Through the empty
branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and
evensong.
Be the ground lying
under that sky.
Be modest now, like
a thing
ripened until it is
real,
so that (he)* who began
it all
can feel you when (he) reaches for you.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows
Book of Hours, II 1
Dearest
Readers,
 |
Portland to Peacham, May 2016 |
Driving
from Portland to Peacham this Spring was a 3,100 mile cross-country race home. I was outrunning
the inevitability of a limited number of years left on this planet, and feeling the need to churn
out the artistic questions about this love affair I have with the trees,
forests, and the Green Mountains of Vermont–my ancestral home. This is the place
where my great grandparents arrived from Ireland, escaping the Potato Famine of
the 1840’s and the oppressions of life under English colonial rule.
Some fought in the American Civil War a decade or so later,
 |
Peter Fagan-16th Vermont Infantry-Grand Army of the Republic |
and most are buried
in the same town of Rutland Vermont where they first put down roots, raised
families, and where I spent the later years of my childhood. I am grateful to
them for taking the risk of immigrating to a new land and making this place
their home.
 |
Bridget Hickey Dunn |
 |
Margaret Conlon Fagan |
 |
Patrick Fagan in Civil War uniform |
 |
Thomas Dunn |
Because of the Dunns, the Conlons, the Fagans and the Hickeys, I’m sitting
in my 2nd floor bedroom scanning a vast sky over a lush green Vermont
forest brimming with the inexorable creation and destruction that is the
wildness of Nature.
 |
My window view of sky above and forest below at sunset |
It is in me too. I fit into this landscape. My mind is the mind of the land interwoven
with the continuous progression of generation, growth, decline,
death, decay, and regeneration. Outside my window is a cathedral. I stop, look
and listen.
 |
The Mother Hole-West Rutland Vermont 2012 |
If you remember, dear readers, I have in recent
years burrowed myself a tunnel into the earth to satisfy my itch to claw
into this Vermont-y-ness. I descended on a hand-lashed ladder, and I climbed
out.
 |
The Thinking Place-Peacham Vermont 2014-2015 |
More recently I fashioned a womb-like stick hut in the field outside my
window. I cleared, I dug, I sawed, and wove the branches into a quiet thinking
place. My friend Cynther added the leafy boughs.
Today the burrow is filled in, and the hut dismantled and rearranged
into a pile of branches that has been home to hummingbirds, white throated
sparrow and the ubiquitous, resourceful ground hogs.
Home is place, culture, memory, an old homestead, family,
a community of friends and neighbors who help each other out, living gently and
reciprocally on the land.
I call
my road here in Peacham “the Hall of the Ancient Mountain Maples”. They too are
weathered and stalwart.
I feel the wind in
my thinning hair. I walk and walk and walk my gnarly feet across the dark
brown earth. I turned 70 last week.