on Samos Island

The cost of a rental car runs half in winter what it does in summer and the roads tend to be empty, so it is a joy to drive around and discover the beauty that lies in the countryside.  There is lush greenery and the ravines are flowing with water in winter, and the light is gentle and dramatic.  Samos is a popular beach destination and I was frequently asked why I was there in the winter when I had it all to myself.  I'm a hardy Northwesterner so I was able to sunbathe while Greeks don their winter attire.  And since the beaches were empty, it was entertaining for me to beach comb and gather stones and create mosaic medallions.  The stones on Gagou Beach near the main town of Vathy are so beautiful, in soft shades of grey and buff with lines indicating their sedimentary limestone origins.

The Gagou Beach Mosaic is more than a meter across, Samos Island

Detail of the stones in the Gagou Beach Mosaic, Samos Island

The Gagou Beach Mosaic, Samos Island

Because the limestone is flat I also made an interesting twisting form inspired by the action of waves on the shore and the shapes of fishing nets I've seen around Greek fishing boat harbors.

An undulating line of flat limestone rocks on Gagou Beach, Samos Island

A twisted seam in a net cover at the harbor of Naoussa on the Island of Paros

A made a second small mosaic before I caught the ferry to Syros, on a thick mat of dead beach grass on a beach near the old port.  This one I dedicated to the Goddess Hera because of its moody location.

A small Hera mosaic on thick mat of beach grass, Samos Island

The fourth island I visited is called Syros.  Ermoupolis, the main town, is the capital of the Cyclades group of islands.  Some of Greece's most famous islands lie in the Cyclades group, including Mykonos and Santorini.  The capital town of Ermoupolis, being an administrative and transport hub, has some life in the winter, and I came here hoping there would be a festive atmosphere to start the New Year.  Except for the arrival of a midnight ferry, Syros passed quietly in to 2014.  I had a drink in a lovely bar with half a dozen other people and toasted the New Year with a drunk former sailor, of which there are many in Greece.  Ermoupolis has the largest and most impressive pebble mosaic I have seen so far in the islands.  Two large 150 year old patios and a wide walkway at the Church of Metamorfosis are paved in the finest black and white pebbles with small red/brown accents in a bold variety of crisply executed patterns.

A compass and geometric shapes in a section of the pebble mosaics at the Church of Metamorfosis, Ermoupolis, Syros

The island is not large but it is exceptionally beautiful.  I was able to cover most of it in a day in a car.  In the south of the island on a pretty beach called Komitos I gathered an array of pebbles and made a large mosaic by laying the stones flat.  It isn't my favorite as it was built rather hastily, with the stones laid flat because of their angular shapes.

The Komitos Beach mosaic is more than one meter in diameter

Before I left the island I created a much lovelier green stone mosaic on a tiny beach surrounded by cliffs that I dedicated to the English pebble mosaic artist Maggie Howarth who I had recently been in contact with, wishing her good health in the coming year.

Maggy's Mosaic, made from green stones dislodged from the beautiful surrounding rock formations

Maggy's Mosaic, Syros Island

On the ferry from Samos to Syros I met a young man named Alexandros who recommended that I visit the Island of Tinos, as it is known for its marble quarries and a stone carving tradition that continues to this day.  It is a short distance from Syros so I went over for 4 days.  The island is known as a holy pilgrimage destination because of a revered icon of the Virgin Mary that resides in the splendid Church of Panagia Evangelistria.  I stayed in a tiny apartment in a complex that was otherwise deserted in the main town within walking distance of the church.  The owner's 106 year old grandfather, the oldest man on Tinos Island passed away the day after I arrived and I was left to man the place solo during my stay.  The holy day of Epiphany occurred while I was there and perhaps 1,000 people arrived for the day to watch a priest throw a golden crucifix in to the sea, after which a group of strapping youth dove in to the harbor in a competitive effort to retrieve it.  I was told that the one who gets it is granted very good luck and possibly a substantial amount of money as gifts from people in the community.

The Epiphany ceremony in Tinos Town

The church has an expansive mosaic terrace fronting it made of larger pebbles that are much more crudely laid than the fine mosaics in Ermoupolis, but the effect is still dramatic.  The carpeting laid across it is for penitents who approach the church on their knees from the harbor to make such a journey less grueling.  I walked, and so did everyone else while I was there.

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The island proved to be spectacular to explore in a car, but I didn't spend much time on any beaches.  I made a tongue in cheek medallion from plastic bottles that washed up on shore near Tinos Town the afternoon I arrived.

Water bottle medallion, Tinos Island

I also made a small rather uninspired mosaic a day later dedicated to Icarus, who fell to his death in the sea near the island of Ikaria, which I reluctantly bypassed on my way from Samos to Syros due to the infrequent winter ferry schedule.  Ikarus was the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, who designed the Minoan Labyrinth near Knossos to hold the dreaded half man/half bull Minotaur, who was the unfortunate offspring of the wife of King Minos of Crete's after a tryst with a bull.  Daedalus was imprisoned by Minos after he gave the King's daughter a ball of twine called a klew, which she gave the Athenian prince Theseus so that he could find his way out of the labyrinth after slaying the Minotaur.  Daedalus fashioned wings with feathers and wax in order for he and his son to escape from Crete by flying, but in his enthusiasm, Icarus, although warned not to, flew too close to the sun, thus melting the wax and causing the wings to fall apart, plunging him to his death.  The tale is one of warning to those with unbridled ambition.  My homage to Icarus certainly lacked ambition, but its cute.

The Icarus Mosaic,  Island of Tinos

In the winter the only way to get to Mykonos by ferry is via Tinos.  My Mother had been to Mykonos in 2009 and told me she saw gay men everywhere wearing practically nothing.  I had to see for myself. Nothing of the sort in winter.  Instead, of being wild, the town in January is a beautiful, peaceful Cycladian village with white washed churches, windmills, and the infamous succession of pelicans, who to my surprise was pink and missing part of one wing.  The real reason I came to Mykonos was to visit the sacred island of Delos, a place that has no permanent population beyond archeologists and care takers of the ruins.  The boats to Delos don't go very often in winter due to a lack of tourists, but I was fortunate enough to meet Irene Syrianou, a woman who has a mosaic shop in the town and teaches classes and makes reproductions of some of the classical floor mosaics found on Delos Island.  She had worked for some time doing restoration there and had some pull with the surly boat captain, so eventually we were able to visit.   In the mean time I walked a lot and at one point made a very pretty mosaic on a beach in town.  I also started cleaning beaches of the amazing amount of trash that washes up on shore.  You can read about that endeavor in the last essay I posted 'Giving back to the Earth'.

The Mykonos Mosaic

The Mykonos Mosaic with Little Venice in the background

A small group of people made the journey to Delos on a beautiful day.  An archaeologist named Martha who works on the island guided us around the ruins, focusing on the beautiful mosaic floors that lie in situ in villas that toppled over 1,000 years ago.  Delos is considered the birth place of Apollo and his twin, Artemis, as it is the island with most sunny days during the year.  Perhaps the most famous of the floors is a circular design with pairs of dolphins at the corners bearing riders in an aquatic competition akin to trick riding.

A section of the mosaic floor in the House of the Dolphins, Delos Island

We were busy exploring the ruins all day so we didn't have a lot of time to linger on a rocky trash strewn beach, but I managed to make a quick stack from the pancake flat stones there.

A slightly blurry image of my Delian Rock Stack

From Mykonos I returned to Syros and then took the ferry to the Island of Paros.  Parian marble is famous for its luminosity and helped make the island prosperous in ancient times.  The Venus de Milo and the Winged Samothrace at the Louvre Museum in Paris were carved from Parian marble.   I rented a little apartment in the main town of Parikia with a view of the bay, near the remnant of an extraordinary defensive wall made from parts of a dismantled temple dedicated to the Goddess Athena.

A Frankish wall built from parts taken from an ancient Temple of Athena in Parikia, Island of Paros

There are nice stones on the beach in town and I spent part of my first afternoon there making a large mosaic medallion not far from where I was staying.

The Parikia Mosaic

Many Greek towns are built on top of ancient ones.  Next to a parking lot on the edge of town I found the excavated remains of floors from the Hellenistic era.  Pebble mosaics were often used later for sub flooring with fine cut stone mosaics overlaying them.

Pebble mosaic flooring in Parikia, Island of Paros

From Paros I took the ferry to one of my favorite islands from this winter's travels, Naxos.  This is the largest of the Cyclades group, with high mountains and a rugged coastline.  Chora, or Naxos Town has a fine Venetian fortress crowning the small hill in its center, and the Portala, a grand entrance to what remains of the Temple of the Delian Apollo that is the main symbol of the city.  The beach next to the ruins of this once grand temple are the subject of my previous essay about cleaning up beaches of the debris that washes up on shore.  The lovely mosaic that I built there was dedicated to the boy who helped me clean the beach that day.  This young man is a glimmer of hope for humanity to me and I will never forget his selfless assistance in aiding me to gather an enormous amount of garbage from this otherwise beautiful beach.

The Mosaic of the Delian Apollo

Mosaic with the Portala of the Temple of the Delian Apollo in the background

I rented a car for two days to explore the island and drove up to the majestic Mt. Zeus, the tallest mountain on the island, and did a beautiful hike to the cave said to be where the King of Greek Gods, Zeus was raised as a child, being kept safe from his father Kronos, who devoured his siblings.  It was an incredible day in the majesty of the mountain and fascinating to explore the mysterious cave.  Being the only person there made the experience very special.

Cave of Zas

I collected small shards of stone and made little lightning bolts in honor of Zeus outside the entrance to the cave.  I brought some pieces back with me that I will use to make a similar lightning bolt design in the Labyrinth in the 5th circuit, which is dedicated to the planet Jupiter, he being the Roman incarnation of the Greek God Zeus.

Lightning bolts dedicated to Zeus

An earlier visitor left a bouquet with a pink lily that remained fresh in the divine coolness of the cave.

Naxos was the birthplace of the God Dionysos, and the faint remains of an ancient temple dedicated to him lies to the south of Naxos town.  Further on is another temple in a more recognizable form dedicated to the Goddess Demeter.

The Temple of Demeter, Island of Naxos

From Naxos I took a ferry further south to the Island of Ios to see the mosaics of Yiannis Loukanis, who I met 5 years earlier on a short trip to Athens.  In 2013 he competed a series of finely executed mosaics around the island's harbor.

A beautifully crafted pebble mosaic by Yiannis Loukanis at the harbor in Ios

Ios is a party island in the summer but was very sleepy in winter.  I rented a car one day and drove the nearly deserted roads through rugged mountains to the supposed grave site of the great ancient Greek writer Homer.  Later at Agia Theodotis Beach I made a mosaic in honor of Homer after collecting most of the garbage from the shoreline.  A friendly dog joined me for a time while I collected pebbles and assembled a tidy medallion of concentric rings.

Homer's Mosaic, Agia Theodotis Beach, Ios Island

A mosaic dedicated to Homer, Agia Theodotis Beach, Ios

 I stayed an extra day on Ios because the ferry to Santorini was canceled due to rough seas.  Before I left I went to Koumbara Beach across a peninsula from the harbor and made a mosaic there using pretty green schist that I collected from the beach.

Koumbara Beach Mosaic

I was excited to be traveling to Santorini.  This dramatic volcanic island is famous for its huge caldera, and on arrival I couldn't help but notice the similarities to Crater Lake in Oregon which was formed in the same way.  I worked on the tour boats there for a summer when I was 18 years old.  Santorini's eruption and collapse is considered to be the most violent in human history, and is believed to be responsible for the demise of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete, which was the first advanced civilization in Europe.  I stayed in the picturesque village of Oia on the stairs where what may be the island's most famous view is photographed by zillions of tourists every year.

Posing on the stairs to my Cave House in Oia, Santorini

Santorini was the first island that I visited that had any noticeable number of tourists, mostly Chinese because they were on their NewYears holiday.  Because the cliffs are so steep leading down to the sea, the caldera side of the island doesn't have any real beach.  The hike down is steep and wonderful, passing layers of sculpted ash tufa and black and red lava flows.  At a small dock area I made a little wreath of red lava dedicated to the forces of volcanism.

A ring of red lava filled with small black lava pebbles, Oia, Santorini

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My 5 days on Santorini were blissfully beautiful, but the largest island in Greece beckoned, so I caught the ferry to Iraklio at the ridiculous hour of 3:00 AM.  We arrived in the early morning at the not so attractive but bustling capital of Crete and I moved in to a bizarrely decorated ultra modern hotel that was in sharp contrast to my atmospheric cave dwelling in Oia.  One of the main reasons I came to Greece was to visit Knossos, the ancient Minoan citadel and site of the fabled Labyrinth near Iraklio.  I'll post an essay about this later.  The weather was wet for the longest period yet this winter and my day at Knossos was very soggy.  The collection at museum in Iraklio was amazing although the most famous artifacts that I had studied in Art History at the University of Oregon were not on display for some reason.  Still, the art of the Minoans is very inspiring, especially for their love of nature.

A beautifully decorated plate reminds me of the mosaics I have been making on Greek beaches

A fragment of 5,000 year old Minoan fresco also reminds me of the mosaics I have been making

A gold wreath

Much prettier than Iraklio is the town of Rethymno in the middle of the north coast of the island.  The cities of Crete were heavily bombed by the Germans during World War ll, annihilating a significant amount of their historical charm.  Rethymno and Chaniá fared better than Iraklio and had more to salvage and restore.  I rented a car for four days here and explored the extraordinarily beautiful countryside on quiet little roads.  My adventures felt legendary as I was a lone traveler in most of the places I ventured.  I visited the picturesque Amari Valley, dotted with whitewashed villages amidst lush greenery.  Snow capped Mt. Ida dominates the region being the tallest mountain on Crete.  It is a dramatic surprise to see snowy mountains across the island.  My favorite drive was up a narrow crumbling mountain road to the tiny town of Kallikratis, something straight out of a Washington Irving fairy tale.  I met some sheep along the way.

Baaaaaa

Before I left Rethymno I made a rough limestone mosaic below the walls of the Venetian Fortress that kind of disappears in to the surrounding rock.

A rough limestone Mosaic, Rethymno, Crete

A limestone Mosaic amongst the rocks in Rethymno, Crete

Another day I visited the Minoan ruins at Phaestos where the oldest known form of typography, the Phaestos disk was found.  I bought a copy of this famous round clay disk imprinted with small symbols in a spiraling order to set in the Labyrinth when I get home.  Nearby is the famed hippy beach of Matala which inspired lines in the Joni Mitchell song 'Carey'.  "They're playing that scratchy rock n roll beneath the Matala Moon".  A golden bluff dotted with caves dug as Roman tombs became the free troglodyte lodging for hippies on a budget and the town still honors this heritage with amply painted peace signs and bright flowers.  I sang Carey over and over while I made a mosaic on this beautiful afternoon.

The Matala Moon Mosaic, Matala Beach, on the Libian Sea, Crete

The Matala Moon Mosaic

"The wind is in from Africa" The Matala Moon Mosaic, Matala Beach on the Libian Sea, Crete

I made another small mosaic on the beach at Agia Galini on my way home during a breathtaking sunset.  Another one dedicated to the God Apollo.

Apollo Sunset Mosaic on Agia Galini Beach, Crete

The next day I drove to the famous Cretan mountain town of Anogia and up to the Nida Plateau at the base of snowcapped Mt. Ida.  It is an amazing area of rugged limestone hills and tenacious forests.  Turning off on a dirt road I came upon a beautiful little round stone church modeled after the regional stone huts called Mitatas, in which the shepherds make sheep milk cheese.

A stone church near the Nida Plateau, Crete

From Rethymno I moved further west to the ancient port town of Chaniá.  This is a beautiful place with an old Venetian lighthouse gracing the harbor.  I made a sunburst using tumbled pieces of Ottoman era roof tiles and remnants of Chania's Venetian fortress walls on a small quiet beach.

The Chania Mosaics

It grew a couple of babies the next day.

A full rainbow formed before the full moon rose while I worked on the second and third sunbursts by the Venetian walls, Chaniá, Crete

 My last full day in Chaniá was warm and beautiful and I am wondering why I am leaving.   I went swimming in the sea for only the second time this winter.  It was wonderful.  I also made two mosaics.  One looked like a little cake as the pebbles were very small where I went swimming.

A little cake mosaic

Further down the beach the pebbles were much larger and more plentiful so I couldn't help myself.  I worked on this simple set of colorful concentric circles until it was almost dark.  I can't really say why I do this, OCD perhaps?  I like the results, and they do catch people's eyes as they pass.  I suppose it keeps me in shape for when I return home and go back to work.
 My last full day in Chaniá was warm and beautiful and I am wondering why I am leaving.

The sea is ready to reclaim this one

None of these mosaics is meant to last very long.  The sea often takes them back in a day or two.  I like that.

Thanks for reading another very long essay, but then its been quite a long journey,  Jeffrey

Labyrinth patterns were stamped in to the coins of Knossos, from the Archaeology Museum, Heraklion, Crete

One of the main reasons I came to the island of Crete this winter was to visit Knossos, the ancient Minoan Citadel near the island's capitol city of Heraklion.  This was the mythical site of the famed Labyrinth of the Minotaur.  Minoan culture dates from the Bronze age and is the oldest known advanced civilization in Europe.  The palace at Knossos went through many incarnations over several centuries and developed in to a great citadel with spacious courtyards and a complex arrangement of rooms on several levels.  The elaborate layout of the buildings may have inspired the idea of the labyrinthine concept due to a seemingly endless number of rooms and corridors at a time when the rest of Europe still resided in simple dwellings.

An artist's rendering of what the palace at Knossos may have looked like

There is however no actual known remnant of any kind of labyrinth on the island of Crete other than depictions on coins and ceramics.  The Labyrinth insinuated in frescos was a kind of 'dancing ground' where rituals probably took place.  So it is possible that a labyrinthine pattern may have decorated a spacious courtyard in the palace where it is hypothesized that these events took place, but there is no physical evidence of this today.

A Minoan woman depicted in a fresco from the palace at Knossos

The word Labyrinth is derived from the word Labrys, which was a Minoan word for a double edged ax, a royal symbol associated with creation, and a Goddess that was the protectress of the palace. Depictions of double edged axes were found in the excavations at various Minoan palaces in different parts of Crete, but it is assumed that Knossos was the main center for the civilization, from which the great King Minos once reigned.  The suffix -nth insinuates a palace, therefore, the word Labyrinth can mean the Palace of the Double Ax.    Double Ax symbols have been found in excavations of other ancient cultures that would have had influence on the Minoans.  I must note that the name Minoan was the invention of the colorful archaeologist Arthur Evans who led the excavations at Knossos, and that much of what we consider to be historical fact is the highly interpreted vision of this man and other modern scholars.

A palace hall recreated by the archaeologist Arthur Evans at Knossos

The most famous myth related to Minoan history is that of the Minotaur.  The story goes as this:  King Minos had promised to sacrifice his most beautiful and prized white bull to Poseidon, the God of the Sea, but spared the bull and sacrificed another in its place.  Poseidon's revenge for King Minos rejection of the chosen sacrifice was to have the Goddess Aphrodite cause the King's wife Pasiphaë, the daughter of Helios, to fall in hopelessly in love with the bull.  Daedalus, the court architect designed a wooden bull for her to hide in so that she could entice the bull to make love to her.  She was impregnated and gave birth to the the terrifying half man/half bull, the Minotaur.  In order to hide this fearful creature, who fed on humans and wreaked havoc on the Minoans, King Minos commissioned Daedalus to design a labyrinthine palace from which the Minotaur could not escape.  

A beautifully enhanced image of the planet Jupiter showing a swirling cloud layer of ammonia crystals

It is Spring and I am back on Bainbridge Island to resume work on the Halls Hill Labyrinth.  Last fall I completed 6 of the 11 circuits.  I started with the outer rings, and they make up the majority of the project since the circuits get smaller as I work my way towards the center.  The outer circuit, the 11th is dedicated to the full moons of the year, and I call it the Lunar circuit.  The 10th circuit has 108 stones arranged like a Tibetan prayer bead necklace, so I call it the Mala circuit.  The 9 rings leading to the center are dedicated to the 9 planets, starting with Pluto (yes, I know Pluto was downgraded from planet status).  The planets are named after Roman Gods, except for Uranus.  Roman worship borrowed heavily from Greek religious traditions, so there is usually a Greek equivalent to every Roman deity.  Pluto was first Hades.  Neptune was Poseidon.  Uranus is the only planet named after a Greek God, the Roman name being Caelus.  Saturn was Cronos, Jupiter was Zeus, and Mars was Ares. Earth was Gaia in Greece and Terra Mater (Mother Earth) in Rome.   Venus was Aphrodite, and Mercury was Hermes, and the sun was Helios and Apollo.

A magnificent bronze statue believed to be Zeus hurling a lightning bolt dating from 460 BC at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens

The 5th circuit, which I am building now, is dedicated to the planet and God Jupiter.  Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, being approximately 1,400 times the size of our planet Earth.  It is the third brightest object in the night sky after our Moon and Venus, and at its brightest can even cast a subtle shadow on the ground. The Romans named the planet after the King of their Gods.  The majority of the planet is made up of layers of hydrogen and helium gases.  The cloud layer that we see on the surface of the planet is a relatively thin (about 50 kilometers deep) layer of ammonia crystals, and may contain a layer of water, as powerful lightning activity has been observed that would most likely be caused by water's polarity.  The intensity of these lightning storms is estimated to be 10 time greater than anything ever recorded on Earth.  As water vapor rises to the outer layers of the atmosphere it freezes, and the ice crystals rub against each other creating an electrical charge that is discharged through lightning.

Lightning captured on Jupiter by the NASA spacecraft New Horizons

Jupiter is the Roman incarnation of the Greek God Zeus.  He is a God of the sky, lightning, thunder, and justice.  He is often depicted clutching a lightning bolt ready to hurl it Earthward.  Lightning is a phenomenon that could easily inspire divine explanation.

Jupiter depicted in a ceiling painting I photographed in the Louvre in Paris

The Eagle is associated with Zeus, and Bald Eagles land here in the tallest trees from time to time.  I love hearing their distinctive cry and have seen them soaring overhead while I work on the labyrinth.  I have heard that with the building of new homes on the island that trees traditionally used as nesting sites by eagles year after year have recently been cut down.  There is great wealth on Bainbridge and lots with views of the water are increasingly more rare, so the impact of new building on less accessible sites tends to be greater.  Our natural systems are being impacted at an alarming rate.

200 AD Roman floor mosaic depicting Zeus as an Eagle, snatching Ganymedes.  Museum of Archaeology, Thessaloniki

This winter I visited several islands in Greece, including Crete and Naxos.  Both islands are mountainous, and I climbed up to caves on each that are related in mythology to the life of Zeus.  The cave of Ideon Andron on Mt. Ida, south of the city of Rethymno on the island of Crete, is according to legend one of two possible birthplaces of the baby Zeus.

The Ideon Andron Cave, one of the mythical birthplaces of Zeus, on Mt. Ida, Crete

Sired by Cronus (Saturn), and birthed by the Goddess Rhea,  Zeus was destined to be eaten by his father, like his siblings were before him.  Being Gods, the family role call of Cronus' offspring is significant, including Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon.  Cronus had heard in prophesy that he would be deposed by one of his own, like his father Uranus, who'm he castrated and dethroned.  But Rhea wasn't going to have it this time so she wrapped a stone in swaddling and offered it up, and it seemed to pass the culinary needs of a distracted God.  Zeus was squirreled off to be raised in a secret cave on either Crete or Naxos.  Though the myths vary, he was said to have been raised by the Nymph named Adamanthea, and fed by a goat named Amalthea, who nursed him from his magical cornucopia horn.  To mask the divine baby's cries and avoid discovery, a band of Demigods called Kouretes clashed their spears against their shields to drown them out.  Excavations at the Ideon Andron Cave on the flanks of Mt. Ida yielded a treasure trove of offerings related to the cult of Zeus, including a bronze drum depicting winged Kouretes beating their shields while a triumphant Zeus flings a lion over his head and straddles a bull in the center.

8th Century BC Bronze drum depicting Zeus and Kouretes, from the Ideon Andron, Museum of Archaeology, Herakion, Crete

After his birth, some versions of the Zeus myth say that he was taken to the island of Naxos to be raised in a cave on the flanks of Mt. Zas.  Zas is the tallest mountain on the island and bears a form of his name.  I was the only one on the mountain the day I hiked it and it was a magical afternoon spent spelunking without a flashlight and and looking for stones to make little lightning bolts with.


Zeus, in retribution for his father having eaten his siblings, dethroned Cronus and caused him to vomit up the family.  Afterwards he became the supreme deity to whom all others worshiped.  

Zeus was a ladies man, and had a jealous wife, the Goddess Hera.  He sired many children with Goddesses and mortal women, many of whom were cursed and put to great tests by Hera.  The list is stellar.  Athena was born when Zeus's skull was split to relieve the worst of headaches after he had swallowed Athena's Mother, Metis.  The twins Apollo and Artemis (Diana), were birthed by Leto on the island of Delos after a curse from Hera that made it impossible for her to give birth in any other terrestrial place.  A tryst with Maia produced Hermes.  Hera had six children with Zeus, including Ares (Mars), Hephaestus, and Hebe.  Mnemosyn, the Goddess of Memory gave birth to the 12 Muses.  One of Jupiter's Moons is named for the Muse Aoide.  Dionysos fetus was stitched up in Zeus leg after his Mother, Semele was incinerated when she made Zeus promise her a boon, and she asked to see him in his divine form.  He attempted in vail to minimize his appearance to spare her, but he had promised with an oath made on the River Styx and was committed to fulfill it.  All in all he sired more than 40 divine offspring and a large number of mortals, including the mighty Heracles (Hercules).

Lighting bolts I made and left outside the entrance to Zas Cave, Naxos, Greece

Zeus had many rolls and aspects as a God.  He was the King of the divine pantheon that resided on Mount Olympus.  He continued to be the King of Gods in Rome as Jupiter, and the most important oaths of honor were made in his temple.  The Jupiter Temple at Baalbak in Lebanon was the largest temple in the entire Roman empire, with some of the largest known blocks of stone ever hewn, weighing 60 tons and more.

The Jupiter Temple at Baalbek, Lebanon, the largest in the Roman Empire

Me standing on the World's 2nd largest known hewn stone at Baalbek, Lebanon

The Roman Emperor Hadrian completed what would become the largest temple in Athens, the Temple of the Olympian Zeus.  Begun in the 6th Century BC, it was envisioned to become the greatest temple in the ancient world.  The King of Gods and Man was given the highest level of respect by the ancient Greeks and later the Romans.  By honoring Jupiter more than any other empire, Rome could claim divine supremacy over it's realm.

What remains of the great Temple of the Olympian Zeus, Athens, Greece

With all that in mind, I packed up my tools and returned to Bainbridge Island on March 23rd, the 3rd day of Spring.  I had hoped to be there earlier to mark the Vernal Equinox but the lovely apartment that I stay in wasn't available at that time.  It was a beautiful day with ample sunshine for the drive up.  I stopped at the beach in Purdy and the tide was out in the late afternoon so I collected a couple of 5 gallon buckets of stones.  When I arrived at the site I went immediately to work clearing loose stones from the area where I would resume building the path that leads to the center.  Because the 5th circuit turns and runs to the center I started at the bend from the 6th circuit in the northern Cardinal point.

The Labyrinth as it looked on my return on March 23rd

The next morning a pallet of mortar was delivered along with 10-20 foot sticks of 3/8 inch rebar.  And so the toil of building the Labyrinth resumed.  I built the bend and made my way from white stones in to silver stones.  This is the next set of turns inward from the 'Clouds of Heaven' that I built last fall between the 9th and 8th circuits.  Finding white stones is becoming more difficult in the right shapes as I have picked up most of what is available on the beaches that are close by.  Winter waves have turned the beaches and revealed new stones but I have to work harder to go further down the beaches to find the colors I need.


Today I had a visit from a lovely woman named Angie, for whom I dedicated the first of a series of simple 'lightning bolts', that I am incorporating in to this circuit as a symbol of Zeus, the God of lightning and thunder and storms.  In return I asked her to go and turn the prayer wheel and send an intention out in to the World.

Angie visits the Labyrinth

Angie's Lightning bolt (they tend to be very subtle when made of beach rock)

The next visitors were a family out enjoying the beautiful weather.  When people ask about the project I tell stories about the meaning of the various colors and circuits and what a Labyrinth is used for.  It will be so interesting when people actually start to walk it.  I find Americans to usually be very impatient, and walking this will require a fair amount of patience and time.  Some people just walk by and don't say a word, others come on a regular basis to show friends and to see the progress.  Some tell me they have been coming on a regular basis all winter just to gaze upon it.


My good friends Trish and Thane from Portland came by on their way back from Anacortes to see the project.  I love that friends find their way to this rather remote location in their travels to see what I am up to.  I made a special lightning bolt to commemorate their visit.

Friends from Portland visiting the project

Turning from the 6th circuit to the 5th at the Northern cardinal point

From my bag of select stones that I brought back from Greece I made a lightning bolt using the small slivers of stone I had collected at Zas Cave on the island of Naxos.  The link between the sacred places I visited in Greece this winter and the Labyrinth form a physical link between the Labyrinth and Greek Mythology, which I have been studying a great deal lately.

A lightning bolt made from stone shards I collected on Mt. Zas on the island of Naxos, Greece

I worked my way around to where the 5th circuit turns and runs straight to the center of the Labyrinth.  A section of the path in line with the entrance path parallels the one leading to the center, which represents the sun.  These straight paths are made of yellow stones since they are aligned with the east, and yellow is the color for the east in Native American medicine wheel diagrams.

The paths turn towards the center in the East

These paths bisect the Mars, Earth, and Venus circuits, and then the one centered on the east west axis connects to where the Sun disk will be at the center.  The path next to it connects to the Mercury circuit, and turns and goes part of the way around the Sun.  Once you reach the center it is traditional to walk back out following the reverse route.  If done with intention, this walk should be consciousness altering, if only for having exercised the patience needed to do so, but hopefully with so much more.

The next day was epic for its rainbows.  They lasted for at least an hour, arching across the sound while I gathered another 400 pounds or so of rock.  The tide is out in the afternoon so I am gathering what I need to make my way through each band of color during that time.

A brilliant full spectrum rainbow

It is a constant search to find the right shapes and sizes of stones in 12 colors I'm using, and the graduations in between.  I will have collected more than a ton by the time I finish the 5th and 4th circuits.

The day's pickings

Later, a very fashionable girl named Ava brought her parents, Lori and Farrell to see the project.  I told them about the community circuit that I will be building, the 3rd from the center where the Earth would orbit the Sun, and how people were bringing stones they had collected to contribute to it.  Enthused by the idea, they returned the next day with 3 buckets of beach rock, most of which had well chosen shapes I could use.  This doubled the amount of stones that have been left by people on a boulder by the Labyrinth over the winter.  I will build that circuit when I return in the middle of April.  Now that I am back on the site, more stones for the Community circuit have been showing up every day.

Ava, Lori, and Farrell

Later in the evening, Barb, who lives below the park came by with her two dogs.  We talked about the Labyrinth as a place of contemplation and soul searching, and the idea of it being a portal or link between realms of existence.   The is solace to be had here.

Barb and her sweet dogs

I worked my way around from Spring in to Summer, using up most of the pink and red stones that I had on hand.  I am always looking for these colors as they are not so plentiful.  I've incorporated a number of wave tumbled red bricks in to the red areas due to the rarity of flat red stones.  I left a gap at the Western cardinal point for turns that will connect to the 4th circuit, where brown then transitions to orange.  This is the direction of the Autumnal equinox.

The Jupiter Circuit, the 5th

On March 29th, I worked my way from orange in to black, mixing in stones where both colors are blended.  Then I transitioned in to white, and completed the loop in the North across from where I started when I returned to the island a week ago.  It rained all morning so I had to put my tarp up over the frame I have set up for shelter.  I'm able to walk the frame around like a spider to keep the areas I am working on dry.  Fortunately I haven't had to work under the tarp a lot because it is darker and kind of moody when it is up.  If it looks like it won't rain for a while I take the tarp down.  But it was up for the completion of this circuit as the rain came and went, and the sky grew dark.

Subtle zig zags of stone honor the God of Lightning and Thunder

Just as I was setting the last stones in the bend from the 5th to the 6th circuit, a dramatic bolt of lightning struck the water out on the Sound.  I could see the flash through the trees and thunder rumbled past a few seconds later, so it was very close.  Zeus had spoken!  I let out a whoop.  About 5 feet away from where I was sitting is the lightning bolt made from the slivers of limestone I brought from the Zas Cave on Naxos.  The electric connection between Heaven and Earth is buzzing through the Labyrinth now in the Jupiter circuit, and there is great magic in the World.

Thanks for reading, Jeffrey

With the Jupiter circuit complete, there are four circuits and the center remaining to be built