The Gardan Journal Issue 08

CRAIGARDAN JOURNAL

Pathways - a familiar metaphor for the choices and circumstances that shape our lives. We try to follow or create new lines through our known world. Pathways can be mutually exclusive, but they are also intertwined within our shared existence. And in this world, our paths will cross. It doesn't matter if you have made yourself a million-dollar lifestyle with mansions, surrounded by technology, or if you live in a humble home of adobe walls and a thatched roof. The choices we make not only change the way we live our lives but also affect how others carry on as well.

There are those who want to make the world a better place. Some want to leave behind a legacy, something helpful for future generations, more beautiful than ever, a legacy that matters. I've learned that parts of this goal seem almost constantly out of our grasp. To better ourselves we might need to find a sanctuary. We need these places to escape to in order to make meaningful changes. When I paint, I create this safe place where I am free to imagine, to dream, to communicate, to think beyond myself. Without the necessary breaks from reality or the day-today, I wonder if we can achieve the state of mind necessary to make positive impacts in life. Without these sanctuaries we may feed into a cycle of wasted efforts and time.

I have been forced to make those changes. I had to adapt to make my life more meaningful. Art was the way — the path — for me, using creative outlets. But is this the case for anyone?

That's where the responsibility of finding a quiet, safe corner in our world comes in. Sometimes inspiring and thought-provoking art comes from lost, tortured souls. Are those with such gifts attempting to create beauty to somehow make the world a little better, or are they attempting to mitigate their own injuries with masterful works of art? On one level this is a terrifying concept: to think that maybe we cannot create beauty without some level of looming threat foreshadowed or remembered.

As an artist I feel that the ability to create something beautiful has saved me. I allowed myself to escape from a world at times teeming with anxiety, stress, and responsibility. Art is a pathway to expressions of thought and emotions that permit me to feel hope in times of grey. I created my own space to walk along a tree-covered path backlit by the sun, on a cold autumn morning...

So as we walk our unique paths in this intertwined world, perhaps we can all find something or some place that allows our minds to flourish. If it doesn't exist, then we create it. We inspire ourselves to become a little better and add to the world’s beauty.

MISSION

Craigardan is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with a mission to encourage the human imagination to interpret the world with philosophical, ecological, and artistic perspective.

To ful fi ll our mission, Craigardan supports artists, chefs, craftspeople, farmers, scholars, and writers through residencies, social justice initiatives, our community farm, and other public programs.

PROGRAMS AND PLACE

Located in the heart of the Adirondacks, Craigardan’s artist-in-residence program strives to cultivate a rich and collaborative place-based experience for all people working in all disciplines.

Our strong interdisciplinary foundation encourages creative thinking and collective problem solving by welcoming diversity in all of its forms.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Mary Barringer, President

Allison Eddy, Vice-President

Lorene Garrett, Treasurer

Kate Moses, Secretary

CONTACT CRAIGARDAN

www.craigardan.org

info@craigardan.org

518.242.6535

THE GARDAN

The Gardan , a project of Craigardan, is an offering to our creative community near and far, delivering a small piece of our program — along with inspiration and ongoing support — to encourage you to self residency wherever you are.

The Gardan is intended to foster conversations about creativity and its processes among and across all disciplines. We welcome contributions from artists and thinkers, activists and farmers, environmentalists and chefs at any and all stages of creative development.

We hope that The Gardan will unite you with your extended family of creative thinkers and bring a breath of Adirondack air to your inbox.

Each issue can be found online at www.craigardan.org

CONTENT SUBMISSION

We invite your contributions of words, images, video, fi eld notes, sound, and any other way you wish to connect to us, and to each other.

Issues are curated by our editors. Complete guidelines for content submission are online at www.craigardan.org/ journalsubmission

The Gardan is guided by our staff and fully supported by Craigardan’s funding and the efforts of our board and volunteers. We are actively pursuing grants and donations that would enable us to offer compensation for contributors. All contributors receive a complimentary print copy of The Gardan by mail.

Ron Banaszek

Story Bellows

Austin Frerick

Muriel Luderowski

EDITORS

With special thanks to editors

Mary Barringer and Kate Moses.

Loren Michael Mortimer

David Speert

Michele Drozd, Executive Director

9216 NYS Route 9N, Elizabethtown, NY 12932

All artwork is used with permission of the artist, who retains copyright of their work

CONTRIBUTORS

IN THIS ISSUE

MEQO SAM CECIL

CONOR BRODERICK

RAIMONDAS VALASCEVIČIOUS

ERICA BERRY

KATE MOSES

JENNIFER ALULA ROSE

MARY BARRINGER

SUSAN JEFTS

DUANE L. HERRMANN

TYLER BARTON

ALAIN HARJAONA RASOLOMAPLANDRA

CAPERTON TISSOT

PHIL BROWN

MIA VODANOVICH

SOPHIA KAREN

ANNIE FURMAN

ALSHAAD KARA

MARILYN MCCABE

CHARLES WATTS

SERGEY DOBRY

ALYSSA CARROLL

COLTER MANCINI

SARAH TERESA COOK

JACLYN HALL

TEREZA NESNÍDALOVÁ

JAMES B. KOBAK JR

HIMANEE GUPTA COVER

FRONT: “Untitled 1” by Meqo Sam Cecil

BACK: “City Roots” by Conor Broderick

“Welcome” by Conor Broderick. Watercolor.

Art and poetry collaboration with Conor Broderick and Raimondas Valasevičius.

Craigardan’s Kate Moses recently spoke with writer and 2018-19 artist-in-residence Erica Berry about her debut book, Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear, published in February by Flatiron Books. Erica spoke with us from her home in Portland, Oregon.

One of the most highly anticipated nonfiction books of 2023, Wol fi sh is Erica Berry’s kaleidoscopic, deeply researched, and personal exploration of the real wolf, canis lupus, and the sometimes revered but mostly feared wolf of our minds – lone-wolf terrorists, the wolf at the door, Little Red’s devourer, and predatory men. Wolves are “Government Sponsored Terrorists” according to bumper stickers in Montana, senselessly persecuted emblem of resilience according to environmental and animal activists; symbol of leadership and hunting skill in Navajo tradition; bloodthirsty child-snatcher borne of British Imperialism in India; the twin founders of Rome’s wet nurse, whose descendants were respectfully shooed toward safety outside the city’s gates; apex predator whose near-complete eradication in the U.S. may be a significant reason for an ecosystem out of whack and the resulting epidemic of Lyme disease carried by deer ticks.

“I am not an academic or a scientist,” Erica writes, “I am just one animal trying to see another.” Taking an associative, interdisciplinary and lyrical approach informed by a decade of scholarship and field study, she examines the many threads of our emotional and cultural constructions of the wolf through the lenses of history, fairy tale, myth, biology, conservation, and sociopolitics. Tracing the life of one particular wolf, a tagged “disperser” who left his pack and became the first known wild wolf to enter California in nearly a century, Erica examines her own history of solitude and camaraderie, fear and curiosity, exploration and home. “To understand the ‘wolf,’ I look to what it brings up beyond itself,” Erica continues. “I cannot see the animal without seeing the dynamics of gender, race, colonialism, violence, environmental degradation, and capitalism that ensnare my conceptions of it.”

--Kate Moses

Kate Moses: You’ve been working on this book, your wolf project, for a really long time – you must feel such a sense of achievement to finally see it in physical form, to know it’s being read and appreciated. When did you first think of yourself as a writer? I think women, particularly, seem to feel that they have to earn some exterior approval in order to be seen. So often we have the hardest time putting on the wardrobe of the art we're in the process of making.

Erica Berry: I had a very lucky experience. One of the reasons why I love teaching high school now is because it was so formative in my teen years, when I was so lost and insecure in my body and living, really, in a projected version of what I hoped I would become. I was finding places to hide in books and finding possibility in books. I won a poetry contest that a teacher had alerted me to, and I got to go to England to be around other teenage poets – talk about a gift. This experience gave me the sense that poetry -- that language -- that writing -- could be this sort of trap door, a way to get me out of the other teen bullshit and spring me into this world where other people wanted to talk about the things I wanted to talk about. That moment made me want to be a teacher almost as much as it made me want to be a writer. Seeing how important it is to have a hand reaching out of nothing, a voice that says, “You can do this.”

And it made me want to enter a lot of contests, which I wouldn't win, but having won the first one, I understood the lottery-ness of it. I feel like part of my drive towards wanting to get my work out there now is understanding that it is a rejection game. And the odds are so strange. In some ways my love of writing and my willingness to play the game were both seeded young in a way that I'm grateful for. Nobody's waiting for the writing. It's often not going to fit. And that's so hard. But it just takes a couple of moments where something amazing happens, you win something, or you get an opportunity to meet someone, that makes you realize, wow, I get to be seen as the person I feel I am.

The thing about being in residence with other people who are artists is that they're seeing you

first as an artist. I think about all the ways we are asked to be other bodies who are doing different things. What I have with my residency friends is that the first thing you check in about is “How's the art? How's that going?” They see me first as an artist, even when I've been teaching high school up to my ears and grading assignments. Being seen in this way kindles something that’s crucial.

KM: That validation is only external for an artist. Other people have actually seen the deepest part of you.

EB: Rebecca Solnit had a quote that really resonated with me. She said when she was young books were the portal, this bridge, that took her other places. And then you realize that your writing can be the bridge that brings other people to you, or opens up opportunities. I've met friends by writing to them to say, “I loved your music,” or they write to me and say, "I read your book. It really resonated with me.” And then we start talking and suddenly the work is about that human connection.

But you also have to cultivate this deep solitude. I love being alone so much and I'm so grateful to Craigardan for the time it let me be in-residence without the static of the world. I also love people so much, and don't always know how to reconcile those two things. This is the central question of being a creator. I think it takes understanding that the work can be a way to connect with people, and the solitude is like a gateway to the community, and vice versa.

KM: This makes me think about the disperser wolves you write about in your book. For one of several well documented reasons, they're willing to leave their pack and head out. And that too is an interesting balance of leaving the community in order to become a part of -- or create -another community.

EB: And it leads us back to the misnomer of “lone wolf,” which is the cultural belief that the lone wolf has gone out alone because he wants to be alone. I’m gendering him because that's often how it is culturally as well. And yet in reality, a wolf goes out alone because it wants to meet a new pack. And that's the point. That is such a misunderstood,

beautiful thing about this metaphor -- you set out alone in order to create new constellations of ideas or community. Genetically the wolves are trying to create the most diverse genetic pool. But there is something in that quest that we know intellectually. I’m drawn to people from different backgrounds, from different places, and that can involve a lot of discomfort and living with the unfamiliar. I've reckoned with this a lot since moving back home to Oregon after being gone for ten years. Oregon's a different place for me now because I also have the Adirondacks as a home and Maine as a home and Sicily as a home.

KM: There's another layer to it, too, that's really fascinating because wolves are not thinking to themselves, “Well, you know, I really do want to diversify our genetic pool here. So I'm going to head over to eastern Oregon." But instinct and intuition are somehow working. Which is, of course, where art lives as well. It's below the conscious level and there's something so incredibly poignant about thinking of these creatures who are so reviled and so endangered by human beings, and yet their instinct is still to leave the “safety” of the group. We know that's not necessarily a safe thing, but something’s driving them regardless.

EB: It reminds me of the idea that fear and curiosity or fear and inquiry are very tied. At times it felt like fear had closed all these doors for me. But I was talking to a biologist who said, “A wolf is born afraid. They hear a noise under a tree. They're going to go investigate it.” And that's inquiry. That's a beautiful thing. The fear is actually getting them out the door. And in some sense, I feel like that's true in my life. I have felt this. I wrote this book from a place where I was uncomfortable with a hypervigilance that had set over me. At the same time, I was constantly pushing myself into new adventures and new things. I think that is so tied in some way to making art. The state of complete terror you’re in about putting something out into the world is tied to a deep curiosity or generative imperative to do this thing.

It also makes me think about animal emotions. There's a famous color wheel model of emotions felt by animals, and love and fear are across from

each other on this color wheel. So any time that we're afraid, it's because we're deeply in love with something. Those feelings are not opposites, actually. They're very tied.

KM: At one point in the book you wrote about the domestication that led to dogs. And it seems to be tied to gendering as well. You raise the question regarding the hysterical fear and hatred of wolves, “Is it possible that human beings are responding to feeling rejected?" As in, our hostile attitude toward wolves may be coming from a place of emotional projection -- you rejected me, so now I’m going to reject you right back. Dogs are our best friends. You're our worst enemy.

Another side of that is the possibility that the trope of the devouring wolf is actually female, not male -- the thing that should be overpowered, but cannot be overpowered.

EB: Wolves do not obey the expectations that people have for them -- that it should behave like a dog, it should be very tidy, it should come eat our food when we want it to and leave when we don't want it to. Instead, there’s a wildness there. And yes, I think we see that so much in the tropes of misogyny — the idea that a woman is not acquiescing, that she's out of her territory, or there's some roaming beyond where she should go. That sort of trespass and punishment appears all the way back to old Greek poetry. There are clear parallels between women and wolves as this problem-thing that needs to be taken care of. Wolves are essentially matriarchal in their packs. The whole idea that patriarchy is natural, well, it's just obviously not. If you look at what a mother wolf does in the pack, she’s setting the tone through empathy and, very often, is the most successful leader and hunter.

Not just in terms of wolves but studies across different species are debunking the alpha male trope, which has been used in bad CEO business stuff since the ‘80s. The alpha male idea doesn't even apply to wolves. The metaphors we have for wolves are broken, but they have huge implications in the human world. Based on the wrong idea about wolves, we pass along harmful ideas in a human context.

Looking at how these animals act gives us another roadmap for how we might be. Wolves are very territorial. They'll kill each other, it's not all peace and love. But there are different models of kinship, even the sense that you'll usually have one breeding pair in a pack, that’s only a couple of pups, and then everyone else is helping take care of the pups. The aunts and the uncles or the half-siblings. Wolf packs can have foster families. They have stepfamilies. They have immigrant wolves. It’s not just these nuclear family packs. That to me was really inspirational when I started reading about those “chosen family” wolf packs and trying to think about how we are all animals in an environment that is threatened and, you know, in a habitat where we can be both scary but also scared. We can be both fearful and feared for. And how do we stand by each other in those moments? That's true for wolves, and even thinking about their prey. It all does come back to community as sort of the antidote to fear or to threat.

KM: And yet, the prevalent attitude toward the wolf, as well you know, in general is so binary. It's either you're with us or you're against us. There's no in-between. The only good wolf is a dead wolf.

At what point do wolves get to be good? You include the creation story of the Kalapuya in Wolfish. Mother Wolf offers to watch the first woman’s two babies while she explores the world. The first woman is afraid – can she really trust this wolf? — but decides to take up Mother Wolf’s offer, strapping the babies to the wolf’s back and securing them with a band across their foreheads. When first woman came back her babies were just fine, but their foreheads had flattened from the band holding them into their basket. From then on, the Kalapuya people flattened the foreheads of their children to honor their relationship with the wolf.

EB: The Kalapuya were native to the area where I now live. It was from the same ground, the same animals on the same earth, that you have two radically different origin stories. That was the story of honoring the wolf. In contrast, Oregon's founding was rooted in the extermination of the wolf. The difference is so stark. I've been thinking

about this idea of the nemesis that people are sort of addicted to. It makes them feel important if they think they’re being hunted. With human attitudes toward wolves, there’s a real unrequited hatred there. I mean, if you think that hatred can be a form of love. It can be a form of obsession. We think about the wolf so much more than the wolf thinks about us. The wolf is just doing its own thing. It's not out to hunt us. It's not out to be our friend. For us the challenge is to understand that we have to untangle our own ego from imagining that every other creature is somehow orbiting around us: they want to come be in my photo, or they’re scared of me. No -- they're just doing their thing. You are just another body that they maybe are not hungry for, or not interested in, and that's all.

KM: You did an interview with someone who worked with the Yellowstone Wolf Project. She and a colleague were coming down off a hillside and a huge herd of elk came running at them and sort of split to either side of them, fleeing a group of wolves who then showed up. I think she said something like, she was so surprised that one of the wolves got really close and started barking at them, and she’d never heard a wolf bark before. If we think of how dogs bark to communicate their feelings, then it doesn’t seem so surprising that wolves might also communicate to these creatures who were interrupting their hunt! So what if they’re wolf researchers – all the wolves know is that they got in the way of a biological imperative. I think that's the perfect illustration of your point that human beings are so confident of our centrality as creatures that we are thinking that the rest of creaturedom is orbiting around us. When in fact, we're just one more creature. In the book, you tell us that fossilized wolf remains have been found in Oregon that are more than 300,000 years

old, but the oldest signs of Homo sapiens in North America are only 16,000 years old.

EB: Wolves were originally the most widely distributed land mammal. They are literally living in Mexico City, on Antarctica — every continent has had wolves. People have been encountering them for ages and they've been in our language and psyches for so long. Their resilience and that dispersing trait again means they are constantly expanding or reclaiming their territories. Even after humans have wiped them out.

Somebody recently asked me in a Q&A, "What's a mountain lion folk tale?” I don't know any off the top of my head. I've also been thinking about the wolf’s howl and the idea that a howl is a sonic breadcrumb -- we don't see them, but we're aware of them in a way that is so much louder than mountain lions. It's that howl that has become aesthetic shorthand for creepiness. If wolves didn't howl, I don't know that we'd be as scared of them.

KM: Do you think it also has something to do with the fact that humans like to pick a fight with something they think they have a fi ghting chance against?

EB: So that does go back to conceptions of the nemesis. Even in philosophy, with the concept of the perfect enemy, there is that sense of balance and some equity, right? It's not punching up, it's not punching down. There's the idea that you're well matched in some way. And I think all the mirrors between humans and wolves -- the pack behavior, they're monogamous sometimes, they like to raise young collaboratively, they mourn their dead pups and even bury them. All of that gives us the sense that we are these mirror creatures.

KM: Again this brings up the dog-wolf tension with humans, where one reaction is “you’re

“We are all animals in an environment that is threatened and… in a habitat where we can be both scary but also scared. We can be both fearful and feared for. And how do we stand by each other in those moments?”

coming in the house” and one is “we're hiding our kids and shooting you.”

EB: In so many Indigenous stories there is much more fluidity and slippage in a creature's wildness. I think it goes back to our desires for control or imagining things as civilized or uncivilized. So much of America was built on this binary of, well, we better define what is wild, because otherwise are we civilized? Like we better stake our civilization in saying, that thing is out there and it is not us. And we know that ties to conceptions of whiteness and patriarchy and all of these ideas that are defined off of the creation of a vulnerable other that we are not.

KM: What does this book mean to you now that it's finished and it's out in the world?

EB: There's the thing you think you should do, and then there's the thing that you just keep doing. I didn't want to write the book this way for a long time. I tried to write other books or do it another way because I thought that I shouldn't write about my own experiences: They're not noteworthy enough. Or I should write a more serious wolf book, or I should do more. We have all these doubts and at a certain point, I think part of recognizing myself as an artist and this book as my art was about learning to trust my gut a little bit. Honestly, that’s what Craigardan was for me. I’d finished my MFA and I'd gotten some feedback that was, “this is two books.” It's a book about fear, it's a book about wolves. And I sat with that and I remember getting to Craigardan the first day and thinking, “Am I going to tear this book apart? Am I going to make this book two books? Am I going to abandon the book?” And I decided how to proceed with a really strong conviction, maybe the first conviction I've ever had in my life. I'm a person who lives so much in nuance and in indecision. And then I knew I was going to try to do everything to make it one book. And it was also the book I had to write. It’s very personal in that I'm trying to make sense of a discomfort I have with occupying the world in a certain way, and I need to figure out how to live better in the world. For me that means understanding these stories about fear that I've been told, and understanding

what I want to carry forward and how to reclaim some of this bravery or adventurousness that feels very close to me. So the stakes felt kind of high. I think now I do feel a sense of calm and resolve, having done it. I'm a lot less hypervigilant about some things. In that way there was a curative in it.

KM: There was a Washington Post review that points out how Wolfish "reads expansively.” That applies to the way you’ve built a sort of openness into the narrative -- the intersecting pathways of lyrical associations and resonances in this work, the art that you created out of the information you give, not just what but how you put it together. Art and story are what get us emotionally, what make things matter to us, not logic. I think of your recognition in Wolfish that factual analyses of the potential threat of wolves to humans shows how statistically remote it is for us to fear these creatures. Even in terms of livestock loss, the percentage of wolf predation is overwhelmingly miniscule. And yet, the fear of wolves remains at a hysterical level. It’s associative and became practically instinctive over many human generations. It’s become our fearful story of wolves, not the fact of wolves. and only recently, maybe the last sixty, seventy years, since Farley Mowat’s book Never Cry Wolf, has that story been increasingly challenged. But I think that your decision to write Wolfish as you have increases our opportunities to break those stories open and see what other, more useful stories might be lurking inside. One of the many thinkers you quote in the book is Bruno Bettelheim, who wrote The Uses of Enchantment, on the impact of fairy tales on children. Bettelheim believed that the more fairy tales that children were told, the more possibilities they would have to create the stories needed for their own survival. In that way, asking the questions it asks us to ask ourselves, your book has an opportunity to change hearts and minds.

EB: I didn't think of it as polemical. I thought of it as showing my mind, working ideas out on the page and connecting dots. One of the reasons I include other quotes is related to how I did my math homework, which is, I'm going to show my

work a little bit because you might not believe me, but you can see how all of these facts, this history, this thinker, those things, are going to create a constellation. And then you decide where to sum it up. This is not a book of answers. You’re right, it's more a book of questions. But I also think it's a book that shows a web of associations. One of my goals with this book was to show that in the same way that Little Red Riding Hood was bad for the Wolf, it was also bad for the girl.

KM: So with this expansiveness that you've created with the book, are you content with leaving it there? Where do you go next?

EB: Now I have another set of questions because I thought it was about getting rid of certain fears or making them make sense. And now I understand that we learn to live beside them. There are so many things we can't control. So, okay, we're in this world. I can't turn the volume down on the things that scare me, but I'm here. And what does it mean? How do we connect through that? So now I'm interested in writing about love and connection, and thinking about climate change again. Through time and space and history when people feel in crisis, how do we connect? And that is the question that came out of me. Living through the pandemic and understanding what changed and what didn't change socially and culturally got me interested in speculatively imagining a better world, but doing that through a lens that's also looking at history and at the animal world and inevitably my own life. So…

KM: It sounds so simple.

Swan Song

By Jennifer Alula Rose Newtown, PA

As my fears become tears To be cleansed and released

As my heart once was full, Now it sinks to my feet

Nothing’s left, nothing’s gone, Only changed and washed anew

As my soul is laid bareMore steadfast, and rare

As my peace grows in sync With the spread of my wings

When the swans start to swim I think maybe I’ll swim, too

As the wave crashes down Just as fast as it rose

All that’s sacred revealed In the highs and the lows

Watch my heart as she blooms, Through the thorns, Just as roses do

BUILDING THE HEARTH

By Mary Barringer

When they left the old place – were driven from it, really – they left a farmhouse, a studio, a refurbished barn with a commercial kitchen and a beautiful common room, and a couple of living spaces. They took everything they could: office furniture and records; all the bricks and pottery equipment; the beds and dressers; the tractor and chest freezers. All of it went into storage all around the county, while they worked out their next move. And when they bought the land, they envisioned the buildings, the gardens, the pens for the animals and spaces for the artists and writers: the new homes for all that stuff that huddled in storage, waiting to be put to use again. Clearing the land and reclaiming it from the damage the loggers had done took longer than they had expected – two years of delays and setbacks and regulations suddenly and arbitrarily invoked. But now, finally, they had a road curving up through the woods to the clearing. They had an open, level space, a septic field, conduits for the electricity to come up and the water to flow down. They had cabins, perched in their temporary places. And they had a view, across the narrow valley to the peaks, each one named, that rose in the distance. Humans crave a vista: it both enlarges and settles the mind, and the removal of that deep tangle of discarded trees - no longer landscape but defective as lumber – made the long wait and all the struggles seem worthwhile. You might think that, when it was finally time to build into and up from this land, they would begin

Craigardan’s director and 2017/18 artists-inresidence unloading the kiln — a process of discovery and learning. This was Craigardan’s first kiln, an anagama-style wood kiln built by Michael Hunt for Paul Nowicki in 2004. Photo by Ben Stechschulte.

with shelter. But no: the very first structure would be a pavilion – a house for the kiln, followed in very short order by the kiln itself. Before the offices and kitchens, the meeting rooms and work spaces and sleeping quarters, they would make a place for the fire. This would create the conditions for a certain kind of work and a certain kind of commingling. For whether or not they are potters, people will gather there to stack and stoke, talking softly or boisterously, facing each other across and around the kiln. In the heat of the fire and the hours and work of tending it, a community will be warmed and formed: will take shape.

Humans have been gathering around fires for millennia; both the Native people and the

Europeans who settled on this land would have understood the centrality of fire. And although the making of pots, like so many creative practices, is solitary and self-directed, the firing of them requires surrender to a process that can only be partially seen or directed, and in this sense the potter is always collaborating with the kiln. And firing a wood kiln involves many people, and an extra degree of openness to the demands of the kiln and the unpredictability of the results. The kiln is an agent of transformation: what is placed inside it will emerge different, in ways that cannot be predicted or entirely controlled.

What could be a better or more fitting way for Craigardan to begin to inhabit this place?

Firing the wood kiln is a multi-day group effort; requiring patience, skill, hard physical work, and excellent communication. Over the course of 2-3 days the kiln will reach 2350 degrees Fahrenheit using only firewood as fuel. Photo by Ben Stechschulte.

Craigardan’s new kiln is made possible by the generosity of many people. Potters Sam Taylor and Mark Shapiro designed the original kiln in Massachusetts that Craigardan’s new kiln is based on, and they will teach the kiln-building workshop and build the kiln in June on the new campus. Potter and Craigardan co-founder Lanse Stover has spent countless hours preparing for the new build — translating ideas into drawings, counting and ordering materials, organizing equipment, and designing and building the steel structure. Ron Anan, a potter in Massachusetts, is donating thousands of dollars worth of bricks and materials to the kiln and the new studio. Robert Segall, a potter and teacher in Jay, NY bequeathed his studio and two kilns to Craigardan. Steve Amstutz, a timer-frame master in Wilmington, NY donated his time and designs for the new kiln house. And the craftsman Michael Intrabartola brought the designs to reality. It is with heartfelt thanks to these individuals and to our two anonymous donors that the new kiln is possible and Craigardan’s home is taking shape around the hearth.

Above: This year our community lost a wonderful friend. Artist and potter Barbara Kaufman was generous in spirit to all those who knew her. May her memory be a blessing and bring a smile to our faces.

Left: Last fall the clay community lost Robert Segall; artist, potter, teacher, and mentor. This is a look inside Bob’s well-loved, low-fire wood kiln with one of his pots still awaiting re-fire. Bricks from this kiln will live a second life in the new wood kiln at Craigardan.

Craigardan’s new kiln is in memory of Jill Stover, Bob Segall, Barbara Kaufman, and Paul Nowicki.

All are invited to witness the firing of our new wood kiln at Craigardan’s open house: “First Firing”, on Saturday, July 1st. Free and open to the public.

O/UR POETRY

LEAVING ITS MARK

By Duane L. Herrmann Topeka, KS

Network of roads laid upon the prairie, imposed despite creeks and groves of trees, straight lines over rolling prairie rising up and down, rivers interrupt them, but not much else, no mountain heights to deter the lines. Crossing at right angles, the roads are a mark of one civilization obliterating another. What shall, some time, come after?

Tentatively

By Susan Jefts Diamond Point, NY

These thoughts we send in silence, as a fern sends exploratory runners. Cool nights when the woodstove sputters and hums, as winter ends and spring has not yet come. Nothing quite knows what to do—the garden lies brown and tangled, awaiting new earthshine. Sparrows dart back and forth

in the dusky light of not yet daffodils, not yet brightly alive.

“Gutters” by Tyler Barton. Saranac Lake, NY

“Beaver” by Alain Harjaona Rasolomaplandra. Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar

The Missing Poet

By Caperton Tissot Saranac Lake, NY

Marshaled ideas stood like soldiers in tight united ranks

I, of Puritan descent and rigid rules, burst the lines, sneaked away, to live on the other side, scrabbling through yellow years and perilous places

while the artist, long suppressed, twisting inside, gasping for breath, began an upward push, with risky choices, acts of nonsense, kicking the air, walking the edges,

begging to be fed

sewing, painting, pottery and music until this:

playing with poems

to fill my belly

but life’s riddles tear up my sleep, hurl me crashing against walls of reason.

And I remain, on the surface peering down.

A romantic steeped in pragmatic, hemmed in by logic.

Spiraling round and round, seeking the vortex heart yet flung to the edges, never descending to the core of the matter

Tethered to my past, tied down by comfort, unable to stretch, release irrational zeal.

Each rock turned over, each leaf examined, earth’s sweat inhaled while lying in fields of mystery grass

and still, the essence escapes, syntax stiff, image elusive, the sacred hard to catch, while words, like flashing fish streaming through rainbows, float before my eyes in tantalizing array, magnificent but out of reach

Truth, like water, slips through my fingers, I send down buckets, they come up empty, words spill out below the surface.

Two Days in a Row

By Phil Brown Saranac Lake, NY

On a spring day I went up Little John on skis, Skinning amid yellow birch.

Not much of a view, but what’s this?

A leather key fob

With the initials PM.

Pat Munn?

I had only heard of him.

The next day I skied Marcy, A bluebird day,

And saw Ron Kon on the summit

With some of his friends.

You know how to get in touch with Pat Munn?

Hey, Pat!

Pat Munn clomped over in his tele boots.

Did you lose your car keys on Little John Mountain?

Yup, I did.

Well, I found them yesterday.

And that’s how I first met Pat Munn.

i wanna be remembered like the stegosaurus

By Mia Vodanovich Sunnyvale, CA

i’m afraid we’ve made craters of each other’s hearts: if you take your brush and dust so at the little glimmers of ivory you may find what’s left of my bones in the rubble

we never meant to do this to each other, just as the meteor never meant to land where it did, just as the dinosaurs never meant to die

.

do you think we will be the same someday? do you think, a hundred or a thousand or a million years down the line, children will find us in their school books, and point, with their slightly damp little fingers (children have always had slightly damp little fingers, and i choose to believe maybe they always will), to the diagram of our burial sites? do you think they will memorize our names, claim one or the other

as their favorites? if the next i see of you will be across the page, across the museum, across our gravesite,

will you wave at least?

“Goat Love” by Sophia Karen. Oil on canvas board. Upper Jay, NY

Postcard to an Almost Mountain

By Annie Furman Kelowna, BC

Dear Drumlin,

As glaciers retreat, they cast away unwanted weight: stones, soil, sweaters that are too small. Piled up, trailing off. They don’t write to say — I forgot it, that rock with the little white flecks, mail it to me? It meant something, I forgot it.

I have left footsteps on your stones and songs in your leaves. I have tried to leave nothing more than that, but I am afraid I have gone like a glacier. I have left a rock, small but heavy, tinged with red. Keep it a while?

I remain, fondly and forever, Yours.

Dark Moon

By Alshaad Kara

Beau Bassin, Mauritius

You can hear echoes from the soil... They are the souls coming from the source of nature.

Vibrantly crumbling down the roots on their way, They water each drought to a tornado of tsunamis...

Even the sky lifts the sun, Sending thunderous lightnings to illuminate the night, Pledging that the earthquakes shall accompany it.

Others creatures witness the ashes of repentance.

The moon, eyes of all, Promises that the earth will be no haven until, It becomes the next heaven...

“But The Light Was Light Installed” by Tyler Barton. Saranac Lake, NY

Stone Fruit

By Marilyn McCabe Keene/Saratoga Springs, NY

I pace the aged orchard, fruit downed, flesh fallen away. And I begin to crave the stone. Place one in my mouth the size of a cherry. Grit settles among my molars, my tongue rolls

the stone slick. I press its facets against the roof of my mouth. Taste of gray.

Of mold, mushroom, of iron, which is like blood. I come to know the tang of granite from the sour taste of schist, suck the garnet's berry. I try one plum-size, smooth, river-worn.

A jagged sparkling one. Do not bite down.

I cannot bite down. Swallowing becomes more difficult. One the size of a peach I press into my mouth's stretched o,

my tongue trapped, spit gathers to drool. From my womb I push a stone baby, tiny

feldspar fists, agate eyes. I watch her take a pebble, press it to her lips.

The Path Not Taken*

By Charles Watts Lake Placid, NY

Two paths diverged in a greenish wood,

Though I admit one had more yellow Sun bursting through the trees, and could

Lead up a hill where the mountain stood

And the other into the valley, moist and mellow

Darwin the beagle chose the valley

Perhaps because of squirrel smell

Or hares that in the meadow sally Though both on this mountain tally Equal, in truth, when the scents begin to swell

But one pair of footprints showed on each

And both had beckoned in prior days Both were rife with truths to teach All well within my meager reach Despite the morning’s graying haze

I shall be telling this with glee

When my teeth and hair are far less dense:

Two paths diverged in a greenish wood, and we---

We took the one the dog showed me “And that has made all the difference.”

*With apologies to Master Frost

Attic Office

By Alyssa Carroll Westport, NY

It seemed whimsical once. Thank God I had the good sense to put in a large window. My view from the top of the house looks out over Lake Champlain. Most days the lake is wind-tossed, but in today’s sunset the water is as still as glass. I’m three stories away from my husband. He laughs. The sound tries to muscle up through the floorboards only to fade.

Lone sailboat adriftmy inbox says two hundred emails yet

“Cow” by Sergey Dobry. Glass and oil paint. Lugansk, Ukraine .

Bubble for Two

By Colter Mancini Jay, NY

Identity by clarity, with sincerity

A haze of reality, encompassing two Lost and found in the other’s charity

On this fantasy island, me and you

A bubble of brilliance, resilience, an ozone of perpetual presence

Two butterflies metamorphically magnetic

Two frequencies, one resonance

Halves by two, for a whole as if genetic

Lost in the sauce, not outta the loop, it’s inside, at That moment of the infinitesimal and eternal

An orbit of two, never flat Seconds, minutes, hours the time! Merely words in a journal

Why does it end?

This instant in time

IT is my best friend

Ever flowing, moving in motion, stillness, life, alive from a potion

The sweet comforts of this cocoon

We as one, authentic in fun, a true devotion Caricatures made of stardust, galactic cartoon

Warmth of the landscape; the real reality escaped Floating, flying Shielded around, cloaked from the clutter, a cloak, mithril, a blanket draped A fiction, truly lying!

A place of pleasure, pleasing, shared and devoid of pain

No one can enter, no one shall pass Gone with you, Durin’s Bane! The world outside inferior, through our looking glass

How CAN it end?

A haven, our heaven

YOU’re my best friend

Energies intertwining, lavishly interacting Containment; a new clear fusion

My thoughts to your thoughts, melding and reacting For Spock a confusion, for us the greatest illusion

This place, this time, this spacetime Where art thou?! Here and now, oh so sublime Please join me, us, you needn’t know how

This moment fresh, freshly poured and sparkling A Claymation, suspended animation

Frozen climax, peak height in this momentary fling Or can it be forever, an everlasting creation?

A Warmness on the Soul, sevenfold

Come with me, us, to our happy place

It’ll never get old Not a worry, fret or want; all gone without a trace

Everything ends

A start and finish, but when? A memory, when we were best friends…

I

DO NOT HAVE A FAVORITE CHAIR

By Sarah Teresa Cook The Dalles, OR

Because I don’t let myself buy chairs and I don’t let myself choose favorites and I don’t let myself sit down and I haven’t learned what to do with these uneven feelings so I just hold them up like long funny trees

DIVIDE AND CHOOSE OR DIVIDE AND CONQUER?

By Jaclyn Hall Akwesasne, NY

Craigardan and surrounding Adirondack Mountains, photo by Jeff Mertz

Some of the elements of this ancient technique are:

• creating or encouraging divisions among the subjects to prevent alliances that could challenge the sovereign, and distributing forces that overpower the other

• aiding and promoting those who are willing to cooperate with the sovereign

• fostering distrust and enmity between local rulers

• encouraging meaningless expenditures that reduce the capability for political and military spending

Coming from an Onkwehonwe perspective with ancestral ties to the traditional territory of the Kanienkehaka, who continue to uphold the responsibility of adhering to our original instructions and way of life, known as the Kaianerekowa*; it is plain and clear that the colonial tactic of divide and conquer continues to be inflicted upon our people to this very day.

One very specific example would be the ongoing negotiations between the State of New York, the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribal Council (BIA-America), the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne (Indian ActCanada) and the Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs regarding certain land claims of our traditional territory. Although it may look as though we are being presented with a choice, which looks and sounds like some sort of justice or reconciliation, in reality it is an ancient practice known as “divide and choose” or “cake cutting,” which is truly a divisive tactic at its core. The reality is that we are not being offered our land back, but financial compensation instead.

The fact of the matter is that the State of New York is in negotiations with Akwesasronon (People of the land where the partridge drums), not three separate peoples. The Saint Regis Mohawk Tribal Council is an administrative branch of the U.S government, which is the same de facto government that strategically implemented the Doctrine of Discovery into U.S law specifically to deal with our people by way of the Marshall Trilogy (three U.S. Supreme Court cases that led to the U.S asserting “jurisdiction” over our people and our lands by assuming that all Onkwehonwe nations are no longer capable of selfdetermination; instead we are seen as “Domestic Dependent Nations.”) One could ask themselves: how did we become a domestic dependent nation? And, what defines a domestic dependent nation? To date the foreign government does not have a clear answer.

One of the principles of divide and conquer — creating or encouraging divisions among the subjects to prevent alliances that could challenge the sovereign, and distributing forces that overpower the other — happens to be one of the most prevalent practices implemented when it comes to the Rotinoshoni, and speci fi cally Akwesasronon, whose lands are not only divided by the imaginary colonial lines known as the international border, but by state and provincial borders as well. These lines seem to have been created as a means for economic trade and commerce, making it easy for the underlying issue — of foreign entities asserting their jurisdiction over people of another nation who are situated on their traditional territory — to go unnoticed.

To take a more in-depth look at what exactly was intended when colonists decided to draw a line through our unceded territory, one would have to fully immerse themselves inside the borders of our modern-day concentration camp known as Akwesasne.

One way that colonists were successful in creating such divisions was by fi rst imposing the competitive mindset onto our people, instead of adhering to consensus through our ancient practices, such as bringing our minds together as

“When you begin to understand the concept of ‘Divide and Conquer’ and its origins, you begin to see its implications in plain sight.”

one by beginning every ceremony and council meeting with the Ohenton Kariwatekwen (Words that come before all else — giving thanks to the natural world). We have degenerated into a society where people compete with one another for their own personal interests, under the guise of band council elections and referendums where the majority of “eligible” voters rules, completely disregarding the input and minds of the ones who are not “eligible” in the eyes of foreign governments and their indoctrinating policies. So, another question is: what makes a person of Akwesasne an eligible voter? Who decides who has a say in our internal relations and negotiations? On the surface of things, it may seem as though we are given the space to make our own decisions within the confines of our “reservations,” but when you really begin to break it down, you come to realize that it is all a façade, appearing as though we are truly a democratic people. But what is democracy in colonial terms and how does it differentiate from our ancient practices and principles, known as the Kaianerekowa (the great law of peace), which the colonists of the new world drew inspiration from when creating their constitutions?

A true democracy does not exist within the structures of foreign colonial polices. It is much more appropriate to refer to Canadian and American governments and their administrative bodies (i.e. elected tribal councils and band councils) as a “representative democracy” intrusively overseeing all tribal councils and their internal relations – where the people vote for representatives, who then enact policy initiatives. Whereas, in a true “direct democracy,” the people decide on policies without any intermediary or representative; there is no superior oversight, but equality and consensus.

Now to circle back to how this competitive mindset contributes to the divide and conquer tactic: When one sees others in the sense of “you and I” or “us and them” it does not leave room for the understanding of the collective interest as a whole, which is the ideological thought process at the core of the Kaianerekowa (the great law of peace).

When it comes to Akwesasne, colonial lines have been drawn and competitive mindsets have been instilled and continue to be reinforced by the ongoing genocide in fl icted on our peoples, through the assimilative processes of the residential school system and the modern-day education system. The number of Kanienkehaka people who participate in the elective band council systems seems to have increased since its implementation, due in part to another tactic mentioned earlier: aiding and promoting those who are willing to cooperate with the sovereign . When monetary incentives are offered to a people who have had their selfdetermination and selfsustainability violently stripped away, it is no surprise that they are more than eager to fulfill the expectations of foreign entities in order to receive the “benefits and privileges” being offered.

I have not even begun to touch on the last two principles, because there is such a vast amount of experience and knowledge that comes along with it. For now, I will focus on the tactics that are clearly being utilized in present-day Akwesasne, in regards to the ongoing negotiations with the State of New York and certain foreign entities being enabled by the participation of an assimilated peoples.

I feel it is necessary to point out that not all Akwesasronon have completely assimilated into modern-day society. The Kaianerekowa people of the Longhouse are still very present within the confines of Akwesasne, although it may not be as

“Despite all the genocidal attempts to completely wipe out our people and our culture in order to occupy our lands and extract our resources, we are still here.”

apparent to an outsider perspective. We are still speaking our language and conducting our ancient ceremonies, practices, and diplomatic relations with other nations. Despite all the genocidal attempts to completely wipe out our people and our culture in order to occupy our lands and extract our resources, we are still here.

There are those among us who continue to assert our power as the natural human beings of this land we call Anowareke (Turtle Island). We continue to defend our lands and waters, in order to preserve what little we have left for the next seven generations. When we speak of the next seven generations, we are not only speaking of our kin, we are speaking of all humanity who reside on our mother, the earth.

One of the main things we are taught as young children, immersed in the teachings of the Kaianerekowa, is that the natural world is not to be bought or controlled. Instead, we are taught to be caretakers of the earth. I truly believe that the principles of the Kaianerekowa have the power to bring humanity back together, and allow us to reconnect with the lands that were intentionally and competently tended to by our ancestors — who had us in their minds and hearts — as we are the seventh generation.

*For those who are unaware of the Kaianerekowa, it is an ancient practice of consensus with peace, power, and righteousness firmly instilled in our minds and hearts; these principles are the very foundation of how we conduct ourselves as a natural people, and there are those of us who will continue to do so, even in the face of adversity.

“Kunene” by Tereza Nesnídalová. Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic Pigment on dyed canvas

Three Fifths a Person if Not Free

By James B. Kobak Jr. Keene Valley, NY / Jersey City, NJ

Three fifths a woman, three fifths a man

From the beginning it’s always been the plan

First the Southern, then the other, white folk

prosper

On the backs of voteless blacks.

Talk of racial equity, if you prefer, But sixty per cent

Is all it’s ever meant

Sixty per cent:

About as far as equal treatment ever went.

Three fifths the wealth,

Three fifths the health,

Three fifths a Person if not free

You can find it in our founding document:

It’s all right there; caste system written in:

Article One, Section Two—

Our nation’s will, its testament.

They will have three dollars, you’ll have five And odds the same to escape catastrophe alive

Three fifths the quality of home

Three fifths the chance a jail won’t be that home

Oh, yes, we fought a civil war

And yes, some did and do repent

But never all and never to the full extent.

Article One, Section Two

Embedded in our psyches from the start

A false duality that then took root

In speech and customs keeping us apart.

From subjugated others, wealth, a major nation state,

It’s time at last the country must atone

For the commerce made

By those thought fit to be by others owned.

Article One, Section Two:

Abandoned but undead, it pervades

Our thinking still; around us all its tainted residue,

Day after day it festers and accrues

A mortgage on our souls that’s yet to be repaid

Complacent or complicit, many are afraid To confront the reckoning that must ensue. But sin rots all until is atoned

And bitter are its fruits until disowned.

Unpaid toil, no right to own the land—

Three fifths a Person, if not free

The shameful legacy

Three fifths of what America should be.

“Industrial” by Conor Broderick. Watercolor.

Art and poetry collaboration with Conor Broderick and Raimondas Valasevičius.

CLIMBING THE MOUNTAIN

By Himanee Gupta Saratoga Springs, NY

I begin climbing Bear Den Mountain in a drizzling rain, telling myself it is only rain and that this time I am better prepared. I had been in the High Peaks region of the Adirondack State Park for two weeks as part of a three-week writing residency at Craigardan, a creative collective breaking new ground in rocky soil. During my time here, I had decided to get my hiking legs back into shape in hopes of perhaps beginning to climb the famed 46 High Peaks.

Volunteers at a roadside 46er Club stand encourage me. They introduce me to the “Lake Placid 9,” a set of nine lower elevation peaks that are beautiful and fun. They do not know me. When I tell them I am a farmer and have done marathons and have hiked before, they tell me I’ll be a 46er in no time.

I decide to try. Baxter is first. I get soaked on the way up, but the sun breaks out at the summit. A good sign, until the rain pours again on the way down. It’s drier when I do Big Crow, and sunny when I swing myself up the boulders at Cobble Hill.

Now I am at Bear Den. It is like the other mountains but harder. Many memories come back to me as I climb:

- The bear on the Hoh River trail in the Olympic National Park.

- My ex-husband mocking me for not climbing, running, biking, cooking, cleaning, harvesting, setting up, taking down, driving fast enough.

- All the messages I’ve received in my life of what I can’t do.

I am on the trail alone in the rain, thinking that if I had started sooner, not had a slow wake-up time with coffee and morning pages, a farmers market jaunt where I had to stop by a dozen booths and

chat with a whole bunch of farmers, and a shopping spree for warmer clothes, I would have been doing the hike in the sun, in the company of others. The water is soaking my hands and my jeans, the hoodie of the new sweatshirt I bought that I did need for the colder-turning temperatures here, but not for this hike. My glasses keep fogging. Every time I take a sip of water, I need to pee.

I remember Snowy, heroine of a series of novels set in rugged New Hampshire. She is climbing up to the Fire Tower to fight agoraphobia and to find Tom. As she climbs, she is just shy of age fifty. She is letting go the grief and shock over the suicide of her husband of twenty-one years. The climb leads her out of the world of fear and into the wilderness of strength. She is hiking toward the lover from high school she never forgot.

Her stamina is like mine. So are her legs: little legs – baby legs, Bambi legs – that the big people of the world don’t seem to know how to handle. The big people try to help me in ways I do not need help – often lifting me over boulders in ways that wrench at my armpits and hurt. They sometimes ignore me. They often belittle me. Very often they do not see me at all. That’s almost the response I like best. It’s not that I do not appreciate help. I just wish people would let me ask for help – and let me tell them what it is that I need.

This desire echoes a sentiment from Gloria Anzaldua’s essay, “La Consciencia de la Mestiza,” that I find particularly compelling. Do not try to help the colonized, Anzaldua says to the descendants of colonizers. Instead, take stock of your ancestors’ wrong-doings and then ask the colonized: What is it that you need from us to help you heal?

On Bear Den Mountain alone, I seek a sense of direction. The colored markers affixed to trees are sometimes quite clearly spaced; at other times they are nowhere in sight and I am not sure if I have stayed on the path or meandered off. On the Hoh River Trail in the Olympic National Forest in 2000, I somehow meandered off. That was how I managed to land in the clearing face-to-face with an almost magical-looking black bear. A thousand cues for how to confront a bear flashed through my brain as I stared dumbly right at it: be aggressive, fight, shout, throw rocks, and then I thought: bear bell.

My friend Kat had hinted at picking one up on my way to the trail, a night or two earlier in Honolulu, where we both were living. We were sitting together at our favorite hangout, the Hau Tree Lanai at the New Otoni Kaimana Beach Hotel. A few days later at an outdoor gear shop in Port Angeles, I saw one for sale. I tossed it into my cart. I tied it to the top of my backpack. It tinkled throughout the hike, annoying me.

The tinkle was supposed to repel bears. Clearly that did not work because I was now face-to-face with a gorgeous one who could swipe me down with one brush of a powerful paw. But bears do not like shrill sounds. I reached up and rang the bear bell hard. The bear got up, took another look at me, and ambled off. In a fast hot surge of adrenalin, all of my negative self-talk wore off.

Now, here at Bear Den, I am seeing that as I ask Nature to guide me, Nature obliges. I get lost and then spot a marker. The marker either reassures me that I am on track or shows me how to get back on track. I stop, sip, pee, and make my way upwards.

My confidence wavers as the going gets rougher. I remember my ex-husband and his bestie – a female friend and 46er and her dog. We are hiking a trail around Moreau Lake near my home outside Saratoga. It is an easy hike, supposedly. But when I hike it with them it is not easy at all. I cannot climb fast or match my pace with the dog’s need to pee. I am frustrated that I cannot get the workout I want. My performance confirms to me

what they had told me – that I could not be a 46er without a great deal of training and effort, that even if I had hiked in the Cascades, the Olympics, the Canadian Rockies, and the Himalayas, the Adirondacks were not meant for weenie-teenies like me.

I let the negativity settle over me like the mist filling the skies. I catch myself. “What is this selftalk all about? Isn’t it just making the path harder?” I force myself to laugh and take some deep breaths. I keep going.

And then I am at the summit. The darkness of the trees and the mud break open. It is so beautiful that I nearly start to cry. Not because I’d made it but because of what I see.

What I see. Nothing. Nature had obscured the stunning scenery I was supposed to see with fog. Through the mist are outlines of mountains and ridgelines. I must go inside and use my imagination to paint in the rest. It is one of the most beautiful sights I have ever witnessed.

I think of how many people might have opted out of the hike, thinking that without a good view and a photo-op, why make the hike?

Why not make the hike?

Not for the view but for the silent communion and the opportunity to see from the inside.

I will remember the vivid greens and browns of the forest, the bright yellow markers on trees that guided me up and back down and how much I realized I was relying on them when they disappeared, the grays of the water-soaked boulders. I will remember the mud and the moss, the fears and the tears, and the joys and the tears.

Bear Den was for me a farmers’ hike, something that can – maybe must – happen rain or shine. Going up in the rain is like farming’s 24/7 confrontation with the power and challenges of Nature. It is the most cleansing experience possible.

Himanee was a 2022 writer-in-residence at Craigardan.