A View from Cape Sounion

How many times I’ve passed an office park or gated community with a “lake” dyed some totally unbelievable shade of blue I can’t say, but never, when passing such a pond, have I failed to point out how absolutely ridiculous it looks. The concept alone of a lake in my home state of Arizona, a state that boasts a measly two natural lakes, is a bit absurd in itself. But why force us to suspend our disbelief even further by tainting the imported waters with outlandish artificial coloring? We all see water every day--in a glass, in the sink, in the bathtub--we know it’s clear. Nobody’s fooled here. Why decorate with something so obviously contrived?

But as I mount the peak of Cape Sounion and gaze from the cliffs across the Aegean sea surrounding me--overpowering vastness of deep, rich cerulean blue adorned with streaks of Prussian, cobalt, and ultramarine, so blue it bleeds into the sky on the distant horizon and I’m not quite sure where one ends and the other begins--I know. This is the goal towards which the thousands of manufactured ponds I’ve seen strive so vainly and miss so completely. Water may be blue, but the lakes in the office parks and gated communities are plastic whereas this sea is a sheet of glass. This is the beauty someone tried to bottle and mass produce. This is nature once again sticking it to the man.

Man:

Nature: