The Art of Setting Stones. Marc Peter Keane
let sunlight through intermittently, at times strong then fading, rising again, and as the landscape brightens and dulls it seems to twist and bend, expanding and contracting into pools of light and shadow. Now the sun is out and a soft light filters down through layers of translucent new maple leaves to the smooth surface of the pond, reflecting a cool pale green on the trees and boulders at the water’s edge. Waves of light ripple off the water, shimmer up the stones, the trunks and branches of the trees, rising in endless waves as if returning to the sun. A small brown warbler, an uguisu, flits back and forth among the branches, restless with nervous energy.
Everything about this place seems to belong here. The water that slips out from the shadows of the forested hillside at the back of the pond and pools before running on to the river below. The temple that sits so comfortably by the pond, shaded by the spreading cover of old trees. The gravel path leading out to the prayer hall, meandering to avoid tree roots as it winds through the carpet of moss. All of these seem not to be separate elements fitted together in one place, but rather elements that are very much of the place. Born of it, nurtured by it, at one with it. Complete.
What keeps recurring in my mind, and what has kept me here in this chilly hall for the last hour, is the question of where the mountain ends and where the garden begins. What here is natural and what man-made? Surely the path through the moss was built, and the gray granite lantern in the shadows of the maples by the back of the pond was set there, no doubt about that. But what about the smooth boulder the lantern rests on, or the maple that arches gracefully above it, or the pond itself? Were these set out by design or have they always been here? The whole appears seamlessly connected—mountain, pond, mossy yard, and temple, too—and somewhere in that unity I feel lies the mystery of the garden.
The desire to understand that integrity has set me hunting for the boundaries of the garden, but it occurs to me now that, as is so often the case, the difficulty in finding the answer is that the question is all wrong. What I am puzzling over is not what is natural and what man-made, but “What is nature?” Concealed in that question is the essence of the garden.
What is nature? If common usage of the word is taken as its definition, nature would be that which occurs without the impetus of the human hand or exists free from its control. After all, we consider the words “natural” and “man-made” to be opposites, defining each other in the negative. Yet, the moment we accept that definition, we separate ourselves from nature, placing ourselves outside looking in, which we are not. However much we may wish to set ourselves apart by defining a hierarchy of living things, with us conveniently on top, there is no separation. We are integral to the whole.
There are some rare moments in our lives when that unity appears so clearly it stuns as it pleases, like the first gulp of air after a long dive. I felt it in Canada one night canoeing on a pond after a thunderstorm. The air was crystalline, cleansed by the rain. Shards of lightning crackled off in the distance as the last black clouds eased over toward the horizon, and in the ensuing calm an ocean of stars flowed out into an ink-black sky and cast themselves across the glassy surface of the water. Stars above, stars below, and a boy gliding silently through them, paddling through the universe. I have felt it floating motionless on the surface of the warm sea off Hawaii, bobbing gently, each breath in synchrony with the rhythms of the surf as if the waves were breathing for me. I feel like it might happen here and now, and just the thought sends shivers along the skin of my back.
I have felt the unity, but not often; those moments are rare and magical. And I also see that people do things that suggest we are separate from nature, “unnatural” things that appear to make us different from other species. We murder our own kind, wage cruel and calculated wars. But if cold-bloodedness is proof of our unnaturalism, consider for a moment the callous acts of some other species. Lions are known to consume their own offspring, inexplicably, still wet and clinging at the moment of birth. Dominant males among social primates will kill the young of others to free their mothers for their own seed. Female praying mantises devour their mates while copulating, crunching away from head on down, even as the remains of the hapless males continue to pump away at procreation. If we look objectively at the world, without beginning our inquiry with the predetermined bias of a man/nature division, the question that immediately comes to mind is: “Are we so different?”
A break in the clouds momentarily highlights the valley beyond the prayer hall. From end to end it is filled with boxlike houses and a maze of powerlines. Not a single tree in sight. The light fades again and the valley recedes, leaving me with an image of ugliness, cold and suddenly sad. Perhaps just this sort of wanton destruction of the environment for selfish purposes is the deciding factor that sets us apart from the rest of the ecosystem. We harvest more than we return, cauterize our rivers with concrete, despoil our land with toxic waste. But even as I think this I am reminded of North American beavers, flooding entire valleys to build their homes and in the process drowning neighbors by the thousands in their earthy burrows. Trees, too, die by the acre, their roots submerged and suffocated. The beavers, who build their houses of these trees, fell them and then use the very pond that killed them to float the trunks where they wish. Admirably efficient selfishness. Are we so different? We kill for selfish purposes; we lay our own backyard to waste.
The little brown warbler has been flitting between the trees in the forest. It flies out of the trees into the streaked light by the pond, hides briefly in a hedge by the temple hall, then back to the forest, quick across the water, lost in the shadows and gone. The uguisu sees no boundary: forest canopy and garden hedge are equally home. I watch as it emerges again and crosses over to the old prayer hall, which sits well above the ground on a platform of stone, its roof held high by twelve massive wooden columns. A sense of pride is expressed in its erect posture, and one of grace in the upward sweeping lines of the roof, supported by a wondrously complex puzzle of interlocking wooden brackets. The temple eloquently expresses the spiritual desires of the priest who commissioned it; the harmonic balance of the whole remains as a tribute to human achievement.
So perhaps it is not our destructive capacity so much as our noble acts, our higher achievements in science and art, like the graceful prayer hall, that separate us from the rest of nature. But are we really that advanced? Does our architecture in any way but size, for instance, surpass the gossamer, crystalline webs of spiders? The microscopic intricacy of their silken threads, which apparently are actually sheathed cables of pleated keratin, is well beyond the present capabilities of human science to explain let alone reproduce, and although arachnids may not be adept at a wide range of skills, when it comes to construction detailing, their genius is downright humbling. One such creature, all black and yellow and needle legs, inhabits my front garden. Somehow, in the space between the fir tree and the huge gardenia that frame the entry walk, she finds just the right twigs to anchor her threads, and though I don’t imagine she can see well enough to design the whole from afar, nonetheless, her master planning is impeccable.
Despite prolific examples like these of the overwhelming complexity of the organic world, we still tend to pride ourselves that the sophistication of our technology shows us to be not just one of the multitude of species, but in a class by ourselves. And yet, what if we compare human achievement with that of other species; for instance, compare a nuclear reactor with a leaf—both producers of energy. By applying the greatest concentration of intellect and capital currently available we can build reactors and make them work, barely. Can anyone build a leaf? Music is another of our great accomplishments, but surely none of the astounding variety of instruments we have invented emits a sound more moving and potent than the dulcet call of the little brown uguisu, darting now among the trees—a melodious blur. Are we so different? We build, we sing.
At the end of the room is a tokonoma, a small alcove in which artwork is displayed. Its floor is a single panel of beautifully grained wood; the walls are clay. Shadows gather about the back of the recessed space but a soft light from the garden casts across the front, illuminating a rough earthenware vase in which stands a single stem of tree peony. The twisted, gray branch is tipped with a feathery red bud the size of a quail egg, already beginning to open. A row of more peonies grows along the veranda, echoing the single bud in the room, hundreds of russet spots that flit this way and that as if dabbed onto the stems in quick strokes. The changing light shifts within the bare branches catching the uguisu flitting within. It darts back out, across the pond into the trees above