The Still Garden

In the garden

The gravel bed runs down the middle, pale and combed into rows, with two moss islands and five stones between them. On its west side the gravel gives way to a shore of pebbles, and the rows run across the view, so a low sun catches every ridge. Behind the bed stands a small pavilion on a stone plinth, open on three sides, and stepping stones lead to it from the gravel where you leave the car. A stone lantern stands at the corner of the bed by the shore, lit after dark. Past the shore lies a koi pond, seven koi on slow rounds under the lily pads, and at its edge a bamboo shishi-odoshi fills from a spout, tips, empties and knocks against its stone, every minute or so.

At the shore stands a Japanese maple that keeps the seasons: lime green in spring, deep green in summer, red in autumn, bare in winter. At golden hour the sun comes through it.

A gardener looks after it: an indigo jacket, a straw hat, bare feet and a long wooden rake. He rakes in the morning and again through golden hour, lights the lantern as the blue hour begins, and leaves his rake leaning on the maple.

In the world it's just off the trail between the cavern and the Overlook, at the end of a short gravel spur. Choose "Rake the garden" in its panel and draw your own lines in the gravel with a mouse, a finger or the keyboard, or lay a whole pattern at once. Your lines ease back to the gardener's rows within a couple of minutes, and nothing you rake is kept. Choose "Feed the koi" to stand by the pond and scatter a little food; the koi nearby come up for it, and a tap on the water scatters a little more. Or take the camera out and walk in; the gravel itself is for the rake, not for feet.

You can sit there, too. Choose "Sit for a moment" and you settle on the edge of the pavilion's floor, looking across the gravel and the pond to the low sun through the window in the bamboo. Nothing needs doing. If you like, breathe with the lantern: it brightens as you breathe in, for four, and fades as you breathe out, for six, six times, about a minute. With sound on, a small bowl rings as you sit and twice at the end, and the pond keeps the same pace. The gardener, if he's at work, bows and goes on his way. Space pauses the guide; C takes the camera, and putting it away sits you back down; any other key, or a tap, stands you up. Nothing is counted.