Ironing balsam branches (in maine)
From my diary entry yesterday afternoon, seated at a new place, a great place, at the sea-front edge of the side porch off the cottage. Under-used except for barbecues, no light and without (it's covered) the direct sun and easy-access of the front porch.
There's a round table – unstable - and a white painted folding chair with a faded green cloth seat and back and, when it rains, there can't be a better place on the property to think big thoughts. It rained around 4 yesterday (Maine weather seems governed by god's judicious with meting out their sun)and I found my new perch.
So I wrote/rambled:
“Have embarked on a project that am just now putting name to: I'm endeavoring to take Maine with me when I leave this time.
Since Rus and friends left mid-last week, have been bustling about with esoteric busy-work: Cataloging the libraries of the two houses, the contents of the pantry drawers, photographing first the beach then its individual stones, inhaling (and note-taking) its history (Mt Desert Island's), now collecting specimens – have ironed (v. messy) sprigs and buds, leaves and branches to be pressed somewhere, identified, collected moss from the path to the club (soaking in a bowl), rocks, 2 pieces of driftwood and a tiny sand dollar (perfect).
It's amounted to a sort of intellectual splaying of the toes in the long grass, or holding a day-warmed rock to the cheek, or squatting to take in the life of a tide pool. Non-intervention ownership of nature by keen observation.
The most ephemeral of these little pursuits (which are filling my days entirely - on the nightly phone call to R in New York, recited in list-form my day's activities. From his telephonic glazing over, can assume they sounded batty.), is actually the meta-pursuit that inspired them all. Have been driven to know nature – as only Maine can drive you, to know earth, to seek out its history (who squatted here 50 years ago? 100?) and to thereby get some inkling of man's nature and the threads that link us all.
Whew – big stuff that fills your head when the distractions are few and nature related.
Will come back to earth, reality, this century, and New York City, tomorrow eve.
Leave with Thomas Cole (Hudson River School also one of the first of the school to paint Mt desert).
Urging fellow artists and, by association, their patrons, to seek and record nature and in it find renewal, Cole stated his “belief that city life required corrective sojourns to the powerful consoling and redemptive wilderness, for the maintenance of spiritual and mental health.” Wilderness tourism had “the power to mend men's hearts.”
C
There's a round table – unstable - and a white painted folding chair with a faded green cloth seat and back and, when it rains, there can't be a better place on the property to think big thoughts. It rained around 4 yesterday (Maine weather seems governed by god's judicious with meting out their sun)and I found my new perch.
So I wrote/rambled:
“Have embarked on a project that am just now putting name to: I'm endeavoring to take Maine with me when I leave this time.
Since Rus and friends left mid-last week, have been bustling about with esoteric busy-work: Cataloging the libraries of the two houses, the contents of the pantry drawers, photographing first the beach then its individual stones, inhaling (and note-taking) its history (Mt Desert Island's), now collecting specimens – have ironed (v. messy) sprigs and buds, leaves and branches to be pressed somewhere, identified, collected moss from the path to the club (soaking in a bowl), rocks, 2 pieces of driftwood and a tiny sand dollar (perfect).
It's amounted to a sort of intellectual splaying of the toes in the long grass, or holding a day-warmed rock to the cheek, or squatting to take in the life of a tide pool. Non-intervention ownership of nature by keen observation.
The most ephemeral of these little pursuits (which are filling my days entirely - on the nightly phone call to R in New York, recited in list-form my day's activities. From his telephonic glazing over, can assume they sounded batty.), is actually the meta-pursuit that inspired them all. Have been driven to know nature – as only Maine can drive you, to know earth, to seek out its history (who squatted here 50 years ago? 100?) and to thereby get some inkling of man's nature and the threads that link us all.
Whew – big stuff that fills your head when the distractions are few and nature related.
Will come back to earth, reality, this century, and New York City, tomorrow eve.
Leave with Thomas Cole (Hudson River School also one of the first of the school to paint Mt desert).
Urging fellow artists and, by association, their patrons, to seek and record nature and in it find renewal, Cole stated his “belief that city life required corrective sojourns to the powerful consoling and redemptive wilderness, for the maintenance of spiritual and mental health.” Wilderness tourism had “the power to mend men's hearts.”
C
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