Crete is an island where myths linger in the salt air, where secret beaches reveal themselves like gifts, and where village festivals feel less planned than bestowed. The real treasures here are rarely chased — they arrive, unannounced, when you least expect them. One such moment began, for me, with a Viridian crayon.
Back in the 1960s, nothing thrilled a child’s heart more than opening a fresh box of Crayolas — the big one, with every color of the world inside. To a creative mind, it was a universe waiting to be drawn. And always, without fail, the first crayon I wore down to a stub was Viridian. There was something about that deep blue-green that felt like paradise itself, as if I were glimpsing a perfect sea painted from Poseidon’s own dreams.
Now, decades later, I live on an island where that dream sea surrounds me. Crete’s waters shift with the moods of sky and season — aquamarine, emerald, Aegean blue, even gunmetal gray when winter storms churn. But one day, a most remarkable thing happened.
We had just attended the Minoan Theater, a stunning creation by Anna Bastakis and her husband, Evangelos Grammatakis. Anna had studied over 2,000 Minoan seal stones to recreate gestures and rituals long thought lost. And Evangelos went so far as to transport huge uncut stones from sacred Mt. Juktas to form the amphitheater. The performance was no mere play — it was a ritual, a summoning of something older than memory. For those attuned, it stirred a metaphysical tremor. I found myself haunted by the priestess’s movements, etched in my mind as though I had seen them once before.
A few days later, I went to Tzo Taverna, perched right on the Cretan Sea. It was one of those golden afternoons when the island seems to lean in close and whisper. A Russian college student was working there for the summer, sweet and curious. We fell into conversation about Crete, its mysteries, and its myths. And then — I don’t know why — I asked her, “Do you want me to change the color of the sea?”
Naturally, she looked at me with both curiosity and doubt. But something compelled me. I had studied the old myths, how Poseidon guarded the Minoans. So I lifted my head, placed my hands as if in ritual, and spoke aloud an incantation I cannot now recall. I asked mighty Poseidon to reveal his majesty once more.
At first, the sea far offshore remained its ordinary Aegean blue, absorbing the light as it always does in the depths. Near the shoreline, the water was its usual pale aquamarine, almost glass-clear at the sand. But then it began. The entire horizon darkened, the blue deepening into a pure, flawless Viridian. It stretched in a vast panorama as far as the eye could see. And then, as if Poseidon had waved his hand over his canvas, that Viridian color began to move.
It advanced like a tide of pigment spilling forward, rolling over the aquamarine shallows, until all of it — near and far, shallow and deep — was the same breathtaking Viridian. The sea was no longer many colors; it was one. The god had answered, and his answer was majesty.
The Russian girl was stunned. My wife saw it too. Perhaps even strangers further along the beach noticed, though whether they understood what they were seeing is another matter. But I know this: that girl went home with a story about a strange American who called on an ancient god, and the sea obeyed.
And so I returned to the child with the Crayola box. Viridian was never just wax and pigment. It was a promise — that someday I would stand at the edge of the world, speak into the wind, and watch the god of the sea transform his canvas.
Author’s Note
This story is true. I cannot explain it, nor do I wish to diminish it with explanations. I have since asked Poseidon for smaller favors, and once he even knocked the glasses off my face to remind me what a true friend is. Perhaps he remembers these things as clearly as I do.
