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Landscapes and Riverscapes

of the Delaware River Valley

Portfolio One

WALPACK BEND

Walpack Bend is a remote section of the river, in feeling and in fact. After a long section of slow moving water, the river races through the broadening shallow bend. The air is fresh with pine, with a western feel because of the expansive and wilder nature of the location. The far bank has sections which have been scraped clean by high water through the turn. Wavelets surf back upstream, against the current.

GHOST FENCE

Leaving the fence slightly open, the residents left one afternoon. The fence bears the memory of openings and closings. Rusted and overgrown, the last opening suspended in time, ghosts pass freely. The trees keep company, arms outstretched. The house is nearby, the barns, chicken coop, silo all entwined, the fenced-in garden, and the long descending field bordered by magnificent pines. Ghosts are but the invisible energy of things that once were.

MAGIC KINGDOM

An elf sized forest, rimed by relative giants, centurion elders, behind which a scrim of morning dew is penetrated by sunlight, the deeper forest’s edge, and if you’ve been there an old winding path into the woods past a rock escarpment, a tree filled pond where few tarry. Mayapple has been used for a variety of medicinal purposes, originally by indigenous inhabitants and later by other settlers. The more we look carefully at nature the more magical and miraculous it is.