The Hidden Pond Is One Year Old
And I just saw chives pushing up little green candles in celebration.
The Hidden Pond is a free weekly newsletter about my life as a studio artist and restorer of semi-wild habitat in midcoast Maine. If you love reading it, and want to support the work I do, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You can also share with a friend via email or social media.
This anniversary, I especially appreciate the subscribers who are just joining, and those of you who are renewing their support for another year. You rock!
The Hidden Pond’s actual birthday, March 7, got right by me this year, so here on March 16 (Saturday) I want to take a look back at that first post, where I took a chance on writing a more frequent and more engaged newsletter. It was a rookie post without the images that are now so much a part of what I share, and I had this to say:
Here on Substack, I’ll be posting once a week with what I hope is more flexibility than I have with a monthly newsletter and a website blog. I’m not giving those up! I just want the opportunity to share more often about my habitat work, the changes that have occurred over the years in my very wet and semi-wooded part of Maine, and the changes that are to come.
The natural world is always on the move. As it moves in fits and starts toward Spring, the birch grove still has snow on the ground. But the birch grove in the banner image didn’t exist when I first lived here. It only sprang up after I stopped mowing for a few years to see what would happen. It seems a good avatar for what I want Substack to be - a fertile ground for the many seed ideas I have as I go about the business of encouraging native plants, and making paintings and artist’s books that reflect our place on earth.
Of course before the year was out, I did give up both the blog and the monthly newsletter. If you go to my website now, you will find a link to this column and it’s no longer a newsletter. The banner image has changed, and so has what I write about. I’ve touched on everything from the native plants and related books and paintings that I promised, to reading runes, posting an odd dream about cows, compiling bits of family history, reading The Divine Comedy, conjuring up Hermes, and zenning on the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The foundations —habitat restoration and studio work — are the constants that anchor the thought balloons of my mind.
I used to plan in advance what I would write about. Now I just sit down and start typing.
Today is no exception. The morning was absolutely glorious. A cardinal was singing close to the house, and when I went outside, I found the first tiny greens of chives pushing up through last year’s dead leaves. A blue jay was imitating a squeaky gate. Geese flew by, honking as they went. I hauled the shop vac out onto the deck and sucked up all the asphalt particles from the old roof that had accumulated over the winter and into January when the new roof was installed. I moved a couple of chairs back onto the deck, ready for coffee, and put up a second hook for hanging baskets. Seen from inside the house, two hooks look way more enticing than one.
Then I couldn’t resist a walk down to the pond, and because I have a general rule about never going down to the end of the path* without pruner and gloves, I made a few stops along the way to chop and drop some renascent multiflora in the birch grove, and I brought some pussy willow branches up to the living room. Not much going on at the pond, other than a new pattern in the ripples now that the culverts and rocks have been rearranged.
So by the time I got around to sitting down at the Mac, I had maintenance on my mind.
As the Hidden Pond continues to grow, I’ll be using Substack’s tools to make some improvements to my magazine-style home page. I want to use Notes and Restacks more frequently. If you’re not familiar with them, check out the Nav bar. They are a way for me to share other writers who go more deeply into things I care about but don’t have the expertise to write about. Some current favorites are The Bees’ Knees, Lolly Jewett’s Substack about native plants and gardens; Letters from an American, a sane take on politics as history; Jason Anthony’s Field Guide to thee Anthropocene; and Austin Kleon. Austin is the author of Show Your Work and Steal Like an Artist. Because of him, I try to share something every day somewhere online or reach out with a handwritten note, and I recently broke a personal taboo and put myself on Threads to do a little promo there, along with the images I post on Instagram. Insta is image based, Threads more about using words. I am not nor will I ever again be on Facebook. There’s only so much time. I do what I love and what I love is longer-form writing for you.
I ran across a good quote attributed to Paracelsus. “Anyone who imagines that all fruits ripen at the same time as the strawberries knows nothing about grapes.” So here is a little patch of wild strawberries just getting started, and let us hope that like the grapes, my writing in the year ahead will provide some drinkable wine.
Who was Paracelsus? For a quick answer, have a look at the Encyclopedia Britannica.
From the Macaulay Library, here is the Blue Jay’s “pump handle” or “squeaky gate” call.
*“You must never go down to the end of the town, without consulting me.” He didn’t mention pruners, but that was James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree’s admonition to his mother, in “Disobedience,” by A.A. Milne. Here’s the entire poem, and what a naughty mother she was.
I would love to hear from you in the comments or by email - what do you enjoy about The Hidden Pond? What would you like to know more about? Substack has a lot of ways to engage readers - is there anything you think I’m missing?
And thank you again for reading. Do subscribe if you haven’t already done so — that way you can be sure of getting each and every post.
Hi, Dudley! I truly enjoy reading your Hidden Pond! Thanks for the card via snail-mail! I ordered some Ruta Maya coffee beans and Cynthia and I are both hooked! It is a great cup-o’-Joe!
One of my favorite poems:
J.J.
M.M.
W.G.Du P.
Took great
C/O his M*****
Though he was only 3.
Congratulations on a year of Substack!