The Well: Part 2
Set down your pack and rest a while.
Hello there! Welcome to Dandelion Seeds, an illustrated newsletter that is hand-drawn and hand-lettered — and welcome back to a brand-new essay series called “The Well.”
This series is about the time I spent eight days walking around an island in Japan, following an ancient path called the 88 Temple Pilgrimage.
Today’s installment is about a courtyard in one of my favorite temples along the way, and I wish you could visit this courtyard with me. I wish you could slip off your shoes and linger beneath the cherry blossoms.
I wish we could all sit there together and rest a while.
But since we can’t, I’ve tried to do the next best thing — I created an illustrated essay about it, and I hope it transports you just the same.
With love,
Candace
You've captured the serenity of what it feels like to enter a sacred place.
There is an ancient, hand dug well deep in the desert between Khartoum and UmJawasir that I visualize every time I think of the word “well.” I see the young boys watering their camels, goats, and sheep by lowering a goatskin attached to a long hide rope tied to a patient, long suffering donkey whose entire purpose in life is to raise the water skin up to the boys who empty the cool water into a stone trough. Back and forth, up and down until all thirsts are quenched.
Truly, that water is sacred and blesses all whose thirst it quenches, even Switter’s, who has tasted water from that precious well.