Some of us in the May nature writer’s workshop took that day’s drafts and re-worked them later to share here. We’ll do another workshop in September, at a new spot, for those whose schedules interfered at the last minute – and all interested others!
Under the partial shade of a sugar maple I sit on the east side of the River downstream from the arched bridge. On a flat rock I am listening to the peaceful sound of the moderately flowing water going around small rocks and continuing on south. Next to me, very close is May Apple with its serrated round leaves and not very far poison ivy by my foot. Birds are chirping and singing and behind me is some very light green moss. So many plants in this small area around me at arm’s length are euonymus, dandelion, wood aster, bittersweet and grasses already flowering. Flying slowly by is a tiger swallowtail butterfly, not sure where it went, maybe heading to a small field with fleabane daisies, garlic mustard and other plants.
The sky across the river has caught my attention. It is so unusual with a pink area surrounded by white puffy clouds below and gray ones above. I have not seen such a sky before. The wonders of nature abound. I now see other areas with pink but they are faint.
Now back to the relaxing, peaceful water of the river, so soothing, calming, and wonderful to spend this time here. Apple blossoms floating down the river, birds flying across one way and back again. A slight breeze is coming across making the hot spring day feel very comfortable and enjoyable.
Marcia Kilpatrick
“New Knee at Play”
Today, all I see and hear and smell
is soft.
Lilacs beckon me to follow their scent as I drive,
windows open.
Grasses at pond’s edge host dancing visits from swallowtails.
Fields of sinewy muck at pond bottom shelter new life and
welcome old forms that float down.
Mosses wend their way over the contours of
bark and boulder.
I limp slowly over beds of pine needles,
my ginger steps cushioned.
Old pileated’s holes have blurred at the edges.
Trees felled from age or lightning
sport slo-mo magic wrought by both bright and dark mushrooms,
lichens piling on to join the patchwork garden.
I know not all is so.
Plenty of things are hard—those rocks and
roots for tripping on,
the sometimes brutal ways of woodland creatures,
not to mention people.
You could say loss is everywhere here, and you’d be right,
but alongside lives the softness, shot through with slanted light.
Katherine Hauswirth
The pergola stood there as a reminder of a past event, a wedding perhaps. Rickety yet stable it bore a melee of aging vines, dried up and curling around its wooden rungs, winding their way over and under each. Though the warm weather had started and the skunk cabbages had already unfurled, the vines were bone dry and cracked and weathered brown, indicating that there might be no more life in them. All around were trees, and in the distance the gurgling of a stream. Birds called out. Peep-peep-peep. Tweet. Peew-pew-pew, chirp-chirp, pew, kwee-kwee-kwee…
A path led toward the water, another veered off to the right, further into the bush, deeper into the wood. The water’s gentle hissing and bubbling reached out as if they were tentacles, long slender limbs like those of an octopus, soft and flowing, rubbery… The water’s invisible audible tentacles reached out and drew the walker down the first path, through clumps of barberry and wild rose to the water’s edge. Bigger than a brook, wider than a stream, a narrow river moving at a gentle pace, over the rock-strewn bed which in places revealed a softer floor of gritty sand.
Benedicte Naudin
“There’s one trout right here but he won’t commit.” The young fisherman talking has shorts, a wide-brimmed floppy hat, and a net far too big for any trout that ever lay under the Fenton River bridge. He’s one in a long line of hopeful anglers, leading way back to Wilbur Cross. Connecticut’s former Governor grew up right here. When he wasn’t helping his father run the grist mill, he caught his first trout under this very bridge. Hooked himself in the thumb too. I can imagine Wilbur now, sucking on his wounded digit… he’s wearing shorts and a floppy hat.
The historic miller’s house gleams in the sun. The original bridge is long gone, but the road is still hard-packed dirt and the solidly constructed stone mill still stands. The shade under the span remains a good place for a fish to find respite on a hot spring day. And the refrain of the river, gently tumbling over the rocks that once formed the mill dam, is a respite for a sometime writer whose words will fail to capture both the timelessness and sensory nowness of today’s scene.
I feel what Cross charmingly called “the glory of Gurleyville”. The stream’s song is real. The butterfly pirouetting in the breeze is real. The pastel leaves of May, the apple blossoms blowing onto the water, and the boy and his cautious trout are as well. I guess there is no sense in my telling the kid that he’s but an actor in my movie of the past.
George Jacobi
All so lovely!
Thank you.