The History of the Brook on Which I Live & Work: A Jackson Pollack Matrix of Natural Beauty
I’ve lived on this brook for the last 30 years, in a house built in the 1800s on stacked river stones, granite and brick. While rebuilding one of the bay windows, I discovered stacked newspapers, 2 inches thick and from the 1880s. They lined about 8 square feet of flooring, apparently to keep out the draft.
Surprisingly well preserved were the Boston Globe, the Springfield Herald, and other local newspapers. Reading a front page article discussing the 20 year anniversary of Abraham Lincoln‘s assassination, articles about early America, and old advertisements caused a new curiosity about America and it’s history. I was standing on it.
Flour was sold at my property, produced by the Gristmill next-door, which also rented space to two brothers to build melodeons. Jacob Estey, a clever plumber and business man, took over and created the Estey Organ Co. He built the business into the largest manufacturer of reed organs in the world. I’m planning to use one of their organs in a sculpture. A mile downstream the brook flows into the Connecticut River which enters Long Island sound, not far from the Statue of Liberty, the Freedom Tower and the Empire State Building. A lost ball that floats by my house and studio in early summer might be found floating by the Statue of Liberty in late summer.
200ft upstream from the studio
Fifty or more mills lined the banks of this brook, which was described as an open sewer in a newspaper article from 1907. Apparently increased healing has taken place, as the field biologists’ yearly assessments find all the necessary lifeforms that indicate a much healthier, cleaner brook. It’s beauty is astounding at times, the trout delicious.
To witness the gorgeous cedar wax wing flocks pass through, bald eagles on the hunt silently gliding upstream, bears, bobcats, great blue herons and hovering hummingbirds is immensely satisfying. Without clean tributaries this is not sustainable. Last winter a river otter popped it’s head up through a hole in the ice, I watched from the kitchen window and snapped a picture.
However, you can’t walk more than 50 or 100 feet in the brook before you find things like chassis from old cars and modern-day computer fragments spearing a Cheetos bag stuck in a cracked bowling ball. A cell phone with a shattered screen belly up reflecting the sun like a dead fish. A man’s underwear wrapped around a deteriorating garden rake, old bullets, wagon wheel parts, horseshoes and lumber mill saw blades.
Andy Warhol would be happy to know that Campbells, Coca Cola and Budweiser are all well represented in a Jackson Pollock matrix of natural beauty. Granite foundation stones that once supported the mills are scattered. I’ve dug up and removed wagon wheels, trolley axels, old motors, antique straight razors, animal traps, an antique meat grinder and a train track.
A bottle of Ms. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup from the 1800s, a nod to the opioid crisis. Ubiquitous are ceramic fragments of dinnerware and fine china. What appears to be flagrant dumping on the brooks bank include numerous large Dutch Boy paint cans labeled 88% composite white lead.
The industrial revolution collapsed the ecosystem on this brook and I imagine thousands of others like it. A murder scene, death by poison. I remember sewing an ecology patch on my blue jeans in the early 1970’s while contemplating DDT’s effect on Pelican eggs.
In the 1850s this little town was monetizing spring water and was famous for what was called, the water cure. Rich and famous people spent $10 a day, some for months, taking walks in the countryside, drinking spring water, bathing in it, and being wrapped in spring-water-soaked wool blankets. To their credit the water cure advocates preached healthy food and long walks.
My house and studio sit about 30 feet above the average high-water mark. From the kitchen window I can see the brook clearly downstream for about 200 feet. I live on the ground America developed, where this pristine brook did its part to provide power for innovation, build musical instruments, saw lumber ,grind flour and aid factory workers in building this country and their lives.
Like a thousand other brooks that provided abundance, it also became a depository for American sewage and trash to travel out and into the open ocean. This similar history in thousands of towns across America – and hundreds of thousands around the world – has decimated the natural environment. It has also created a true story of unbelievable wealth, unbelievable scientific discoveries, and above all, a steady and increasingly understandable march towards obliteration.
These destructive forces have given millions of people wonderful lives while billions continue to suffer. All of us, including the Earth is suffering from the offgassing from less than a few centuries of producing these innovations .The world’s survival may well be contingent on a yet to be discovered creativity, spirituality, science and technology that can braid with the cleansing power of the biosphere’s individual ecosystems. Art can inspire this process. I believe without the fertile ground the arts contribute we are doomed as I believe they are so closely tied to nest building . How do we mature the rapidly developing and destructive technosphere we find ourselves increasingly dependent on? How do we become content with living on a higher plane of caring about the future? How would this change our daily lives? Is it personal, what does internal innovation mean?
