Edges

--One thing I realized while driving up to Ripton the other day and watching the landscape was how important the boundaries are between woods and clearings.  Many kinds of wildlife thrive in this edge environment (woods for cover, openings let the sun in which provides better food selection).

--I use this edge too in my paintings.  I like the feeling that we are peering out from behind some brush and trees, hiding sort of, and quiet enough that the edge animals and birds don't notice us, watching people going about some business or other in the clearing beyond.

-- Robert Frost uses a similar strategy in his poems.  Many of them involve an observation of nature that is so close that it seems we are holding very still, listening to wind, bird song...  And behind these observations is always the world of human issues and concerns.