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| "Palm Tree" by Neisga and Owen Crawford |
First, there was this sculpture at the art center of a stainless steel palm tree with the splendid incongruity of tropicality amidst the region's cold-weather pines and maples.
Then, as my route home took me through the village of Bondville, there off to the side of the road were hundreds of rock sculptures in the river with people milling about--some wading in the water creating new cairns, others (motorists like me) standing around enjoying the scene.
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| Looking up-river |
Thinking she might be a local, I asked a woman, "Who's doing this, do you know?"
"I don't know," she said. "I'm from Maine." But, later, looking on-line I found the story. It all started a few weeks ago when, to assuage his grief after losing his dog, a man went out to the river over the course of several evenings and starting piling rocks on top of each other. Soon, townspeople joined in including families with children ... turning it into something of a community art project. But then one of the town's residents who thought the whole thing had gotten out of hand took a rake and in the course of just a couple of hours knocked everything down again.
But people got together and decided to rebuild. So it was that rebuilding that I was lucky enough to witness both by townspeople and by tourists who stopped to join in. (Surely some from the Pine Tree state since there were a number of parked motorcycles with Maine plates.)
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| Looking down-river |
As I then made my way home, I thought about the simple, lovely act of piling one stone on top of another. It seemed very Zen-like. Very transitory. Rather like building sand-castles that are all too soon washed away but that give both on-looker and builder a quiet satisfaction. They're there. And then they're gone. Work well done that brightens the moment.
No more than a mile from home, I found this beside the road.
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