An Epiphany on Epiphany...

   My first photograph of the pond for 2015, on the feast day of Epiphany, January 6th.  Most appropriate, I thought.

   This pond has been an epiphany for me in so many ways.  Each day I visit it brings me new insights and meaning...even new ways of making my photographs.  On this day the temperatures hovered around 0 but the wind chill made it feel more like -20.

   This little fishing shack on the far edge of the pond stood in a kind of splendid solitude.  Ice fishermen will huddle inside by the tiny wood stove to keep warm as they fish. They would need it on a day like today.  But I wasn't thinking about fishing, I was thinking about the story of Epiphany.  After the wise men visited Bethlehem, which is the tradition of Epiphany, an angel came to them and told them that the should return home by a different way.  That thought, and this photograph, would stay with me for the rest of the day.

   I began this project last June and now in January I have rounded the corner and I'm heading for the "homestretch" as it were but I am definitely "returning home by a different way."  Hearts and minds that are stretch can never return to their previous size or shape...they have transformed into a new state of being and, in my case, a new way of looking at the world.  That was my personal epiphany on this Epiphany of 2015.  A great way to begin the year.

 

The Poetry of Place - The Pond Speaks

   My last visit to the pond in 2014, on December 30th, was a real treat.  It was very late in the day and the sunset illuminated the ridge line to the north and to the south the moon was well risen...the sun and the moon present together.  It was frigid but no wind...supremely silent until I heard the tell tale sounds of the ice contracting and "snapping".

  At first, I wasn't sure what I was hearing but then it dawned on me.  Our recent warm temperatures and rain followed by plummeting temperatures, 47 degrees F. one day, 15 degrees F. the next, was causing the ice to "sing".  It was reciting its own poetry right before me and I was delighted.

   The many holes made by the intrepid ice fishermen served as little amplifiers, letting the sound from below out.  The surrounding hills also allowed the sound to project more clearly.  I've often heard fishermen talk about this phenomenon but I personally haven't heard it for years.  The pond was giving me an especially wonderful gift this day.

All of nature begins to whisper its secrets to us through its sounds. Sounds that were previously incomprehensible to our soul now become the meaningful language of nature. ~ Rudolf Steiner 

   I've added a link to a blog which gives several examples of these ice sounds.  The video of the man sitting on the ice at a fishing hole best approximates the sounds I heard but it is louder because they are using underwater microphones.  My experience was much more subtle...just a soft whisper..but truly magical.

The Ice Speaks

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Footnote:

   Today marks the 3rd anniversary of A Photographic Sage and I send out my sincere thanks to all my readers!  The Photographic Sage community is world-wide and growing...keep spreading the word!  May the next year bring us all wonderful gifts of images and reflections and may your soul lead you to where you need to be...always!

The Poetry of Place: 26 December, 2014

   Between the holidays and alternating storms of heavy snow and rain, I hadn't stopped at the pond for several days.  The day after Christmas I ventured out and the pond delighted me, yet again.

   On the easterly shore the ice was in shadow but the low sun illuminated the upper parts of shoreline trees creating a golden reflection in the unfrozen water along the edge that I found rather startling.

   I had received a calendar of Celtic Blessings for Christmas and January's blessing is:

Walk through the world

with hearts on fire.

     Somehow this seemed to fit the pond on this day.  It seemed to be on fire beneath the ice. There is a pulsating life beneath the frozen surface.  We seem to think that things "die" in the winter.  They simply slumber and sometimes they toss in their sleep.

   The fire of passion isn't often associated with a life of contemplation but I feel that unless we have that burning in the belly our photographs will never achieve their potential.  Millions upon millions of photographs are made everyday yet few achieve the level of passionate engagement.  But when they do, oh, what an amazing thing it is.

The Poetry of Place: December 18, 2014

   I couldn't help but see this juncture of frozen and liquid at the pond in terms of the Taoist Yin/Yang symbol.  It even had a circle in it!

   The pond really treated me this day to a stunning display.  The heavy rains the day before left a thin layer of water on parts of the ice while this shore edge segment also had an unfrozen patch but the energy wasn't in these segments, it literally flowed over the surface.

   The wind was quite brisk, out of the north-east and caused a shimmering transformation to race over the surface. Tiny ripples danced across the water and I stood there quite mesmerized despite the frigid temperatures.  This wouldn't last, I was quite sure of that.  I made the following four photographs in less than three seconds.

   Now, you are probably asking yourself the same thing I asked myself as I drove away..."Why didn't you make a video of this?"  Good question. I should have turned around right there and then and made the video.  Perhaps the effect would have been more dramatic
than these four still images. 

   I was on the way to the post office and I had to catch them before they closed for lunch.  Yes, here in my little village, the post office closes for one hour at lunch time.  "I'll stop on my way back", I thought.

   Only when I drove back less than one half hour later the pond was already starting to "stiffen up" as they say.  The effect was no longer there.  The pond had gone from mirror to a heavily textured and shimmering surface, the ripples spilling into the open patch of water directly in front of me.  It was much more beautiful than these four photographs depict.  I guess it is one of those "you had to be there..." moments.

  Anyway, the lesson is clear, don't wait. Don't let things distract you... stay immersed in the moment.  It also shows how fleeting these kinds of moments are in the landscape. Here one moment and gone the next.  The wind would stop and the surface returned to it's mirror-like appearance. All the more reason to visited a place frequently.

 I now bring my camera with me every time I go into town and have to pass the pond. I stop nearly every day. Perhaps it is the fascination I have with this place but I know that on any given day, at any given moment in fact, this place will offer me a new window into its soul.  I am never disappointed except when I don't take the time for it to work it's magic on me.  Lesson learned...

   The contrast which the Taoist yin/yang symbol illustrates is ever present at the pond...especially this day.  The still/moving, light/dark, open/closed, smooth/rough...it was all happening simultaneously.  I had seen, of course, the wind rippling the water before but this day it seemed to be creating new compositions on the ice.  Moving water over the ice was a very dramatic effect.  The next day the pond had frozen over and the poetry had changed yet again.

The Poetry of Place: June 29 - December 10, 2014

   I've been visiting Little Clemons' Pond for six months now and I thought I would try to distill the hundreds of images I've received from the pond down to a "good crop" of twelve.  It wasn't easy.

   This exercise is always helpful when you become so overwhelmed in a photographic project that you begin to loose sight of the essence of what drew you to it in the first place.

   Poetry was my essence...not documentary.  I wanted to focus on the poetical nature of a place through time.  I chose these twelve images for the personal impact they had on the way I viewed the pond and how that impact altered my understanding and photographic methods in the process.

  Perhaps on another day I would select different images.  Next June, when this project ends and I have to prepare for my show, I will have to make the difficult decision of what to put in and what to leave out.  Some of these will, no doubt, make the final cut...some will not.  For now, these are my twelve images...

The Poetry of Place: A Good Crop: June 29-December 10, 2014

Relax Into the Mystery of Not Knowing...

  Henry David Thoreau inspired me to find my own Walden here at Little Clemons' Pond.  I visited it often, as Henry did Walden, but that is where our commonality ends.  Henry was a brilliant and astute naturalist...a scientist of the first degree.  I am not.

   Henry would probably be able to tell me what made these random holes in the ice.  There were at least a dozen of them randomly peppering the newly frozen surface of the pond.  Henry would have puzzled this out and found the answer...I, on the other hand, enjoy the mystery of not knowing.

   I guess that is one of the things that separates a contemplative photographer from a scientist.  Henry had to know the whys and the wherefores, I don't.  I can sit in wonder on the pond's edge and just breath in the mystery of the place, content with just being present.  I think Henry also appreciated the beauty of mystery in his own way but his inquiring mind always searched for answers and he recorded them diligently in his many journals.

   Before this project at the pond, I was much more an "inquiring mind".  Something here has allowed me to put that aside and settle into pure experience.  There is a time to know and a time to experience without knowing...this was one of those days.

The true mystery of the world is the visible,

 not the invisible.

- Oscar Wilde

Making Meaning Through Contemplative Photography: Part Two

Interaction - 2 December 2014

When we put a frame 

around an image,

taking it out of its 

context as we do

when we photograph, we

 are in fact constructing a

 version of reality.  We

are imposing a way of 

seeing, a meaning,

upon the reality that 

we are receiving.

- Howard Zehr

   This is how Zehr begins his chapter on making meaning in photography.  I am developing a much greater appreciation of this idea through my pond abstractions.  I can make the meaning more obvious by the way I frame the image.

   What I ask myself before I make a photograph on location relates strongly to my Taoist leanings.  "Where is the energy of this place at this moment?"  All landscape has an intrinsic energy or Qi in Taoist terms.  This day, it was in the interactions and tensions between the areas of frozen and open water in the pond.  So, I narrowed my viewpoint to a specific area of the pond's surface where I thought the energy of interaction was the strongest.  The resulting image is above.  I think it is one of my most powerful images of the pond to date.

    When you can discern the Qi in a place you will find yourself settling into what the Taoist call Te.  It is a state where you can just seamlessly relate to what is in front of you and the photographs you can make will resonate with personal meaning for you.  It doesn't happen every time, maybe not even half the time, but when it does you will know...your photographs will show it.  I think it shows in this image.

    When you next go out to photograph, ask yourself, "Where do I feel the energy lies at this place at this moment?" and compose your photographs around that area.  There you will be able to distill and manifest meaning but remember, it will not be the same the next day.  Energy flows and changes and your role as a contemplative photographer is to make meaning from what you perceive...at that particular moment.

   If you want to read a bit about the Taoist principles of Te and Qi, you can link to this past post...

    Characteristics of a Photographic Sage - Part IX: Te

  

Making Meaning Through Contemplative Photography: Part One

   The ego needs success to thrive,

the soul needs only meaning.

- Richard Rohr

  It took me a long time to realize that the role photography was to play in my live had no relationship to any form of "success"...at least in financial terms.  When I gave up the continual quest for exhibitions and sales I began to focus more on personal meaning and my relationship to the landscape, to everything I encounter, changed.

In order to "give a meaning" to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what one frames through the viewfinder.  This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry - it is by great economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.

- Henri Cartier-Bresson

   What we receive from the landscape is in part dependent on selectivity.  We do not sit passively on the shore...we actively engage with the landscape on a heart level.  We must then select from the wealth of gifts it is bestowing on us every moment.  Through that selection process we can discern meaning.

   I have been watching the slow and undulating transformations of the pond this month as it freezes, melts and refreezes almost on a daily basis.  It is a beautifully choreographed dance that I am witnessing.  The interplay of light and water, liquid or frozen, is a constant marvel.  Finding just the right point in all that was before me where that dance most clearly manifested itself to me was my task...the image above was the result.

   In Howard Zehr's wonderful book on contemplative photography that I wrote about on December 3, 2014, he devotes a whole chapter to "making meaning".  That phrase is important because we don't merely "find" a meaning in the landscape as much as we "make" meaning through our selection and composition.  Again, it is an active rather that a passive interaction with the landscape.  Tomorrow, I will continue these thoughts on how we can make meaning through our camera work.

Reflections on the Tao: The Three Treasures

Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts,

 you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.

Lao Tzu

    It is the season of gift giving and Lao Tzu illuminates the concept with his three treasures.  If I could give the world gifts, I would make sure these three treasures would be included.

   As contemplative photographers, we can give ourselves and our work these treasures as well.  Simplicity in approach, patience to wait for the landscape to direct us, and compassion with our shortcomings, photographically speaking.  We all have our strengths and those are our gifts to each other through our camera work.

   This shoreline image shows the place where a small stream trickles into the pond.  The moving water does not freeze quickly and I sometimes have seen birds drinking here.  Even in nature there are small gifts given everyday and we are blessed by them all.

The Poetry of Place: 28 November 2014

   What a difference a day makes!  I went back to the pond and it was a completely different world. A solitary black crow circled in the distance and its cry rang off the hillside.  It wasn't until I got the image home and opened in on the computer that I saw that the crow is there, near the top left side.

  The grey sky tinted everything with its sombre monochrome tone so I decided to embrace it, converting the already essentially black and white image into a true monochrome study of the pond.  This is the second black and white image I've made and I doubt it will be my last.  This time of year lends itself to the monochrome.

   The ridge line of the surround hills is suggested in the reflections and I especially like the way it linked up with the dove grey ice that snaked it's way to the foreground of the image creating a pale grey expanse of water between it and the tree reflections.

   Yesterday and today's posts really brought home the idea that the pond is landscape of many moods.  Yesterday's pond had an energy and dynamic to it while today it was quietly serene.

   Slowly the pond is closing up.  Soon the reflections will be gone.  The nights are getting much colder so it won't be long and then the pond will show me an entirely different side of her character.

The Poetry of Place: 27 November 2014

Pond Patchwork

   Southern Maine had experienced their first significant snow storm and we woke on Thanksgiving
morning with 15 inches of heavy wet snow.  It cause major power outages. I'd been out of power since 5pm the day before so with nothing to do but hope the power came back on so I could cook my turkey, I headed out to the pond to see what this major storm had done to the landscape.  I'm so glad I did!

   The skies were a beautiful blue and the pond was criss-crossed with patches of ice in many different shapes, tones and textures.  It was breathtaking.  The light was especially luminous as it often is right after a snow storm.  Soft fingers of light broke up the expanses of ice in a particularly lovely way.  I especially liked the small oval of unfrozen water the reflected the snow covered trees.

   I could also see that making my way to the ponds edge will be difficult after a couple of these storms but since there is a water pipe that is used in case of fire in the area, the town plows cleaned off a place near to it so I was able to safely get off the road...how considerate of them!

   One particular area of the broken up water surface drew my eye. The reflections of the snow covered trees were stunning. (Be sure to click on it to enlarge!)
    Most of the water surface that wasn't frozen was subtly textured by the breeze but this one area remained calm enough to create the reflections. The curving white line just added the perfect contrast and I created another "Seescape". At least for the time being, the pond is still gifting me lovely reflections and possibilities for abstractions. I'll just need to get my high boots and crampons out!

Always Expect the Unexpected...

   Waves at the ocean's edge, of course, but the last place I expected to see them was on Little Clemons' Pond!  I am beginning to get use to this sensation...this expecting to see the unexpected...like the amazing clouds from yesterday's post.

   Here at the pond, each day, each hour of each day, in fact, is a totally different and unique experience. If I go expecting to see one thing I invariably see something else.  The pond never fails to surprise and delight me.

   I've always said that it is best to dispense with expectations.  They often inhibit what you are able to see.  But I might alter that to say, have no expectations beyond the unexpected.  Don't be surprise when it appears...embrace it as yet another gift from the landscape.

Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have

 been unexpected, unplanned by me.

Carl Sandburg

The Poetry of Place - 19 November 2014

On the Threshold of Becoming 

   The first evidence of ice at the pond  on the day I visited. (It has since melted away.)  It was forming along the shaded and sheltered southern bank.  In most of the area it was this crackled, bubble filled mass...in others it was so clear you could see the leaves and lily pads in frozen suspension.

   The part that most intrigued this contemplative soul was the border line...the threshold between the frozen and the liquid.  The place of becoming.  The little fingers of ice seemed to be reaching into the water and beckoning it in.  Ice is an amazing thing to watch form and I am sure that as the pond slowly but surely succumbs to the icy grip of winter it will offer me so many new possibilities.

   The trees' reflections in the pond, something I have enjoyed so much,  will be erased my the encroaching ice.  I was still able to create an abstract version of this frozen encounter which I call Ice Cubed.  (You will see the effect better if you click on the image to enlarge it.)

   There really is no end to the possibilities of interpreting this place. Every time I visit I always try to spend some moments just breathing in the magic although with temperatures hovering in the mid-20's F it is becoming increasingly difficult to linger for long periods. I wonder what will happen when the snow blankets the shore...how I will make my way to the pond?

   I have complete faith though. I will be able to experience the pond in new and exiting ways as the winter approaches and I will see what I need to see each time I visit. That is, for me, the heart of the contemplating process...to just open up my heart and allowing the landscape to show me whatever it wishes.  Relinquishing my need to control the outcome allows be to see new things.

   For all of you readers who celebrate Thanksgiving Day, have a wonderful time with friends and family.  I know what I am most thankful for, besides those friends and family, it is the opportunity to share my thoughts and images with all of you!  I feel very blessed this year especially with my new found relationship with my little pond.  The following is a quotation from Henry David Thoreau, who's writing on Walden Pond inspired me to find my own Walden here at Little Clemons Pond.  I couldn't agree more with his sentiments...

I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. ...O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.

The Poetry of Place: 16 November 2014

A Great Stillness

 My first black and white image of the pond but it seemed so appropriate to the experience.  It was a day wrapped in grey and completely windless.  A great stillness and silence had settled over the pond.  I heard no rustle along the shore...no crow call.  Perfect silence.   It was a day where the landscape seemed to hold its breath for a time...so did I.

   Unlike we humans who try our hardest to control and manipulate nature, the pond sat in a quiet acceptance of what is.  Change is coming, the reflections will give way to ice and the whiteness and wind of winter but for this moment it was pure tranquility.  (Click on the image and see it in a large version which is more effective in communicating the stillness.)

The first step toward change is awareness. 

The second step is acceptance.

-Nathaniel Branden 

   I have a post about this project at the pond on the wonderful blog, Focusing on Life.  You might like to check it out!

 

The Poetry of Place: 9 November 2014 - 4:10 pm

   I've come to believe that the landscape is a story that evolves, slowly, over time.  It is shaped by occurrences that come and go.  This influence molds it's contours and the face it presents to us this day will not be the same face it will show us tomorrow.  In a way, a landscape is very much like us.

   Now that we are fully into the grey time of November, the hills surrounding Little Clemons seem to be retreating; taking a back seat to the pond.  Just a few short weeks ago those hills shouted with vibrant color and the water reflected it back.  This late afternoon visit was all about the clouds and the subtle pinks of the approaching sunset.  The air was very still...expectant and the hills softly silent.

   Then suddenly, the light, the soft colors, were gone and the sky and water became dark grey.  It was if someone, somewhere had flipped a switch and turned off the light for the night.

Photography is a calling that requires vigilance and alertness for that moment in time that only occurs once.
  - Caroline Mueller

   I nearly missed this one.  I was so transfixed by what I was seeing that I didn't raise my camera until some of the most beautiful color and light was past.  Still, what I was able to record is sufficient to translate that moment into a visual image for me.  I seem to be making fewer and fewer photographs now and spending more and more time just looking.  As the landscape retreats into itself...so do I.  It is as if we are holding a mirror up to each other.  We no longer need the shouts of vibrant color...we are content with what we have become.


 

The Poetry of Place: November Comes to the Pond

November Night

Silent black woods wait

'round a sleeping,

moonlit pond

Owls keep watch with me

Haiku #10

   I went to sit by the pond one night.  I didn't take my camera.  I just wanted to experience the silence of the pond on a cold November moonlit night.  Owls were my only company although I heard a distant rustle in the woods behind me.  Perhaps another curious animal intent on seeking solace by the pond.

    I wrote the haiku when I got back and struggled with the idea for an image to accompany it.  With the new open-mindedness the pond has brought me, I took a tree branch image I'd made a few days before and solarized it.  It was exactly the effect I wanted to accompany the haiku and my experience at the pond that night 

   Again, the pond gives me a wonderful gift...an insight into its poetic soul.  The delicate branches edged in white foretell the frosty nights to come.  The moon light is subtly suggested.  The pond is turning inward...as am I.

Season of the Soul...

   In yesterday's post I spoke of November as being the in between time; neither autumn nor winter, it rests on the threshold.  Thresholds are always special places to be...on the cusp of becoming.  It is not hard to understand why our ancestors saw this time of year as magical one.

Notice that Autumn is more the season of the soul than of Nature.

- Friedrich Nietzche

   I think I would agree with Nietzche but I feel that soulfulness more profoundly in November than in any other month.  In November the trees, as well as ourselves, are striped bare and we are left with only the skeletal essence of each.  It is an in-turning time.  As we lock tight the windows and light the fires, we touch at some of the most elemental facets of our being.  We prepare for the harsh reality to come and draw closer to the hearth for its reassuring warmth.

  For a month that begins with the back-to-back holidays of All Saints and All Souls days, it stands to reason that we feel equipped to wrap around us the blanket of reverence for the past.  It is only right that our camera work should become deeper and more inward facing as well.

   I was captivated by this solitary oak leaf carrying on its back what looks like glittering gems. Amongst the rotting leaves that surround it, it seemed to glisten and sparkle in the subdued late afternoon light.  I'm not sure why I thought it was such a wonder filled sight but I did.  Every single time I visit the pond I am treated to some such moment of enchantment.  It is the aura of November that has me in its grasp I think.  I expect to see magic...and I do!

     

The Poetry of Place: 29 October, 2014

Rain on Water

   Raindrops and Reflections, I'm so glad I went to the pond that day.  Things are certainly changing now that the foliage is nearly gone.  The  grey and white trunks of the birch trees are adding a love linear effect to the reflections.  Tiny splashes of falling rain peppered the water's surface.  It was hard to know where to aim my camera!  The grey skies made photographing the water much easier and I loved the softness it added to the image but it was the raindrops that added a whole new and exciting element to the image.

   The pond has nearly regained all the water it lost during the dry August and September we had.  October and November always brings the fall rains and those of us with our own wells are very happy about that.

    This is the first time I have tried to photograph the pond in the rain.  It was a bit of a challenge but I'm generally pleased with some of the images I received.  It is just another poetic dimension of this place.  Before the rain started, it was the leaves that were gently settling on the surface of the water.  The pond was speckled with little yellow floating leaves drifting along.  Pushed by a gentle breeze.

Rain Circles

  
 There was a solitary feeling to the pond on that day.  It didn't feel "empty", without the vivid fall foliage to dress up the shore.  It seemed quiet and very dignified to me...like a lovely lady who has removed her jewelry but still remains striking in her simplicity.


   Here and there a single yellow leaf floated serenely over its decaying compatriots. Yes, serenity would be the perfect word for this day by the pond. I'm so glad a little rain didn't keep be from experiencing another dimension of this enchanting place.

I have a room all to myself; it is nature.  -Henry David Thoreau

A Copy or An Original?

   A painting is above all a product of the

artist's imagination; it must never be a copy.

- Edgar Degas

The Poetry of Place: 13 October 2014

   I remember reading about how the art world reeled with the advent of photography.  The painted portrait was dead, they all said.  With the camera, what was the point?  Of course, that did not turn out to be the case because the painter could do things the camera couldn't.  The painter could infuse his subject with feeling and emotion...not so the poor photographer who could only record what was in front of him.

   That idea has also been proven wrong and now the photographer has a choice; to clearly and realistically depict what "is" or interpret the landscape, or whatever he is photographing, through the lens of his heart.  When he does, he is paying homage to Degas' statement that an artist must never copy.  This artistic edict isn't often applied to photography but perhaps it should.

    Although I make no claim to mastering the evocative and personal image, I try very hard to step beyond merely representing the landscape, which is, of course, a perfectly acceptable thing to do.  After all, contemplation is seeing things as they really are, in the here and now.  But I want my photographs to also reflect the spiritual essence of place, not just its material reality.

   You can do that with your choice of framing as well as the way you process the image later on.  What do you emphasize?  What do you play down?  What moved you when you were there to make the image in the first place?  It is not an easy thing to do but, for me, it is worth attempting.  It requires that you progress beyond the role of silent witness and to forge a bond and connection to the landscape and that, whether you make a photograph or not, is always a good thing to experience.

    Fellow contemplative photographer and blogger, Kim Manley Ort, recently posted a thought provoking essay on keeping your photographs "alive".  You might like to read and reflect...

Are Your Photographs Alive?

  

The Poetry of Place: 17 October 2014

   "Follow the yellow leaf road!"  The pine needles and leaves displaced by the heavy rain storm the day before seemed to glow in the late morning light creating a golden meandering path along the shore of the pond.

   I sat on a rock just enjoying the warm morning when a rustle in the leaves to my right caught my attention.  A small chipmunk, absorbed in his acorn gathering, was completely unaware of by presence until I turned.  With a squeak of protest, he was off.  All the birds and animals are frantic with winter preparation, not basking in the warm sun like me.  They know better to laze about at this time of year!

   Leaves continue to gently fall around me and there is the occasionally "plop" of an acorn diving into the pond.  Those acorns will never feed a squirrel or start a new tree but they also have a role to play.  They will enrich the pond's bottom for fish and turtles and next year's water lilies.  In Nature, even the smallest and humblest thing has its purpose and I too am joining in that purpose.  Recording the unique poetry of this place and entering into a co-conspiracy with the pond, I hope that I will add in a small way to the understanding of this natural landscape and inspire others to find their own "Walden".