Sometimes it’s less about moving forward than resisting the pull to retreat. A shell fragment thwarts the gravity of the receding tide and streaks like a comet up the beach.

Suprematism comes to Odell Lake as sheets of ice fracture into geometrical forms.

At the water’s edge, the edge is frayed, a blast of frosted glass frozen in time, shattering out into the dark. The wind sings: walk with me, don’t be afraid, out upon the stones I’ve laid – I’ll show you where the real lake lies. But those are lies a moment tells, the lie I tell with frozen time until the lake sighs, and ripples liquify the edge.

In Key West, the phrase ‘batten down the hatches’ is more than a figure of speech: from August through September, the specter of hurricane season looms over this tiny, exposed shoal 100 miles out into the Straits, casting a shadow that throws everything out of balance.

Light and image bend, refract and reflect in the stillness of the Sanibel River

Light and image bend, refract and reflect in the stillness of the Sanibel River

Light and image bend, refract and reflect in the stillness of the Sanibel River

Light and image bend, refract and reflect in the stillness of the Sanibel River

One of the most humbling things to realize about the Palais is that every last flourish and ornament and joint was done by hand. The ironwork skeleton of the building is no exception: Because they're hand cast, drilled and set, rivets dance up a beam supporting the cupola crowning Palais Garnier.

A placid pond near Tenryu-ji Temple in Kyoto. In Japan, even nature feels like it's been composed.

On a cold, leaden morning in Kurashiki, the willows bent over the canal, softly rustling amongst themselves. So I bent over the canal with them.

“These steps,” one said, gloomily swinging her boughs back and forth in distaste, “they lead to oblivion.”

“A path is a promise, but this one can only break it,” said another.

“‘But long it could not be,” swayed a third, “Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull’d the poor wretch To a muddy death.’”

But what if someone is at the last step with a boat, I asked.

The water tugged absently against the stones, its ancient nemesis.

“Let’s hope there are enough boats,” they said.

For a designer like me, Japan brought revelations at every turn. This tiny little detail — a sheathed tree in the Samurai Quarter of Matsue — is a good example of why. Some of it is simply about composition. Strong verticals that span and unite two contrasting forms, the bark and its stylization, the bamboo. The perpendicular counterpoint of the neatly wrapped, black rope, both visual anchor and stage. The pointed contrast of tones, lacquer black against late-harvest gold against loamy brown, each sharpening and articulating its neighbor to build a composition of remarkable visual precision and clarity.

But even more revelatory, it’s the design philosophy that seems interwoven through so much in Japan: an audacious yet somehow respectful stylization of nature. Here, it’s bamboo, proposed as a clean, orderly, yet still organic interpretation of the bark grain it reaches toward.

Once I started noticing things like this, I saw them everywhere, not only in highly curated compositions like gardens, but in everyday touches like this simple way to protect a tree’s base in a tiny coastal town.

Like a whisp of smoke from a burnt offering, a stipe of beached kelp twists back toward the sea at Point Reyes, California.

Like Icarus, the St Louis Arch soars into the sky, kisses it, and falls to earth.