The actual artists’ commune was at the end of the island, with nothing but the rest of the lake and forest beyond it. A wide dome painted rusted rainbow colors with little portal windows like a welter of eyes. The reeds alongside were intense. Moss and waterlogged trees with yellow flowers had usurped part of the walkway, so I had to step between two of them to get to the doorstep. Small solar panels had been stacked against a wall. Some kind of marsh heron stared at me with a cold eye from the far side of the reeds.

The sign for the commune read “Unitopia,” which seemed like a mistake in hierarchy. You couldn’t name both the island and a business on the island the same thing. The mold had overtaken the sour stench and a belch of swamp odor. The whimsical drawbridge between island proper and this seemingly detachable part was waterlogged, soggy. Leapt over it rather than trust it to hold my weight.

Leaving me in the open doorway, staring into the surprising light-filled interior. All those pinhole pricks of windows.

The front part was the abandoned visitor center, with a high ceiling and museum-like displays. A row of huge circular photos had been positioned at eye level along the outer wall to show views of different habitats. Some of it faded. All of it faux cheery in design. The flow of nutrients through wetlands charted as a metaphor for healthy life. Places you could pretend to take samples of water quality. Stations on high tables, with stools, that had once displayed brochures and had plugs for headphones and laptops for presentations.

I walked up to the main placard, the standard “Welcome to Unitopia” pablum. But next to it was another station where everything had been ripped out except a bit of wiring. The graphic showed sedimentary layers within the earth and the levels above, ending in sky. I read part, then took a photo to remember it.

What could be accomplished in understanding the miraculous in the everyday if we could truly see the hidden underpinnings of the world. Whether through truly immersive virtual reality or other method. Whatever the process to that end, however you were changed or contaminated or released or mutated or entangled … Afterward, you’d walk down your street and everything would be identical to what you’d see with your own eyes … except you’d also see the chemical signals in the air from beetles and plants, pheromone trails laid down by ants, and every other bit of the natural world’s communications invisible to our primitive five senses. You’d also see every trace of pesticide and runoff and carcinogens and other human-made intercessions on the landscape. It would be overwhelming at first.

But once you got used to it, you’d look at the ground and it’d open up its layers, past topsoil and earthworms, down into the “deeper epidermis,” so to speak, until you’re overcoming a sense of vertigo, because even though you’re standing right there, not falling at all, below you everything is revealing itself to you superfast. And maybe then, while still staring at the ground, even more would open up to you and you’d regress to the same spot five years, ten years, fifty years, two hundred years ago … until when you look up again there’s no street at all and you’re in the middle of a forest and there are more birds and animals than you could ever imagine because you’ve never seen that many in one place. You’ve never even seen this many old-growth trees before. You’ve never known that the world was once like this except in the abstract.