Issue 3

issue 3 | 2014

prose • poetry • photography • art

Editors: Jack Beuttell & Margaret Perry Associate Editors: Gabriela Anhalzer, Sarah Gillig Sunu, Genna Gomes, Maria Klushina, Neil Matouka, Ruxandra Popovici, Shannon Switzer Swanson Layout & Design: Colin Hoogerwerf Faculty Advisor: Rebecca Vidra The printing of eno is generously supported by the Nicholas School of the Environment, the Nicholas School Office of External Affairs, and the Duke Sustainability Office.

Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment Durham, NC sites.nicholas.duke.edu/eno enosubmissions@gmail.com Printed by Barefoot Press Raleigh, NC www.barefootpress.com Printed on recycled paper with soy ink Cover Photo by Evgenia Arbugaeva Back Cover Photo by Wout Salenbien What is eno? eno gets its name from the Eno River in North Durham and from the Eno people, natives who occupied the land prior to European settlement. The name reflects our connection to the places we live, work, and play, and more broadly, to the Earth. To that end, we acknowledge the important work of the Eno River Association in preserving the natural and cultural legacies of the Eno River Basin and the thousands of organizations around the world that do similar work.

Our Mission: To encourage, promote, and publish artistic forms of expression that inspire a deeper understanding of and creative engagement with the environment.

This publication is available in electronic format at the website above. However, we believe print is a powerful and evocative medium, and so have chosen to print a limited number of this issue. When you’ve finished reading, please share this magazine with a friend.

from the editors: Albatross are the largest sea birds on the planet. They mate for life, and have very elaborate courtship rituals. To the human eye, these ritual movements appear as a frenzied explosion of clacking bills, bobbing heads and wings lifted sporadically to the sky. But birds process visual information much more quickly than we do.

During his residency at Duke last Spring, documentary film-maker and photographer Chris Jordan showed videos of Albatross courtship from Midway Island in the central Pacific Ocean, slowed down to match the way the birds perceive it. Seen at this speed, the erratic motions become a dance: two great birds gently touching their bills together, bowing to each other, and lifting their heads in unison.

As with the Albatross, we humans court a lifelong companion in the Earth. Our movements mirror the motions of all life. Our feet touch the body of the Earth again and again. In the great collective flapping and clacking of our dance, we need art to slow us down. We need words and images to remind us of the delicate and powerful moments that connect us with the planet.

In these pages, you will find a collection of artistic work that invites us to approach our unfolding relationship to nature with renewed attention. We hope that you emerge from Issue 3 of eno magazine with a deepened sense of wonder at the Earth -- not as inanimate object, but as partner in the endless dance.

- Jack Beuttell & Margaret Perry

Photo by Jennifer Simonton

Photo by Cindy Pi

Table of Contents Essays and Short Stories Rainbow Canyon

10 Rob Burton 18

San Antonio Creek Belton Copp

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Tidak Hutan, Tidak Hujan, an Excerpt Zachary Brecheisen

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To Be Forgotten with the Trees Colin Hoogerwerf

Poetry

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A Moth Devoured colin hoogerwerf Two Ways of Seeing

04 Yemi Adewuyi

Poems & Artwork

06 Sean Sexton

For Those Who Know The Way

09 colin hoogerwerf

Eno Quarry November

09 Cindy Sherwood 20

Four Poems Richard Taylor

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Bare Bones Claire Fox A Poem Between the Two Shores

25 Trevor Thompson Visual Art

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Dispatch Photos from Afar

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Photo Spotlight Perspectives on Wildlife

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Art Feed Photography, Drawing, & Mixed Media

poetry

a moth devoured Colin Hoogerwerf Years ago I watched as a spider devoured a moth in its web

The moth, a small white thing, I’m sure was guided into the web by my headlamp. When it stuck it panicked and the spider moved like liquid and latched on patient while the moth went completely berserk. All the white moth powder came off like smoke wafting through my light beam When it went quiet the spider began to spin and spin and all the while the orange glowing moth eyes stayed lit until that was all that was discernible

two ways of seeing

two orange beads still staring out at the light.

Yemi Adewuyi as a child, I spent a significant portion of my summers lying down on warm grass, staring at the clouds.

I watched, mesmerized, as wisps of white smoke danced across empty blue space. and since I couldn’t give a good explanation for their immunity to gravity, they were subject to the whims of my juvenile imagination. snowshoe hares capered past each other, and ghostly galleons sailed through the sky.

I suspected that these airborne bolls of cotton harbored some secret (privy only to God and nature) whispered amongst the winds that carried them along. (but it seems that only children have a tendency to assign magical qualities to the things they cannot explain. far too much of that magic evaporates with age.) as my mind grew older, it became harder to see the shapes that had once graced the canvas of my imagination. science slowly filled the spaces that creativity had once inhabited. when I glanced towards the sky, I would see Cirrostratus— that meant it was probably about to rain.

I saw masses of water crystals and nothing more. there was no guesswork to be done, no room for speculation, no reason to envision these clouds in a manner inconsistent with fact. and when I realized the magic had been lost, I spent years trying to find it once more. but despite my best efforts, I couldn’t.

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Photos from afar

Dispatch

« A view of the Chilean altiplano, photo by Amanda Onate-Trules (top) • Northern Lights seen from the arctic in Norway, photo by Wout Salenbien (middle) • The meadow at El Capitan, Yosemite National Park, photo by David Millar (bottom)

out of season calves Appear one day, indicating things gone wrong in the irretrievable past.

How they flesh out neglect, holes in fences, unperceived shortcomings in one’s plans.

Yet there they are— robust, sprightly creatures shimmering in the morning like new leaves; dear to whom they’ve come as breath itself, misbegotten signs of what, we pray, shall ever keep in this world.

mud Digging out the squeeze chute for tomorrow’s workday I face, mass— hoof-pocked and raised, inert, mud left a month ago or more, keeping the catch, holding the door with its frozen embrace.

Time that breaks in shovelfuls I chop, topple and scrape away chewing its foundation and hull, in chunks, prying seams apart working emptiness up the chute with blade by jamming blade.

This was what the cattle slogged through heft and overburden of the land, carried to this cell of reproof grabbing them leg by ambling leg to mold and cast their passing haste, as we gained and held the upper hand.

There’s a story of the cocksure dairyman who formed and poured his parlor, stoop, and alleys with concrete, swearing then, “I’m finished with mud for good!”

Three days, four rains, nine milkings logged and where the cows come, gather and wait— near the landing, out beyond the gate stands a small, unmistakable, bog.

Swallowing rain and spewing dust, endured like bad government, guests unwanted, the mud belongs to us.

Joining high ground, borrowing low, always or never where supposed, the mud belongs to us.

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Spring Morning, Oil on Canvas, 32’ x 60’ 2001

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Sean Sexton is the owner of Treasure Hammock Ranch near Vero Beach, FL. As a fourth-generation rancher, he manages a herd of several hundred commercial cattle on approximately 600 acres of pasture, wetland, and hardwoods, now protected by conservation easement. As a writer and visual artist, Sexton carries a journal with him throughout his daily work to capture moments of inspiration, which reflect the difficult and beautiful realities of the ranching lifestyle.

early hour The light this hour— so little of it holds the sky, enters our room, enough for love’s secret toil and aftermath, things small as this light, overwhelmed by a world it awakens. See the moon’s nimble crescent gleaming over the palms; frog on each trunk climbing through saffron glow to bed.

A single bird voices the last dim clarity before rising mists untenure our dreams.

Twins, ceramic (glazed raku’ fired clay) 12” x 6” x 1/2”, 2010

poetry

for those who know the way Colin Hoogerwerf Step softly for the ferns you tread are complicated beasts although their dainty leaves may have you thinking otherwise.

Love they may not know or maybe it strolls by hand in tight-clasped hand and they wonder how on earth we mix up such a simple thing as love.

Look gently, wonder lurks behind the brush you push aside skittish as Luna moths who show themselves to only wandering children, the girl who lost her only friend, the man who could not find his home.

You’ll find it when it finds you unstriving and lost.

Take care this is no place for those who know the way

eno quarry november Cindy Sherwood Indulging in luxurious contentment golden radiance reflecting back and forth in November quarry tranquility.

Restoring and refreshing my soul.

Water, earth, sun, November sky, eyes open breathing in its bounty.

Alone, my 4 year old granddaughter stands watching the beauty in silence as I sit on the wooden dock.

She too is filling her young soul with mesmerizing serenity.

Unwittingly immersed in its awe and grandeur, her spontaneous little arms hug my neck as she kisses my forehead, and time stands still.

Gleaning gratitude our satisfied souls are now full with nature’s magnificent comfort.

The early setting sun ushers us homeward bound to stroll once more through the woods, crunching crisp leaves we slip through trees and flickering golden light.

Hand in hand radiant with priceless treasures we journey Eno’s path home.

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“Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear-the earth remains, slightly modified.

The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break….I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real.”

-Edward Abbey

Rainbow Canyon

Photo by Jake Reeder

Rob Burton

T

he yellow lines and asphalt roll away through the west desert in front of us.

We call it the west desert. It is a relative term. It lies west from us. Perhaps the desert considers us people from the East. Perhaps the desert does not consider us at all. Perhaps the desert is sleeping and we are spiders and insects that crawl on its skin during its slumber. When it wakes we will be gone. Perhaps.

Keri removes her feet from the dash so she can look out the windshield as we drive into the climbing area. The brownish-pink basalt cliff soars more than one hundred feet tall well overhead.

Straight up. Right off the road. Our conditioned eyes spot the routes quickly. The shiny metal hardware reflects the sunlight in a way the rock never would, and sits too close to the beautiful straight-in cracks to be for anything other than climbing. The approach hike requires only falling out of the front seat and into the belay. Like I said, it is right off the road.

Honestly, I’m not impressed. We drove over five hours, burned

more fuel than a dozen sub-Saharan Africans will in a year, all to climb on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. It shouldn’t be difficult to find a place where you can climb and camp for weeks without seeing another soul in this zone. This weekend, however, the desert gives us climbing on the side of a road in a canyon shared with train tracks.

I don’t say anything. Life is what you make of it. These experiences are as much about who joins you for the journey as they are about what you see along the way. My companions are good people. Besides, there is nobody else here. We only passed one other vehicle on our way. Maybe two. In any case not enough to be memorable. We should encounter at least a little solitude.

Soon enough the canyon loses its verticality and the basalt, too, is out of sight. “Do you think we could have missed them?” Keri asks.

“Well, there was nowhere to hide between the rock and river.

There might be more basalt farther up the road. Let’s check it out and see if we see them along the way.”

Light infuses into the cottonwood trees as the sun scales over the eastern mountains. The trees glow in response. We timed it perfectly. Catching them in the fall is a favorite part of the desert, when green turns to gold. My soul feels the desert’s steady rhythm. I forget that we will be climbing by the road. The trees remind me of many other fall desert adventures. Distinct moments emblazoned on my mind.

Through the golden masses we spot Kurt’s truck on a side road paralleling the main road. After a quarter mile, our road turns to dirt and swings back the way we had come. Crossing the stream in Meadow Valley Wash, we drive into their campsite, nestled into a grove of cottonwoods along the stream. We park, get out of the car, and embrace in greeting.

“Let’s go climbing,” Kurt wastes no time.

••• Ah, the first, sacred touch of the rock! It marks the beginning of an intimate relationship. I feel coolness on my skin. Individual crystals press into my fingers. The rock communicates its strength to me. Strong, solid. The tactile sensations tell me that it can support my weight and lift my soul, whispering confidence gently to me. This rock wants to teach me a unique dance. I am a willing student.

The initial moves demonstrate that this bit of stone won’t reveal its secrets easily. I must coax them out. Movement, the voyage of discovery, responding to its demands. My body tenses, muscles flexed and straining, then a moment to relax and recover.

A hand here. My leg and body to one side for balance. I pull myself toward the sky.

••• This desert last displayed a waking state thirteen million years ago. The Miocene epoch, when volcanoes and calderas shook the ground that now bears us. They spewed ash enough to bury the landscape with hundreds of feet of what is now volcanic tuff.

Occasionally, in fits of magmatic indigestion, lava poured out of the earth and over the tuff, like syrup over a pancake. The process repeats again with the ash falling and burying the cooling lava formed slowly into basalt. Thin, grey, horizontal lines of short, sharp verticality in an otherwise sloping and irregular world.

I want to believe that the basalt has consciousness, and that its existence consists of a patchwork of memorable moments just like my existence. Would it remember belching ash and lava or coming out of the sea? How nice to think that maybe I share with the rock what I feel when I’m climbing. It, in turn, imprints me and my short instant onto its memory.

My vanity makes me feel this way. It adds meaning to my life.

••• A blue truck comes down the road. The driver sees us and stops, intrigued by the ropes hanging from the rock. The most recent human visitor to this desert. He exits his truck and says hello. He’s from California, and comes here to watch the trains.

The drive takes him about six hours one way. I keep a straight face as I offer him the opportunity to climb. He chuckles. He wishes us a good day and moves on.

Humans are transient, here for a while and then gone again.

Thirty-five hundred years before our friend came to see trains or we to climb on rocks, the earliest visitors came for the water, sustainer of life. In this place, life maintains a precarious existence, one not possible without water. Eventually, they moved on. Most of the other Native Americans who followed moved on as well, besides a few relict members clinging to existence in the nearby small town of Caliente, Nevada.

••• The ground vibrates. A patient rumbling that comes up through the soles of my feet. The feeling persists for a minute. A train.

Then higher pitch, mechanical sounds join the bass tones of thousands of tons of steel and cargo. The wash is narrow and

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the railroad tracks less than a hundred feet away. The curves in the canyon limit our field of vision. The train won’t appear until it’s fairly close. There’s no doubt, though, that it’s coming.

Talking becomes futile as the train comes into view. When it does pass us, the train is close enough that we can see the engineer. He blows his horn and waves. Kurt lights up like a little kid and waves back. I like Kurt. He’s stoked about the train’s horn.

Tanker after black tanker of petroleum blow by at speed without a thought. After a few minutes the train disappears and its sounds diminish. Peace returns to the valley.

“I bet our train friend loved that,” Elise states.

“Some of that oil might fuel our next climbing trip,” Keri remarks satirically. “Or our train friend’s next six-hour drive to watch more trains.”

Millions of years of geology at our fingertips.

••• Grinning his usual grin, Kurt asks me for a belay. We stand at the base of a long corner that disappears into the basalt above.

Kurt moves easily up the crack. He places gear like I wish I dared to place gear. Climbing, then placing casually, Kurt pulls himself lithely from one stance to the next. Kurt dances.

He continues until I see the black marker on the rope that indicates the half-way point. I yell up to him that he has twenty feet of rope remaining. I’m estimating. He yells down to me his thanks, that he heard me, and that he will look for the anchors. He continues upward. I yell again when he reaches halfway with the rope. He stops climbing. Since he can’t find the anchors, we decide on a back-up plan. He goes higher. I shake my head.

“RRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOCK!” I look up. Not to verify that he actually dislodged a rock, but to determine three things: how big is the rock, where is the rock going, and how much time do I have before impact. In order. It looks like a basketball. Next. If I don’t move it might land on me.

The beam of hope is that Kurt knocked it off from 150 feet above. I have some time to react.

Okay...let’s see. First, be sure the girls are getting out of the way. Okay. Check. They are, with dinner plate eyes. Next, the dog. She’s far enough away and oblivious. She’ll only be hurt if I make a scene and cause her to run to me. Keep calm for the dog’s sake. Calm. Check. Now it’s time for me to move. I need to feed out some slack in the rope so I don’t jerk Kurt off of the rock when I jump out of the way. Feed slack in rope. Check.

Alright, now look at your escape route. There’s a pack and some gear in the way. Be nimble. Tripping here could mean that basketball rock lands on you. Nimble. Check. And remember to keep moving. Check.

WHAM!!!

The rock slams into the ground and obliterates my footprints.

The desert erased a sign of my passage.

••• I hike around the cliff to reach Kurt from above. I take a rope to lower him back down the route to retrieve his gear. Up a steep gully I scramble. It feels sensational to move through this world of giant boulders stacked on each other, cactus, rubber rabbit brush, some other prickly things to be avoided.

Reaching him, I anchor myself into the rocks above Kurt’s corner system. We settle on a plan, and I lower him down the cliff face so he can retrieve his gear.

On the street below I see Keri and Elise dancing. Real dancing with choreographed movement from something they once learned together. Arms and legs and bodies flowing like the water, dancers celebrating this moment.

Street dancers, glowing cottonwoods, millions of years of geology at my fingertips, and one of my dearest friends dangling above the ground on the end of a skinny rope. I feel content in this moment.

••• Our time here is a flash of nothingness. Snap. Even the snap is too long. Our time. The time that my friends and I will be here. Not “our time” meaning for the remaining natives in Caliente or the Anasazi presence that marked the beginning of human habitation of this place. Though, really, the difference is negligible. Like rounding to the nearest millionth. A millionth of a snap. To me it feels like much longer, my presence here. I get three daytimes to do nothing but be in the arid air climbing up and down one of these basaltic cliffs and doing other things that are blissful. Lots of time. It’s relative and my frame of reference is limited. To me it will be sixty hours. But what is sixty hours to a desert that came out of the oceans over 300 million years ago? Snap. Scale the desert’s land-life to my thirty-six years. I figure my crew will be here for 0.2 seconds. There’s the flash again.

Using the same scale, the human presence here is about four hours. Longer than I would have thought without doing the math. I remember being stuck on the tarmac for four hours once while airport crews tried to de-ice the plane in a blizzard.

Unfortunately inconvenient, and was over soon enough. I haven’t given it much thought since then.

••• We sit by the creek at camp below some of the Cottonwoods growing throughout the wash. The sun performs its vespers while we watch from the cobbles on the bank. Water gurgles down Meadow Valley Wash, slowly eroding the tuff and the basalt, pushing it into the Colorado River and finally into the Gulf of California. Patiently over time, water carved the canyon that makes us voyeurs of the desert’s personal history. Since the advent of humans some millions of years ago in Africa, this desert has maintained the rate of change at a pace more restful than its explosive past. Formerly inhospitable, the subdued

terrain now allows life in the wash to flourish and mature to beauty.

The sun no longer shines in our eyes, but still lights the leaves in the cottonwoods that grow over our heads. Dazzling. Like they are on fire but not burning. Each leaf absorbs and radiates the effulgent rays of the setting sun. The light breeze pulses through the branches of flames. It moves in palpably close around us.

This light will soon be gone. Those leaves will fall soon. The cottonwood grows quickly, carelessly, and dies younger than more judicious trees of the same size. Yet, in the span of its existence it produces glorious moments like this, before it dies.

I find one that offers me a perch where I take in the sunset’s finale. It promises a spectacular display. My perch is dead, apparently split from its still-living other half. Its skeleton twists and bends. Skeletons are everywhere. A cottonwood graveyard. A cottonwood nursery.

A memorial to living fast.

From below, the sun paints the wisps of cirrus clouds Photo by Yasmin von Dassow pink. More vibrant color.

The sky is a rich, darkening blue backdrop to this pinnacle expression of natural beauty.

The heavens write a message to us in fire, but we cannot read what it says.

••• The desert seems to defy time, though only defies our understanding of it.

After three days of pulling on these rocks, comprehending that the landscape changes proves difficult. True, Kurt had changed it when he knocked off the rock. But to think that someday this desert will look completely different than it does now?

The cliffs of Rainbow Canyon, shaded on our way into the canyon, stand full in the light of the afternoon sun. The name was apt. The tuff was once light gray, until, over time, the metals in the rock matrix met the rain and the air and oxidized, turning into beautiful pinks and greens and oranges. Erosion will wash these metals away, exposing new tuff, and begin the process over again.

My vanity hopes again that I give to the desert some of what it gives me. That I am woven into its patchwork of inspired moments. Regrettably, I do not even know if the desert is awake or if I am awake. If this is a dream, and my thoughts an illusion, I still hope that we dance slowly, cautiously toward our exit. •

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photo spotlight perspectives on wildlife

Subject A038, in a study on freshwater snails in the African Great Lakes, photo by Wout Salenbien (above) • A warbler caught in a mist net, photo by Megan Hayes (right)

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A Weller’s salamander at Grandfather Mountain, NC, photo by Ian Markham (top) • A tiny forest of spores held between the fingers, photo by Matthew Cicanese (bottom)

Looking through the canopy at Sarah P. Duke Gardens, photo by Jennifer Sionton (top) • Daises in the dewdrops, photo by Cindy Pi (middle) • A hooded parakeet from the Northern territory of Australia, photo by Audrey Archer (bottom)

san antonio creek

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Belton Copp

t seems to me, though I’m no expert, that there are untold stories about the fish that used to inhabit mountain streams and valley rivers where there are now highways and homes.

Dormant myths involving pack mules and hardy souls searching the south west for answers and finding finned monsters accustomed to flashy creeks and spilling pools. These can’t possibly have been relegated to my wandering mind. Somewhere in words written or unspoken exist trout and men and adventures now buried beneath dams and broad suburban roads.

Photos by Belton Copp

Here, water rules—the Inland Empire, Southern California, a vast valley of metropolitan growth. From the Santa Monica beaches to San Bernardino an hour and a quarter east extends one of America’s most populous developed areas. About 15 million people are tied up in the battle for water, but a few of us want to use what water remains between stream banks for something a bit different.

On weekends the lower part of the San Antonio creek becomes more of a bathtub to those seeking refuge from the city. Once beyond the crowds and the noise, however, the white water and overgrown banks reduce the surroundings to your thoughts and the water. Despite the diminutive fish and graffitied banks, I love fishing these waters, where #18 is a small fly and 10-inch fish are trophies.

There is something surprisingly endearing about small fish. It could be the small water they live in, their eagerness to take a fly too big for their mouth, their disproportionately large eyes or their frantic vibrations on the end of the rod. Whether they are arctic grayling, brookies or just diminutive rainbows, I like small fish.

But the hunt is not for fish; it is for water that feels of fish.

Deeper, slower, bluer, fishier. Cover lots of ground and you will find the water that holds the fish. The hiking is either up or down, balancing on fallen trees, following log mazes above thorny nettles and impassable brush, and hopping rock to rock.

Moving away from the bank to skirt around some thick brush and then returning to examine the water.

San Antonio runs clear and fast, pouring over ledges and through brush. As is usually the case I try to move quickly, and I rarely cast for fish. The thickest vegetation in the dry canyon is along the banks where trees and brambles fight like the people downstream. Much of the water is too fast or uneven to get a decent drift but every so often there is a pool or riffle that deserves high attention. Drifts are achieved only by highsticking directly above the hole or by under powering roll casts to gain a few extra feet. Now and again I will remove the butt piece of my rod and cast with the top few sections. The strikes usually come fast, if you can detect them. Even small fish learn quickly that an insect with a hook through it isn’t an insect at all. Missing a strike happens, and with barbless hooks you don’t land every fish you set on.

They’ll often rise for a dry and fail to get their mouths around the dressing and hook, leaving it floating not quite as high as before. One thing is for sure, these small trout are eager. They do not deliberate over whether to eat, or critique the use of a silver bead instead of a gold one, or shy away from some of the more artful imitations of naturals. They pounce and then vibrate, pause, then vibrate some more until they are released back into hiding.

So, I will continue to fish San Antonio, to hop its rocks and walk its shores, to acknowledge its urban setting and let the roar reduce my surroundings to myself and my intent, and to catch its fish and then release them again. Each rainbow represents the hardships of a desert canyon and the persistence of life within. Each tiny fish triggering the thought and the dream that somewhere in these mountain waters, motionless among the heavy creek bed rocks, laughing at my silver headed hare’s ear and the fish that fall for it, lays the grandaddy, the fish that requires a net and two hands to hold, silent with the adventures he has seen. •

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Poem series by Richard Taylor

grand design

ÂŤ

poetry

The oldest narratives have no name.

They come down to us in patterns as natural and variable as rain, needing little to thread them into sense.

Picture a farmer in the wide bottom near Peaks Milll on a Sunday mowing hay, his engine droning along a stand of waist-high fescue, sickling it down in shrinking grids, a stricken doe nearby, her tail aloft in white alarm, a clutch of five or six turkey vultures huddled and bent among the cuttings, neither I nor my friend acknowledging as we pass a formula so ancient, pat, we do not need to see or verify to say the word we need not say: fawn.

distinctive From a beekeeper I learn that honey from each hive has its own taste, its own distinctive flavor based on diet or weather, a late frost snuffing white flowerings of the black locust, a lean harvest of local rain, or maybe a stricken queen-differences on the tongue as near as the next field, depending on what each forager is drawn to plunder, which turns in part on what blossoms when, where, if.

This explains much, including how each of us becomes each.

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reading annie dillard Gravity, to Copernicus, is the nostalgia of things to become spheres.

A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek The earth’s average temperature, she tells us, is fifty-seven degrees.

Only twenty-nine percent of the planet is above water. Closer to home, a certain coalbed in Appalachia has 120 seams, each the compressed leftovers of a submerged forest.

As I lift my eyes from the page to let this news sink in, through the front window the bared limbs seem to tremble, the scruffy, wintered bark loyal to whatever shape the bunched cells dictate, each tapered branch quivering with its sisters.

Gazing over the sallow grass-a few last skittering leaves-I try to visualize the 1356 creatures tenanted in each square foot of topsoil.

Then, reading that the average size of all living animals is no larger than a housefly, I elevate myself to landlord, colossus, emperor omnipotent, inheritor of the pride of nations until I remember that gravity gathers, that threadlike rootlets are tickling my footsoles, the irresistible cilia tugging, putting me in my place.

obsessiveness “. . . everything seemed right just as it was.�

-- Jane Kenyon Picking up this and that in the side yard-a bottle cap humbled into mud, a sheath of bark from the disleafed maple that is only upright out of habit, I lift a smothering plank and almost hear grass underneath breathe a collective sigh.

A rusted roofing nail, a shard of glass holding its splinter of sky-nothing is too small to re-deposit, too insignificant to bend for if it impedes congress between Mother Earth and Father Sky. I know I will do this until each dislocated thing reaches its rightful home, I mine, until everything seems right just as it is.

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An excerpt from:

T idak H utan , T idak H ujan Zachary Brecheisen

L

ooking out the window through my mosquito net, I watched the green light brighten as it passed through softly swaying leaves like a kaleidoscope. I wondered if orangutans dream like I do, remembering brief snippets of a happy youth.

To help keep the orangutans mentally stimulated during the time that they are not in the jungle during their day-releases, and to help with their rehabituation to the wild, Orangutan Foundation International (OFI) has a team of caretakers dedicated to enrichment projects and activities. I spent one afternoon working with the enrichment coordination women, making parcels of nuts, raisins, and popped corn all wrapped up in bundles of ferns that the orangutans would manipulate and work to open. The orangutans loved them. Some of the animals would carefully unfold the leafy packages, eating the treats hidden inside one at a time. Others would unceremoniously rip the package to shreds releasing a shower of goodies that they then scrambled to eat up as quickly as possible.

To craft the bundles, you start by making a flat sheet of plant leaves by overlapping several leafy fern twigs in parallel. Then you place a handful of treats in the

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center and carefully fold the leaves and branches around it, tying it closed with younger, suppler fern strands.

My experience folding clothes, tarps, and tents always involved tight wrapping because they would be more compact and take up less space, so without realizing it, I was tightly packing all of my treat-parcels. When the women started laughing at how tiny my parcels were I was flustered to see that theirs were nearly twice thas large and very loosely wrapped. We distributed all of the leafy packages to the pondoks and watched as the orangutans reached for them eagerly. We finished this task a little before lunchtime. I sat in the shade behind the cooking area of the Orangutan Care Centre and Quarantine (OCCQ) with Ibu Maryanti, one of the women who manages OCCQ volunteers. She speaks English very well and we chatted about the facility and how long she and others had been working for the foundation.

Lunchtime arrived and I rejoined the volunteers to eat.

Afterwards, we went out to work on the walkways in the swamp for several hours. As I headed to the OCCQ to spend some time chiseling, Ibu Maryanti waved me over. A few Dayak men approached with large bundles of various branches they had cut from the forest. Ibu Maryanti explained to me that the branches were given to the orangutans each evening so that they could practice nest-building, an important skill for when they return to the wild. Interestingly, Orangutans also use these nestbuilding techniques to weave branches into protective rain shields, and they are the only primates, other than humans, to use an umbrella-like apparatus.

We again made the rounds to the pondoks, though this time not to the baby orangutans, as they were not old enough to build nests.

When we slipped the branches through the bars of the orangutans’ night enclosures, they pulled them through waving and swapping them around wildly before gathering them all together. I watched as some weaved nests very artfully, while others haphazardly piled them high before flopping on top of them.

“Boy” was the last orangutan to get a nightly allotment of branches and he got the most by far. A fully mature cheekpadded orangutan, Boy was massive, though he seemed more like a gentle giant than a fearsome creature. Earlier, when we were handing out the leaf parcels, Boy just sat and watched us disinterestedly as we placed several of the parcels inside his pondok. A few minutes later though, I peeked around a corner and watched him delicately unwrap the leaf packages and eat the treats inside one at a time. He carefully dismantled the leafy bundles, discarding one fern branch at a time to make sure he hadn’t missed any of the goodies. Similarly, Boy watched as we inserted the branches in between the bars of his pondok, and waited until we had left before pulling them in and forming his own large night nest.

As the other volunteers and I hopped in the back of the truck to return to the volunteer quarters, Boy could be heard

building up to a long call – a deep, visceral rumbling noise used by males to maintain the claim to their territories and repel rival males passing through the area. Male orangutans fight viciously to obtain and keep territories. As oil palm deforestation worsens, orangutans are forced to flee inward of the remaining patches of forest, leading to increased orangutan density. As more orangutans compete for decreasing resources and space, territorial challenges become more frequent. Since Boy is a fully mature adult, releasing him into an area with an existing dominant male would inevitably result in conflict and injury, possibly death, to one or both males. Since nearly all areas of suitable habitat are already full of orangutans, Boy cannot be released into the wild until an area with few orangutans is discovered or a significant reforestation takes place. Given his relatively old age, it is unlikely that Boy will be able to roam free again. Though he lives a life of comfort and peace, and certainly a much longer one than if he were released, a yearning sadness could be heard in his calls as we drove away.

Several days later, we were rewarded for our hard work with a trip to the Tanjung Puting National Park. We drove to the city of Kumai, and boarded a klotok, a large double-decker boat, to travel up the Sekonyer River. Tanjung Puting is approximately 1,600 square miles in area and has magnificent mangrove and swampy peat rainforests. The heart of the park is Camp Leakey, which was established in the early 1970s and references the legendary physical anthropologist Louis Leakey who played a key role in uncovering human evolutionary history mentoring other renowned primatologists.

Camp Leakey wa mesmerizing. It made the beautiful forest around the OCCQ seem paltry in comparison to the towering trees and placid waters of Tanjung Puting.

There was something ancient about the place, like forgotten memories of a time deep in our evolutionary past, glimpses of an era when we were capable of living in harmony with such a dynamic and majestic ecosystem. Nowadays, humans are more apt to be wary of parasitic insects, various venomous snakes, crocodiles, burning-rash-causing fungi and other dangerous microorganisms that live in the natural world.

The orangutans in Camp Leakey move about the canopy, swaying mightily and bending over entire trees, whose large flexible root foundations are buried deep below the water’s surface. Back and forth they swing, close enough to reach and grab and move to a neighboring tree. I couldn’t help but realize my own frailty as I tripped and slipped trying to hike the jungle pathways. Any lingering ideas that I may have had about humans being the evolutionary “winners” of the world were thoroughly demolished as I struggled to move through the enchanting and forbidding forest. I couldn’t imagine trying to find enough food to keep myself alive, let alone any offspring. It is a place we had long ago lost the right, or even the ability, to call home. The Garden of Eden. •

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poetry

to be forgotten with the trees Colin Hoogerwerf Photo by Maria Prebble

H

e pulled the car over to the edge of the road onto the narrow gravel shoulder. He turned off the engine and put his hands back on the steering wheel, a ten-and-two grip, and he held it tightly. He looked out the front window at the orchards bordering both sides of the road. Just to the left of the car was a small weedy ditch and then the first row of trees.

The orchards lined the roads along the route all the way up to the express way. The northern fruit lands, they called it, and he loved driving through them. The lines of trees rolled over the small hills. Cherry trees, peaches, and some vineyards. He wasn’t sure what trees were next to them now.

He’d always wanted to be able to identify the trees while flying by on the roads.

On the drive up to her parent’s house a few days earlier, Anna had talked about building a house out on one of the curvy orchard roads. A dream. He had played along, nodding, and suggesting different spots as they drove past.

He turned to her. She was sitting straight with her head tilted down looking into her lap. Her hands were placed, one on each thigh, straight and still. She looked up at him. She rubbed a finger under one of her eyes. Then the other.

“I thought we figured it out,” he said.

“We did. I mean I thought we did. I’m sorry.”

“What do you want?” he asked carefully.

She looked forward. “For it to be easy. For you not to leave and for you to love me and be happy.”

He looked out past her through the window at the trees. He noticed how unkempt they looked. Their branches reached out into the trees next to them and long grass grew up at their bases. He wondered if they’d been abandoned by some farmer for some closer, younger, more productive trees, and had been left on their own to grow in whatever direction they wanted.

He looked at her again.

“I don’t know, Anna. I can’t stay.”

She brushed her eye again with the side of her finger and dried her finger on her jeans.

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He looked back out the window. He reached up and put his hand on the door handle.

“I’ll be right back.”

“What?”

He opened the door and shut it. He stepped back against the car as another car passed by on the road dragging along some dust behind it. He walked around the front of the car, through the ditch, and up to the treves. He heard her open and close the door. She was standing by the car when he pushed through into the first aisle. The branches were thick and he put his arms up in front of his face as he walked through.

He pushed through another few rows and then walked down the lane. He thought the trees were Cherry, now that he could see them up close. The bark had small horizontal white stripes in it like the Cherry tree in his parents yard.

He found a spot in the grass in between the rows of trees and laid down. The grass was thick and it bunched up under him and stuck up on both sides of his face. He could see the tops of the trees merging together over him and the sky behind.

Pretty soon Anna walked up and stood at his feet.

“Colin,” she said softly.

“I’m Sorry,” he said.

“I know.” She stepped up and sat down beside him. He turned his head to the side. She picked a long piece of grass and peeled it into two pieces. She twisted the pieces around her finger. He liked how she looked from his view, with the trees behind her.

He put his hand on her shin and she took it and intertwined her fingers.

“We probably shouldn’t leave the car there,” she said.

He nodded. The grass was poking into his back.

When he stood up he could still vaguely see his spot in the ground.

As they walked back out he wondered where the orchard’s caretaker was. He imagined an old farmer walking the lanes, singing to the trees, making sure they were all healthy, touching the branches as he passed.

They walked up to the car and got back in. He turned it on and turned toward her.

“We’ll figure it out. I can’t stay though. You know that.”

“I know. It just scares me. I’m not sure if I can do it without you.”

He looked back at the road to make sure no one was coming and pulled out into the road. He watched the orchard as they drove away still thinking he might see the farmer. But of course he saw only the trees, wild now, reaching out into each other, twisted, tangled, and forgotten. •

poetry

bare bones Claire Fox With the merest hint of autumnal wind poplar jumps the gun.

Lets down a golden flurry and claims territory, claims breadth.

Yellow carpet stark against azure sky.

In one swift swipe sycamore unmoors her elephantine anvils.

Without a trace of remorse, for sycamore knows, come spring, her skin will glow green.

Beech regrets the cold.

Over thin skin she bears a coat of companions, clutches her paper sleeves.

To fend off winter winds beech sings a song of sighs and rustles, shivers and rustles.

White oak, she waits until the skies are gray; encounters one last clinging leaf, quivering in fear of the after.

White oak whispers: “I am you and you am I, spring warmth sees reunion nigh” She shakes her boughs in catharsis and stands tall to embrace her bare bones.

Maple erupts in flames, dogwood buds burn bright, witch hazel prickles in spicy bloom, river birch curdles in defiance.

For me, gold, incense, and myrrh is a sweetgum potpourri, a silent mat of needles in decay, and a blaze of ruby stars.

a poem between the two shores Trevor Thompson Composed by ice and stone, Carolina wren bones and ancient willow oak decomposed, old Eno unfolds on her way. This wet rhythm of purple, long ripples and soft bubbles, cascades into Devil’s Sink Hole. Midwinter sunbeams shimmer on the surface. A crusader cross, a child, the left hand of God, a tattooed breast. So many shadows cast curiously between the rough edges of the two shores. Above, a red-tailed hawk circles with an opportunistic appetite and slurred speech, kree-eee-ar. A single pink kite feather spirals free, a delicate touch on the surface, scattered light.

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art feed

Evgenia Arbugaeva Tiksi

E

vgenia Arbugaeva was born in Tiksi, a coastal town above the 70th parallel on Russia’s Laptev Sea. She graduated in 2009 from the photojournalism and documentary program at the International Center of Photography and now works as a freelance photographer with a focus on the landscapes and environments of her northern homeland. Ms. Arbugaeva’s work has been featured in National Geographic and exhibited in Belgium, Denmark, and France. She received the Leica Oskar Barnack Award in 2013. In 2013, she received the Leica Oskar Barnack Award and visited Durham, North Carolina with the support of the Duke University Center for International Studies, the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies and the Magnum Foundation, which held a series of exhibitions for three young international photographers.

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art feed

alina taalman River Basins In River Basins Taalman experiments with the dynamic relationship between the river and the sea by overlaying satellite-derived images of sections of river basins onto photographs within their range. This series follows the Cape Fear River.

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erika zambello

tabitha vigliotti

Owl Hoo & Owl Two

Paper Trees

janvi shah Concrete Jungle

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Photo by Dave Millar

contributors Yemi Adewuyi is a 2016 candidate for Bachelor

Janvi Shah is an undergraduate student at

Evgenia Arbugaeva works as a freelance

Cindy Sherwood is the Undergraduate

Zachary Brecheisen is a doctoral candidate

Alina Taalman is a 2015 candidate for Master

Rob Burton is a candidate for Master

Richard Taylor is the author of five

Belton Copp is a 2015 candidate for the Master of

Trevor Thompson is a doctoral candidate

Claire Fox is a 2015 candidate for Master

Tabitha Vigliotti is a 2014 candidate

of Arts in Duke University’s Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. Adewuyi is from Plano, TX.

photographer and travels extensively, focusing mainly on the northern regions of her homeland in Russia. in Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. of Environmental Management in the Duke Environmental Leadership program at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

Burton is from Park City, UT.

Environmental Management in the Nicholas School of the Environment. He is from Providence, RI. of Environmental Management and Master of Forestry in Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. Fox is from Westfield, NJ.

Colin Hoogerwerf recieved his Master of

Environmental Management from the Nicholas School of the Environment in 2013. He currently lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Sean Sexton is a poet, writer, painter, sculptor, conservationist, and fourth-generation cattleman near Vero Beach, FL. His poetry series Blood Writing was published by Anhinga Press in 2010.

Duke in the class of 2015 majoring in Neuroscience and Finance.

Neuroscience Program Coordinator for the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. She lives in Durham, NC. of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts at Duke University.

collections of poetry, two novels, and several non-fiction books and was the Kentucky Poet Laureate from 1999 - 2001. He lives near Frankfort, KY.

in Duke University’s Divinity School. He lives in Durham, NC. for Master of Environmental Management and Master of Public Policy in DukeUniversity’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Sanford School of Public Policy, respectively. She is from Davie, FL.

Erika Zambello is a 2015 candidate for

Master of Environmental Management in Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

She is from Cumberland, ME.

Photo by Jennifer Simonton

Closing Note: This Spring, as we prepare to move into the Environmental Hall, the Nicholas School’s new LEED Platinum building, we are also moving into a new phase of our work as a School of the Environment. New partnerships between the arts and environment at Duke are flourishing. There are new physical signs of this integration: the stone arch created by Thea Alvin as a passageway to the new building and the upcoming unveiling of the Wegner Art Gallery.

But we are also seeing an incredible surge of interest from our students.

Increasing numbers of undergraduate students are majoring in environmental science and minoring in art, visual studies, and theater. Graduate students are designing innovative Masters Projects to address environmental issues through the arts and art activism. Several new Bass Connections projects bring together students and faculty on arts/ environment-themed research efforts.

During the Fall 2013 Duke Arts week, which focused on the theme of sustainability, artist Chris Jordan spoke of the deep sadness of living in a broken world. His new film, Midway, celebrates the exquisite dance of the albatross while mourning the loss of these birds as they suffocate on meals of plastic trash. He also shared footage of an abandoned fuel storage facility on the island, accompanied by the eerie sounds of an ancient chant echoing off the bare walls.

Artist and PhD student Pinar Yolder’s exhibit the Very Loud Chamber of Endangered Species (showcased in the 2nd issue of eno) inspired awe and conversation in the Bryan Center during Arts week. At the same time, local artist Bryant Holsenbeck led students in the creation of a huge sculpture of used plastic bottles, asking us to consider the beauty, as well as the scale, of the discarded.

As we begin to thread the arts with the environment, we recognize that many of us are asking the same question of ourselves: How do we acknowledge the broken world while still celebrating the dance?

Our new building answers this question by dedicating space for the arts. Our students find answers in their research, coursework, and community engagement. This issue of eno answers this question with poetry, story, and image.

May this growing collaboration between the arts and environment at Duke inspire us to acknowledge the challenges of a call to action. May we continue to find ways not just to express messages but to inspire thoughtful engagement in this beautiful and sometimes intricate dance.

-Rebecca Vidra

Photo by Audrey Archer

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