Our timelapse and landscape talent Eleanor is also a history buff. She made some observations about the stonewalls that we found in South Hope with the last timelapse we shot. Building stonewalls are experiences of Americana, of who we are and where we came from, in the big picture of the stone and wood we’ve literally held in our hands over the years. E.O. Wilson differentiates the living creation from the non-living creation. With this lead, my interests in this filmic inquiry are primarily with the living. But the American divorce from nature runs deeper than that.

FROM ELEANOR: “Rarely in need of replacement, constructing stone walls were massive undertakings. This is one reason why they are so familiar in the earliest settled regions of the country, like South Hope Maine, where the frontier mentality had yet to take hold: unlike their children and grandchildren, these farmers expected to spend their entire lives on a single plot of land. A worker could lay between twenty four and sixty four feet of wall per day, assuming that the stones, or “fieldstones,” as they were called, had already been transported to the building site.

Historian John Stilgoe notes that wooden fences, which became the popular barrier among farmers outside of the northeastern US, were replaced every fifteen to thirty years. When in the early nineteenth century, depleted woodlots triggered a timber shortage, it was the stone wall laying farmers that had enough wood to keep their fires burning. Of course, it was also these northernmost people who, hibernating from frigid temperatures, were most in need of firewood.”

For more information on the life and times of stonewalls, see: Robert Thorson, Stone by Stone: The Magnificent History in New England’s Stone Walls (Walker & Company, 2004).
John R. Stilgoe, Common Landscape of America, 1580-1845 (Yale University Press, 1983).

Another blog entry from Eleanor…

“As the sun rose red this morning on the eve of an approaching hurricane that is making its way up the edges of the Eastern seaboard, I am reminded of the feeling of the familiar “calm before the storm,” and the anticipation of the violent weather that might follow.

While today I look to the concrete weather models and primarily recognize storm systems as scientific acts of nature, in 1620 William Bradford looked elsewhere for understanding. He recorded how after one particular storm subsided, “the lord filled their afflicted minds with such comforts as every one cannot understand, and in the end brought them to their desired Heaven, where the people came flocking admiring their deliverance.” Bradford’s Mayflower crew saw the weather on their Atlantic crossing as an act of God.

Perhaps it is in the eye of the storm that I have the potential to be humbled by the experiences of my forbearers, experiences that were carried out not on the faith of forecasts but on faith alone.”

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.

Beholding the earth in November and early December has become a chilly task here on the Maine coast.

Especially for my son Will. He stuck his fingers deep into the soil of the garden and successfully dug out this spectacular parsnip for the Thanksgiving table.

Passed my local dragonfly consultant Bob Grobe on November 23rd in the market parking lot. He reported a sighting -on the previous day- of a male Autumn Meadowhawk (Sympetrum vicinum) dragonfly basking in the sun along the Megunticook River, despite the 48 degrees Fahrenheit temperature. It may be a record for the last living dragon in these parts!

November is a restless month. I often recall that this is the month that inspired Melville’s Ishmael to leave the farm in the late 1800′s and head to sea.