We are fortunate enough to have recent graduate Eleanor Conover (no relation) working with us this summer, and applying her artist’s eye and work ethic to generating new timelapse sequences from the surrounding landscapes… and now also adding to this blog. This morning we recorded sunrise over Penobscot Bay from nearby Beech Hill.

Eleanor is getting to know this hill pretty well, having made several trips now to record time lapsing. The hill is also a location where my crew shot with musician Tim Eriksen and friends for BEHOLD THE EARTH. Her observations…

“We had an Edna St. Vincent Millay type morning on Beech Hill, shooting a timelapse of the sunrise. The bay was flat due to the air from the northwest, and as the sun rose and banked right, the reflection looked almost like the water does when the moon rises in the early night.

I keep returning to the islands, anchored stoically in the landscape. From above, you don’t encounter them face-to-face, but their articulated treetops that stretch across the view is, I think, at the heart of a dramatic encounter with the entire bay. The wind turbines that stretch from their foundations on Vinalhaven granite are the newest—and tallest—break in the horizontal composition. They interact with the natural environment in their own way, picking up the rhythm of the wind, and ceding their macbook white color to the oranges of the sunrise, later silhouetted with the pine trees against a pale, daytime horizon.”

DC NOTE: In 1917 Edna St Vincent Milay published a collection of poetry which included the poem Renascence. The first 16 lines are below. She penned this after hiking up another hill nearby in Camden, Maine.

All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked the other way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I’d started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see:
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.

Just returned from a multi-day canoe trip with my son, exploring the North Woods of New England.

Here, on the shore of Lake Umbagog.

I watch him sitting at sunset and recall lyrics from a song that asks a question…”If you knew that you would die today, would you change? Would you change?”

My son, on the other hand, awakes the next morning and marvels at the movement of light and small fish within shallow water.

A rich opportunity…the Ark story, retold, thousands of years old, revisited as a base of dialogue among scientists and people of faith.

All of life sampled in one ship. One ship, with no apparent means of moving about. No sails. No engine. Only its own surface area, being pushed around by wind and water. All of life aboard, including humanity. Each trying to protect itself, carve out a niche. Some stronger than others. Some louder. Some more persistent. Others more patient. Some visible. Most not.

We focus on this ship. Why was it built? What runs it? Where has it come from? Where is it going? Can a steady course be steered long enough to avoid the common shoals ahead? Or is it there that we will rest, while the water recedes, life jumps ship, and we wait for the seas to rise again?

Considering the workings of dialogue among those people who work with the new biology and those of faith, while preparing the soil for this season’s family vegetable garden. Last year, a blight took out the tomato crop. This year I imagine the sungolds from years past.

I will be screening clips and speaking about this work-in-progress BEHOLD THE EARTH on Sunday at 2:45pm, at the Baird Auditorium of the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History. Please come if you are in the Washington area this weekend and curious to learn what the production is all about.

The talk and screening is part of the US Environmental Film Festival, in its 18th year. For those of you who are enthusiasts for films about the people/nature connection, there are 155 diverse films screening between March 16th and 28th. Special programs exist for children and are marked by a family-friendly symbol in the festival program.