CALLING ALL ANGELS

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Memorial Day, postaweek2012, veterans

FIFTY SHADES OF GREEN

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Berkshire, cellist, Environment, Eugene Friesen, Great Barrington Massachusetts, Housatonic River, Massachusetts, nature, photography, postaweek2012, river cleanup, River Walk, Wendell Berry

It’s a simple affair. The River Walk is a greenway trail along the Housatonic River in the downtown center of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. It’s the work of 2,300 citizen volunteers who reclaimed the beauty of a “working river” abused by years of industrial waste and neglect.

It’s something to celebrate. Just meander along, don’t check your watch. Surrender to the magic that is the Housatonic River.  It flows 150 miles, passes through the Berkshires and western Connecticut and empties into Long Island Sound. It’s just the place to learn from nature. You’ll love what you see.

The Housatonic River is the natural Main Street of the town of Great Barrington, flowing gently as the life stream of the town.

W.E.B. Du Bois, Great Barrington native

Along the River Walk is the W.E.B. DuBois River Garden. It commemorates the Harvard-educated civil rights leader born two hundred feet away from “the golden river in the shadow of two great hills.”  He’s the most famous son of this quiet mountain hamlet. He loved the river and so do I. A place to just be and take in.

 

Rescue the Housatonic and clean it as we have never in all the years thought before of cleaning it… restore its ancient beauty; making it the center of a town, of a valley, and perhaps-who knows? of a new measure of civilized life.

W.E.B. Du Bois, 1930

Sit and muse on a low stone seat dedicated to the memory of Comstock Small, River Walk’s most valued volunteer. He devoted more than 1,000 hours over nine seasons.  There’s a guy who knows how to be in the here-and-now.

The river has a calming effect. You can’t speed up the current~ it follows its own rhythm and invades you with the same calm.

Part of the River Walk’s beauty lies in the rain garden. A catch basin slows and filters the runoff from a storm drain using wetland plants. Then the water slowly soaks into the soil.

Tucked into the hillside, a concrete sculpted Flowform receives water (from the storm drain), aerates and purifies it before it enters the river.  It’s mesmerizing, this river full of tiny miracles that demonstrate the precise efficiency of nature.

in 1886, electrical inventor William Stanley developed the alternating-current transformer. Stanley ran wires across the river to light stores and offices on Great Barrington’s Main Street. So began the efficient, long-distance transmission of power.

Fifty shades of green ~ the verdant mood that is the River Walk.  A tapestry of plant life woven together with insects, animals and birds. River Walk is a playpen of sorts. I am just in awe at the business of life going on at my feet.

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It’s cherishing something local that everybody can have in common, and to me a thing like that can’t go wrong.  It’s just a little narrow walkway, scaled right, but it’s an enormously suggestive thing.

(Wendell Berry, commenting on the river walk)

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Eugene Friesen’s CD, the song of rivers, is a tribute to the river in his hometown of Fresno. Friesen donated the proceeds of the album to the volunteers who built a riverside greenway of natural reserves and parks.  The song, Cove, is one of my favorites.  The other ten on this CD are beyond epic. I am a megamonstrous fan of this cerebral cellist.

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/efriesen2

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Like W.E.B. DuBois and Eugene Friesen, the folks of Great Barrington know a river doesn’t have to die.

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Toni 5/27/12

Weekly Photo Challenge: Summer

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Fifty shades, gardening, Green, little help from my friends, photography, postaweek2012, summer, weekly photo challenge

Summer is short, but stabbingly beautiful. Mine starts here… in the garden.

It’s a sweet and blessed season for me ~ I sit on my heels and play in the dirt.

Early on, I hoe, dig, water, transplant, weed, sow, clean, cut and clip in a slender, naked, brown patch of unpardonably pretty earth…anticipate fifty shades of green…

….and chase blackbirds away with a little help from my friends.

Where do you find summer?

Toni 5/25/12