Friday, January 13, 2012


One of my earliest memories is of looking out across our back yard. I would guess that it was between one and two acres but there was also a pasture behind it, so it seemed to go on much bigger. In the spring the whole yard, as well as the pasture, was covered in small white sweet smelling flowers.

I remember looking across the huge expanse (I couldn’t have been more than four, an acre alone was a huge expanse) and it taking my breath. It was like a sweet royal carpet of gently waving white. It was magical to me.

“Everyone on board was filled with joy and excitement, but not an excitement that made one talk. . .Whiteness, shot with faintest color of gold spread round them on every side. . .There seemed no end to the lilies. Day after day from all those miles and leagues of flowers there rose a smell which Lucy found it very hard to describe; sweet--yes, but not at all sleepy or overpowering, a fresh, wild, lonely smell that seemed to get into your brain and make you feel that you could go up mountains at a run or wrestle with an Elephant. She and Caspian said to one another, ‘I feel that I can’t stand much more of this, yet I don’t want it to stop.’” -C. S. Lewis The Voyage of the Dawn Treader