BETWEEN WATERS

From My New Book, RUNNING DEEP:

2012-03-17T13:27:00.006-07:00

excerpt from STRIDING THE SHORES OF AN INLAND SEA

...My urge for off-road running is satisfied, if only briefly, by the rocky, rooted trail up into the cliffs at Oakledge Park. Here, I might be forgiven for thinking I’m at the seashore somewhere in northern Maine as I run on shaded, pine-needle-cushioned trails, or leap from rock to rock while waves break, wetting my shoes. At times, the narrow trail comes dangerously close to the exposed red quartzite cliffs. It’s a sheer drop into the lake from here, and I have to balance my greed for the amazing maritime view with a more pressing need to focus on the slippery, wet rock beneath my feet.
Out there in the lake below, between Shelburne Point and pine-clad Juniper Island, sits a massive rock that in Western Abenaki tradition is considered the most important feature on Lake Champlain. Odzihozo-- Rock Dunder to the “English” -- is the creator/transformer in Western Abenaki cosmology. After he created the world--and, most importantly, Lake Champlain-- he shaped himself into this rock, where he could rest for eternity and forever admire his work.
Time after time, as I run along the edges of Burlington Bay, I find myself looking toward Odzihozo; as if to get my bearings; as if to get myself centered somehow within the huge sweep of history and landscape this shoreline reveals. Perhaps it’s fitting that an ancient creator deity would be ever-present, yet ever-changing; appearing slightly different from day to day, from hour to hour and with each shift in the light, the weather, the angle of view.
Leaving the shade of the cliffs, I turn around and head north for a few miles. By now the sun is high and the day is hotter. I watch the silver wakes of boats limn the deep blue water. By now I’m sweating hard, and ready for refreshment. At North Beach I take a quick swim, then rent a kayak for an hour’s paddle out around Lone Rock Point to Apple Tree Bay. After that, it’s time for a lunch of energy bar and sports drink, and some time spent basking in the sun.
Burlington Bay is sublime in the sunshine. But the towering afternoon clouds rolling in are magnificent, too. They filter the lowering, slanting light, sending green-gold rays beaming across the mountaintops, the water, and the sails that dot the horizon.
Though my legs are still a little tired, I feel, in the cooling air, a surprising resurgence of energy. Suddenly, it crosses my mind that the ferry across the broad lake runs all day and into the evening. A new temptation appears before me. After all, I could make it to the dock in time to catch the next crossing, and treat myself to another run, over on the New York side...

by Kevin Macneil Brown

Print copies available here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/kevin-macneil-brown/running-deep/paperback/product-18872627.html;jsessionid=723B8B748B1993E1BBEA46680381E1D8

Kindle Edition: http://www.amazon.com/Running-Deep-Meditations-Through-ebook/dp/B0078F0K6E/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1332017044&sr=1-1

Secret Shore

2012-03-05T04:27:00.007-08:00

Secret Shore 3- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, 2012

Lake, Mountains, Changing Sky

2012-02-19T13:09:00.000-08:00

Changing Skies, Adirondacks, and Lake Champlain- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, February 2012

Lake Champlain, January Glim

2012-01-28T05:00:00.000-08:00

Lake Champlain, January Glim-- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, 2012

Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks, Cascading Winter Light

2012-01-21T06:04:00.000-08:00

l

LAKE CHAMPLAIN AND THE ADIRONDACKS, CASCADING WINTER LIGHT
painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, 2012.

The view from the rocks at Oakledge in South Burlington, Vermont, has become for me a vital center: ever-changing; ever-revealing the compelling mysteries of water, mountains; time, space, spirit. This painting comes from a wind-swept afternoon when the water, sky, and land were saying something other-worldly to me.
-KMB

Winter Passage

2012-01-07T08:50:00.000-08:00

Winter Passage- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, 2012

Champlain Islands, Early December

2011-12-10T05:39:00.000-08:00

Champlain Islands, Early December--Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, 2011

The end of a year is approaching, with winter light and shadow finding-- and changing-- the shores and waters of Lake Champlain. I would like to take the time to thank all of you who journey with me in image, word, and music, sharing the mystery, beauty, and inspiration of this amazing inland sea.

-KMB

Winooski River, November

2011-11-15T03:10:00.000-08:00

Winooski River, November--
Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor and pencil on paper.

The Winooski flows to Lake Champlain. It has become my home river. This fall, its bends and turns and light and shadow have called me to explore and paint it often.

Lake Light, Early November

2011-11-04T02:54:00.001-07:00

LAKE LIGHT, EARLY NOVEMBER- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor and pencil on paper.

November is one of my favorite months for painting. I love the way the light--and colors-- are low and stark; under big skies and attenuated in time, they seem to be all the more precious.

Passage, Bitawbagwa

2011-10-10T02:27:00.000-07:00

PASSAGE, BITAWBAGWA- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper,

October, 2011

September Afternoon on the Water...

2011-09-29T05:57:00.001-07:00

In the late afternoon of that last day on the lake, Shawn went down to the creek to make a few final casts with rod and reel. I took the sea nymph out for one last run before we took her out of the water.
I moved across the smooth waters of the bay side of the point, while gulls and a massive, soaring osprey moved through the sky above me.
Rounding the point, I entered the broad lake. The water here was a darker blue; choppy and cold-looking compared to the blue-green bay. The sun was bright. But at its low and slanting September angle it could do little to offset the stiff lake breeze, so I was glad for the old gray hooded sweatshirt I wore over a white tee-shirt and washed-to-paper-thin khaki shorts.
I steered the sea nymph southwest through the deepest waters of the lake. There was little boat traffic today; I passed only the ferry Valcour, with her wide silver wake and her bands of waving tourists on the deck.
I’d been out about three quarters of an hour when the houses and condos and steeples of Burlington grew larger in my vision. I steered the sea nymph south, running just outside the long white granite vertebrae of the Burlington Harbor breakwater, into the opening of Shelburne Bay. Juniper Island, with its red quartzite cliffs, tall dark pines, and the ancient iron skeleton of an abandoned lighthouse just barely peering above the trees, floated off to the west.
I had brought a small filet of smoked trout and a packet of pipe tobacco along for the voyage. But they weren’t for me.
Outside the entrance of the bay there arose a huge reddish-hued rock, shaped somewhat like an open sail. Rock Dunder, most called it; but its real name was Odzihozo: God, the Creator and Transformer, to the Abenaki who were native to this lake and its islands and eastern shore.
I had learned first-hand what this rock meant, from a man who had died over a year earlier, a poet and fisherman named Virgil Montane.
Montane, an Abenaki Indian who had grown up on this lake, had left it behind for the sea; had, despite his love for the place he called home, exiled himself for far too many years, out of deep shame for his imagined failures in the Second World War.
I had been hired by his aged mother to find him, and I had succeeded, something that surprises me to this day. After I’d found him, the ailing Virgil had back with me: home to die; of liver cancer. His mother, a wonderful, formidable, magical old woman named Helen Lacroix, had died only a few months after Virgil. She had lived a hundred and two years.
Virgil had told me what his father had once told him: That this island of rock was the resting form of the Creator, the Maker--- the one who, after making the work of making the world of waterways and landforms, had come to rest in the place he liked best of all…
So I was here to pay respects, and to ask for help.
The trout and tobacco were offerings, to be placed on a natural rock shelf. I anchored close-by to the rock. Drifting a little with the wind and waves, I looked toward where the sun was setting-- it was almost the autumn equinox, I remembered--in the sky above the gnarled and craggy, blue-gray Adirondacks.
The low sun made the water sparkle with dancing, breathing gems of light; and it seemed-- perhaps it was a trick of that light, or of the motion of water--that Odzihozo was dancing and breathing also, though at a slower, an almost imperceptibly slower, pace.
So I said some words aloud as I stood in the shallows and placed my offerings.
“I’ve come, Creator, to ask your help. Once I found one of your people who was lost to himself and those who loved him. And you helped me find him. Now there’s another who is lost to those who love her. Perhaps she is no longer even in this world. But I ask you to reveal her presence to us, that our worries can begin to be healed...”
Silence followed my words. Or what seemed like silence. But before long I was aware of the sound of lapping water against rock and hull, of the eerie, almost bell-like whisper of wind through the wings of a low-flying pair of canada geese.
Then there was a shrieking laugh from the sky overhead. It was an osprey-- the fish hawk, who with his bright eyes could spot a fish from far above, could dive feet-first, and with fierce talons pull up his flopping, glistening meal.
Virgil Montane had seen the osprey as his familiar, his spirit animal. I took the osprey’s arrival as a very good omen.

--excerpt from BRIGHT PATH, DARK THICKET (A Liam Dutra New England Mystery, By Kevin Macneil Brown.

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/bright-path-dark-thicket/17176193

Kindle edition at Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Bright-Path-Dark-Thicket-ebook/dp/B005ONM5L0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317329832&sr=

Lake Champlain, August

2011-08-23T03:38:00.000-07:00

Lake Champlain, August- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, acrylic on canvas, 2011

Something deep happens when I breathe in this place...

2011-08-07T03:33:00.001-07:00

photographs by Kevin Macneil Brown, 2011

Lake Champlain, Dawn, Late July

2011-07-29T02:14:00.000-07:00

Lake Champlain, Dawn, Late July - painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, gouache on paper, 2011

Some Pages From my Lake Champlain Sketchbooks

2011-07-21T03:05:00.000-07:00

Island Passage, June Morning

2011-06-30T03:25:00.001-07:00

Island Passage, June Morning-- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper,

June 2011

north beach drift 2

2011-06-16T17:59:00.000-07:00

Beginning, arriving; the thickening of all

blessings; the fullness of this

sky full of migrating hawks

all day, once the morning

finds its zenith.

A streak of unknown

light on the lake

is un-remarked but not unnoticed

in the slash of seams at

the edge of uncountable

years.

And those who sailed and

paddled these bays, coves, creeks,

passages

so long ago

have left a flash of thoughts--

no more words or marks--

but nonetheless a vividness

of presence,

an imprint.

Today, tall sedges

beyond

the spillway sway…and

gray water stirs

a sleeping idea

at the source of all reflection.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://kevinmacneilbrown.bandcamp.com/track/north-beach-drift-first-day"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;north beach drift (first day) by Kevin Macneil Brown&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

June Dusk, Lake Champlain

2011-06-10T02:50:00.000-07:00

June Dusk, Lake Champlain

Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, 2011

Lake Champlain Liminal, Late Spring, Dusk

2011-06-02T15:06:00.000-07:00

Lake Champlain Liminal, Late Spring, Dusk

Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor and gouache on paper, 2011

North Beach Drift

2011-05-04T17:54:00.000-07:00

North Beach Drift
Photograph by Kevin Macneil Brown

Beginning, arriving; the thickening of all
blessings; the fullness of this
sky full of migrating hawks
all day, once the morning
finds its zenith.

A streak of unknown
light on the lake
is un-remarked but not unnoticed
in the slash of seams at
the edge of uncountable
years.

And those who sailed and
paddled these bays, coves, creeks,
passages
so long ago
have left a flash of thoughts--
no more words or marks--
but nonetheless a vividness
of presence,
an imprint.

Today, tall sedges
beyond
the spillway sway…and
gray water stirs
a sleeping idea
at the source of all reflection.

- Kevin Macneil Brown

Lake Champlain Meditation

2011-04-20T03:42:00.000-07:00

Water, Mountains, Juniper Island: Lake Champlain Meditation

Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,

watercolor on paper, April 2011

Lake Champlain Liminal

2011-03-24T03:09:00.000-07:00

Lake Champlain Liminal
Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
acrylic on canvas, March 2011

2011-01-20T17:22:00.000-08:00

Lake Light, November

2010-11-21T05:17:00.000-08:00

LAKE LIGHT, NOVEMBER (Quiet Waters 9)
Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, acrylic on canvas, 2010)

Lake Light, October

2010-10-07T03:07:00.000-07:00

LAKE LIGHT, OCTOBER- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor on paper, October, 2010

Painted on the boat:
Blue circles, lines, and
Contours to reflect

The journey,
The opening of space
That the prow,
Cutting gently,
Seeks and sublimates

*
The sky was a sea
For birds and remembrance
In high September

So many strange colors:
Pines and maples and oaks and
Hemlocks; the sharp and
Piercing red
Of berries on mountain ash.

He had brought corn and
Salt, a small flask of
Trader’s whiskey;
Flint and bacon grease,
Line, weight, bait….

*
River, you have
Brought me here, he
Said,
Then smiled and shivered.

Stars rose like
everything must

Now October
Shimmered
On the skin of these waters.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

Quiet Waters, Part Three

2010-08-23T04:04:00.001-07:00

QUIET WATERS 6- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor and graphite on paper, August 201o

Quiet Waters, Part Two

2010-08-01T14:29:00.000-07:00

QUIET WATERS 5, QUIET WATERS 4- paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown,

watercolor on paper, 2010

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My work this summer on the Quiet Waters paintings has been accompanied by the composition of this long-form soundscape piece for lap steel and laptop.

I invite you to listen and take a contemplative journey along the shoreline and on the water:
<a href="http://kevinmacneilbrown.bandcamp.com/album/finding-quiet-waters-ep">Finding Quiet Waters by Kevin Macneil Brown</a>

The Quiet Waters Series

2010-07-08T03:49:00.000-07:00

QUIET WATERS 2, QUIET WATERS 1-Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown,

watercolor on paper, 2010

This summer I'm working on a new series of paintings inspired by the contemplative energies I often find rising within me in at the places where water, sky, and land meet. Here are the first two. Making these images is an active meditation for me; a way to conjure the ineffable connection I feel with these places.

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(For information about purchasing prints and originals, or to enquire about my work and projects, please contact me at liminaleditions@gmail.com, or visit kevinmacneilbrown.wordpress.com )

June Sails, Juniper Island

2010-06-23T10:15:00.000-07:00

When I engage with Lake Champlain's waters, sky, and shoreline, I often feel, all at once, both a deep inner calm and a vibrant sense of energy. My intent in this painting was to express these sensations: the wide and deep spaciousness of the lakescape; the movement and energy of light on water, wind in sails.

-KMB

Early Summer, Lake Champlain

2010-06-07T17:15:00.001-07:00

EARLY SUMMER, LAKE CHAMPLAIN- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor and graphite on paper, May, 2010)

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...I’m grateful and awed every time I engage with Lake Champlain; with its ever-changing surface, shores, and depths offering knowledge and mystery alike.
-KMB, from "Power of Place"

You can read the entire short essay at :

http://voicesforthelake.org/items/show/4

From the Cove

2010-05-18T05:50:00.000-07:00

(From the Cove, Lake Champlain,

Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, 2010 )

--------------------------------------------------------------
From the Cove, Lake Champlain

My father left
this cove in,
what was it,
1833?

Now I’m here again,
three decades on,

seeing the lake through his eyes:

Water always
in motion;
though also, at times,
becalmed.

He had spoken more than
once of season’s changing,
bringing a rain of
birds across the
sky and on the water.

He had also said to me:
“Look at all
that deep blue lake;
those distant ghost-grey mountains today;
the dark green forest sharp to the sky --
but sweet silver shallows
at home here
at the cove…”

This was the place
he always
struck out from,
every morning,
year after year.

As I write these words
a fish-hawk swoops,
hits the water hard,
rises
with gleam of
catch in talons.

So, something
still here
of my father, then,
meeting my return.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

------------------------------------------
Among the many resonances I experience in the presence of Lake Champlain are those that vibrate with a sense of the past. When I finished the painting above in April, I knew there was a story that went with it, but I was not sure exactly what it was. I did have a sense that there was something sort of 19th century about the image.

I returned to the lake shore along Burlington Bay recently for a day of walking, thinking, sketching--experiencing the lake and its horizons as fully as I could. I was riding the bus home when the poem arrived, and I got the first draft down, knowing that I'd found the story to go with the painting.

Across April

2010-04-27T10:54:00.001-07:00

LAKE CHAMPLAIN APRIL II, I
Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor on paper, 2010

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A whole day
in one place:

the edge of
red quartzite
cliffs,

and from here
I can watch
the changing weather
coming for miles.

There it is!
A thin bright line,
slow-moving, silver
across the broad lake, the
flint-hard, sky-flecked waves.

-Kevin Macneil Brown
April, 2010

From Oakledge, April

2010-04-11T17:59:00.000-07:00

FROM OAKLEDGE - Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,

watercolor on paper, 2010

-----------------------------------------------------------

April, and darkness falls at Oakledge.

And out across the water of sky, the sky of water, one last
glint of daylight finds the island,
then is taken in to the heart of dark spruce and shadowed pine.

It’s these vibrations and striations
in time and light that
I live for here at the lakeshore.

For instance, right now,
when lost soundings in fathoms return to memory,
and old bridge footings rise again.

As for me, like these ancient red rocks,
I only seem to be still.

And what first arrives as twilight quiet
is soon to come alive

with wing-beat, ripple, wave on shifting stone.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

Spring Passage

2010-03-29T13:32:00.001-07:00

SPRING PASSAGE (detail) Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
acrylic on canvas, 2010

Lake Champlain, Early Spring Evening

2010-03-08T11:07:00.001-08:00

Lake Champlain, Early Spring Evening (detail)
Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
acrylic on canvas, 2010

Season's Edge/Winter Light ( Part Two)

2010-02-24T10:23:00.000-08:00

Lake Champlain: Winter, Late Afternoon
Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, acrylic on canvas, 2010

Season's Edge/ Winter Light

2010-02-14T06:16:00.000-08:00

SEASON'S EDGE, WATER'S EDGE;

WINTER LIGHT, LAKE CHAMPLAIN (detail)

Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown, acrylic on canvas, 2010)

Sky and Lake, December

2009-12-14T10:44:00.000-08:00

(Sky and Lake, December- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor on paper, 2009)

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To all who have looked at, read, and listened to the works here at BETWEEN WATERS this past year, I give my sincere thanks.

I will be back in 2010 with more journeys and meditations inspired by Lake Champlain and the power of place.

-kmb

November Poem and Paintings

2009-11-12T06:21:00.000-08:00

( Lake Champlain, Autumn Light;

Lake, Island, Clouds

Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown,

watercolor on paper, 2009)

----------------------------

Barge Canal, November

Having found
Love in the loomings
Of blue, layered
Mountains

Having tasted
Freshness and renewal
In the ecstatic gray waters of
Now, November

I stand amazed
Where silver
Sunlight finds
Wavetops, then seeks,
Going deeper,
The sounded bottom:
Ledge and sand and
Ripples, unseen,
Of energy—

But felt in my own
Moving waters.

Sedges holding secrets,
Today the Barge Canal
Smells like split pine and
Bleeding poplar.

Across, on the other shore,
Birch leaves glow with
Yellow-gold
resonance, holding on,

For now

in wind across water.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

Two October Paintings

2009-10-14T09:31:00.000-07:00

( October Beach 2 ( Acrylic on canvas),

Toward Isle La Motte (watercolor on paper)

Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown, 2009)

North Beach, End of Summer

2009-09-22T03:45:00.000-07:00

North Beach, End of Summer (Burlington, Vermont)
Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, acrylic on canvas, 2009)

Lakescape/ Skyscape/ Soundscape

2009-09-14T14:45:00.001-07:00

This video combines paintings and soundwork that I made during the spring and summer of 2009. It is intended as a contemplative evocation of Lake Champlain in the early morning: sounds, sights, and textures of a time and place where water, light, listening, and perception might come quietly together.
-KMB

Crossing the Lake in September

2009-09-08T07:53:00.001-07:00

(Early September, Lake Champlain from Burlington Bay-
Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, acrylic on canvas, 2009)

FROM THE FERRY VALCOUR, LAKE CHAMPLAIN

Blue Sky
Broken clouds

Dark wing shadow
above
shimmer

(Crossing the
lake in September,
inner silence)

Scumbled blessings
Contrast of
Light and shadow

Reflected back,
the True World of

Love, that silence:

Blue water breathing.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

from THE MALLEABLE JOURNEY: POEMS (Liminal Editions, 2009)

Available at: http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-malleable-journey/7522632

Across Waves, Across Surface Tension (Poem and Painting)

2009-08-19T11:56:00.000-07:00

( Shelburne Bay, August - Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,

acrylic on canvas, 2009)

-----------------------

Ancient strength
and curve of flow of
waters between

Lone Rock Point’s
time-stilled geology

and
open arms of
Appletree Bay.

South, across waves,
across surface tension

Odzihozo
(the massive Rock Dunder)

changing, becomes,

in changing light
and beyond long journey,

a gray, weathered sail
or resting eagle.

- Kevin Macneil Brown

Summer: Water, Land, and Light

2009-07-28T17:21:00.001-07:00

( Odzihozo, Sailboat, Juniper Island (Lake Champlain) --Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, 2009)

At the Lake Champlain shore, water, land, and sky come together in ways that create constantly changing light, shifting vistas. Even from a single vantage point, the total effect--of color, of atmosphere, of dimensions and spatial relationships between objects and landmarks-- can change radically from moment to moment. Noticing this, I can't help but think of Odzihozo, the Abenaki creator and transformer, present visibly now as the majestic rock in the bay.
The painting above is an attempt to capture a moment on the lake: a recent July morning just after fog had lifted to reveal a shimmering and paradoxical combination of haze and luminosity.

Invocation: Lake Champlain

2009-07-16T05:25:00.000-07:00

Between Waters I , Between Waters II- Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown,

watercolor on paper, acrylic on canvas, 2009)

INVOCATION: LAKE CHAMPLAIN

from stone sky mountains
these waters
run together here

into the long,
Almost-always
blue lake ringed
with russet rock, cool green islands

Lamoille
Winooski
Otter Creek

Missisquoi
are a few of the names
given to sacred waters
moving into this
strong confluence

and the long view
in all directions
as if trying to take in the entire way:
Saint Lawrence to Atlantic via cold Gaspe

here today, the hollow
Wind-borne sound
Of new and ancient waves

echoing calls of
ducks and geese and loon
scattered in arrival,
departure; migration

we might well choose now
to welcome the always
of eagle, heron,
osprey

returning to find the same
ever-changing place that we ourselves
behold and become

at the heart of these
pulsing, shimmering waters
this living inland sea.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

July, 2009

from THE MALLEABLE JOURNEY

available here:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-malleable-journey/7522632

Lifting Fog/ Searching for Ferris Rock (Painting and Soundwork)

2009-07-07T04:49:00.000-07:00

(Lifting Fog, Lake Champlain- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
acrylic on canvas, 2009)

Lake in Early Summer Light

2009-06-28T05:04:00.000-07:00

Lake in Early Summer Light- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,

watercolor on paper, June 2009)

Champlain and Islands

2009-06-16T03:42:00.000-07:00

( Sunset, Lake Champlain--Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
acrylic on canvas, 2009)

Champlain (160?)

Islands {Piscataqua- (Shoals),

Three Turk’s Heads,
Cape Ann}

Saudade , 7 years

_________________

Osprey, strong and swift
to delve....

( reaching under,
pulling out and up...

-Kevin Macneil Brown

from NORTH COAST DREAMING/LUMINIST DIARY (Liminal Editions, 2008)

availalable at Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, Vermont

and at:http://www.amazon.com/Luminist-Diary-North-Coast-Dreaming/dp/B002AD9DKI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245149580&sr=8-1

Watershed

2009-06-01T03:05:00.000-07:00

( April , Odzihozo with Waters and Mountains, Lake Champlain-
Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, acrylic on canvas, 2007)

Cedar flute
clamshell holding smoldering wood
sharp knife worn around the neck
(these the things thought to be carried by an Abenaki hunter)
Winooski intervale and just above-- railroad tracks you walked on, the river widening out below, beginning a meander, newly fecund on the way to the big lake-- marks early settlements of original people of
DAWN LAND
SALMON HOLE

ODZIHOZO ( the one who made himself)
made the vein-like tracings of all the world's waterways
web of rivers, ponds, lakes in the NW country
his ultimate creation was the big lake he rested upon, in the form of a ROCK above
WATER
still there, looming, in fog or ice or clear sailing....

...made by the one who made himself- -who rests satisfied, at peace, with a view for all time of the edge of his world.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

from "Watershed--Letter to John Puleio, Number Two", published in NORTH COAST DREAMING/LUMINIST DIARY (Liminal Editions, 2008.)

Available at Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, Vermont, or here:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/luminist-diary-north-coast-dreaming/2152993

Running Along the Shores of an Inland Sea

2009-05-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

RUNNING ALONG THE SHORES OF AN INLAND SEA

By Kevin Macneil Brown

(This article originally appeared, in slightly different form, in NEW ENGLAND RUNNER magazine)

My first running encounter with the Lake Champlain waterfront in Burlington, Vermont nearly fifteen years ago was, well, painful. The final miles of the Vermont City Marathon followed the Bikeway here along the shoreline of Appletree and Burlington Bays, taking in stunning lake and mountain vistas. But in my bonked, wiped-out, crashed-the-wall condition, I could barely register all that majestic beauty. Somehow, though, I knew I’d have to come back, to explore this shoreline under more relaxed circumstances. As it turns out, repeat excursions have opened up a runner’s paradise that also happens to be rich in scenery, nature, and the traces of a thrilling maritime history.
And running doesn’t get much better than it does this breezy, sunny morning, after lake fog has lifted to reveal clear blue waters and wrap-around mountains. Lake Champlain stretches south to north for 120 miles, from southern Vermont to Canada, with the high, craggy Adirondack country of New York at its western border, the long ridgeline of the highest Green Mountains of Vermont a few miles inland to the east.
I’m drinking all of this in as I run on a narrow dirt trail beside the paved bike path. The Bikeway runs through two towns and covers more than 12 miles, from its start at Oakledge Park in Burlington to its terminus at the end of the Colchester Causeway, and there are plenty of additional side trails and detours possible. Each mile, each turn along the shore, seems to offer a new perspective: a moving meditation on mountains, water, and open sky.
And on history, too. This now-peaceful lake was once the “northwest coast” of New England, a waterway crucial not only to settlement and commerce, but also invasion and war. For generations, Abenaki and Iroquois Indians lived near and traveled on these waters, fishing and hunting the islands, shores, and open waters. Samuel de Champlain showed up in 1609, down from New France (Canada) on a voyage of exploration. Champlain, a fairly reasonable and temperate fellow by most accounts, commented in his journal on the beauty of the mountain-ringed lake and its many green islands. But he was also the first European to use deadly force in this region: he made friends with his northern Indian guides, and joined them in a raid against the Iroquois to the south, putting his gun to work in the killing of enemy warriors.
The next two centuries saw more war and bloodshed on Lake Champlain, including the first naval battle in our country’s history, when Benedict Arnold led a roughhewn, out-gunned, and out-numbered fleet against the British in the waters off Valcour Island in October of 1776. Though the patriots lost the battle, they staved off a British advance from the north, buying time for the nascent American Revolution. Not far from the site of that battle--well north and west, by water, of where I’m running today--cannon thundered and blood flowed again in 1814 at Plattsburgh Bay. The big guns could be heard across the lake here in Burlington that September day; That night every bell in the city rang out at the news of British defeat and American victory.
Running past the glittering boats moored in the harbor, I’m reminded of these deadly battles by the arresting sight of the Lake Champlain Navy Memorial. Rising from the center of a carved stone compass is a statue of a man known as the Lone Sailor, duffel bag beside him, eyes toward the lake and the mountainous horizon. I can’t help but stop for a silent moment, remembering the struggles of the past and giving thanks that we’ve found more pacific uses for Lake Champlain these days: the sails that fill the horizon here today might offer adventure, but not war.
The Burlington waterfront is well-traveled by cyclists, rollerbladers, walkers, and runners. And heading either north or south along the Bikeway offers sights worth seeing. To the north, the sands of North Beach and Leddy Park offer a chance for some rare Vermont beach running. An arching bridge over the wide mouth of the Winooski river spans a view of waters and wetlands rich with birdlife: heron, sandpiper, osprey; the ever-present skeins of canada geese and long-necked, shadow-black cormorants.
Just past this lush Winooski River delta, after a short run through a lakeside neighborhood and a pleasant stretch that follows a tree-shaded stretch of trail (in the town of Colchester now), comes the gem of the Bikeway. The Colchester Causeway is an abandoned railroad bed, built on white marble boulders, that curves, open and exposed, for more than two miles out into the lake. Running on this narrow path, surrounded by the blue-green lake, is pure exhilaration: a liminal journey as close to running on water as I have ever experienced. On calm days, waves lap at the stone causeway gently. On windy days, the waves crash and break with some force, adding a few thrills to the day’s run. At the end of the causeway, a short channel--the Cut, as locals call it-- allows for boat traffic, and Vermont’s Grand Isle beckons from the other side. (A bike ferry runs across the Cut on August weekends, and extended ferry service is planned for the future.)
But for today’s run I’m heading south. I stride past the busy harbor and waterfront: Perkins’s Pier, with its array of moored fiberglass and wooden craft sparkling in the sun; the Burlington ferry dock, where the car-ferry VALCOUR is just heading out for New York across the lake, blowing her deep-toned horn.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that a waterway so active with shipping has seen its share of wrecks, that the lake floor is littered with hundreds of lost vessels. One of them, the GENERAL BUTLER, lies submerged just inside the breakwater right here in the harbor, in 40 feet of water. Carrying a heavy load of quarried marble, the schooner went down in 1876, when a winter gale slammed it into the stone breakwater. Those aboard leaped onto the breakwater, and were rescued, shivering, from their brutally windswept and wave-battered sanctuary. Today, the sunken schooner is a Mecca for wreck divers; a silent ghost, preserved in cold, clear water beneath the hulls of the living boats that pass above her.
Within minutes, I pass the railyards and the ancient bridge at the inlet to the dark and eerie-looking Pine Street Barge Canal, where faint traces still remain of how this city must have looked and felt and smelled during the 1800s. Back then, Burlington was a thriving port in the lumber trade, a rough- and- ready terminal for the shipping and storage of acres and acres of felled and sawn northern forest. The working waterfront has a different face now, of course, catering to tourists, boaters, and outdoors enthusiasts rather than loggers and canal-barge captains.
After a while I find ways to vary the terrain beneath my feet: I jump off the path and run along rock seawalls; I dig my shoes into loose sand on a short stretch of urban beach scattered with driftwood hurdles at water’s edge. All the while I feast my senses on the sweeping bay views before, behind, and around me, on the variety of people who use this path every day.
My urge for off-road running is satisfied, if only briefly, by the rocky, rooted trail up into the cliffs at Oakledge Park. Here, I might be forgiven for thinking I’m at the seashore somewhere in northern Maine as I run on shaded, pine-needle-cushioned trails, or leap from rock to rock while waves break, wetting my shoes. At times, the narrow trail comes dangerously close to the exposed red sandstone cliffs. It’s a sheer drop into the lake from here, and I have to balance my greed for the amazing maritime view with a more pressing need to focus on the slippery, wet rock beneath my feet.
Out there in the lake below, between Shelburne Point and pine-clad Juniper Island, sits a massive rock that in Western Abenaki tradition is considered the most important feature on Lake Champlain. Odzihozo-- Rock Dunder to the “English” -- is the creator/transformer in Western Abenaki cosmology. After he created the world--and, most importantly, Lake Champlain-- he shaped himself into this rock, where he could rest for eternity and forever admire his work.
Time after time, as I run along the edges of Burlington Bay, I find myself looking toward Odzihozo; as if to get my bearings; as if to get myself centered somehow within the huge sweep of history and landscape this shoreline reveals. Perhaps it’s fitting that an ancient creator deity would be ever-present, yet ever-changing: appearing slightly different from day to day, from hour to hour and with each shift in the light, the weather, the angle of view.
Leaving the shade of the cliffs, I turn around and head north for a few miles. By now the sun is high and the day is hotter. I watch the silver wakes of boats limn the deep blue water. By now I’m sweating hard, and ready for refreshment. At North Beach I take a quick swim, then rent a kayak for an hour’s paddle out around Lone Rock Point to Apple Tree Bay. After that, it’s time for a lunch of energy bar and sports drink, and some time spent basking in the sun.
Burlington Bay is sublime in the sunshine. But the towering afternoon clouds rolling in are magnificent, too. They filter the lowering, slanting light, sending green-gold rays beaming across the mountaintops, the water, and the sails that dot the horizon.
Though my legs are still a little tired, I feel, in the cooling air, a surprising resurgence of energy. Suddenly, it crosses my mind that the ferry across the broad lake runs all day and into the evening. A new temptation appears before me. After all, I could make it to the dock in time to catch the next crossing, and treat myself to another run, over on the New York side...

Seven Islands: Images and Soundworks

2009-05-04T12:51:00.000-07:00

This video combines some of my visual art meditations and explorations of Lake Champlain with a soundwork composition from my 2006 project BETWEEN WATERS.

The music was made with guitar, steel guitar, voice, and what I call sound smear: digital and analog audio processing. The text for the spoken layer is extracted from various journal entries from my trips to the lake and shoreline.

My experience of the lake has led me to a perception of shifting strata: water, land, sky, light, shadow; the powerful persistence of the past arising to fill a present moment.

(Here is the text of the spoken word layer, taken from my lake journals:

8/25/05
9:10 am

Approaching the water, bands of soft green, dark blue ( warm and cold , deep and shoal juxtaposed visibly). The ferry - EVANS WADHAM WOLCOTT- pulls out silently, with barely perceptible motion, out past sparkling boats inside the stone breakwater. August sun is low and mellow. Across the green Mountains a line of clouds, like smoking volcanos beneath clear blue sky.

***
Sipping a brash Speeder and Earl's coffee, I feel something run from soul to synapse-- An idea that's been brewing long inside me rises, whole.
It's about the deep need, to feel and learn and KNOW the wholeness of a place; the levels of truth and story and history and geology and war and peace and land-form and bird migrations that, once sensed and held in the heart, bring that deep and profound wholeness.. .
So by way of all this ---like shapes of mountains and forests, a structure for a narrative begins to be revealed, in sections (core?) (skeleton?) ( island and Bay?).
-------------------
Find the deep balm that heals the death and violence of blood and battles on these waters (1776, 1814, earlier)... The truth --of form, of shape, of feel-- that land and waters reveal, endlessly, again and again.

CROSSING
describe birds, the seaplane landing on surface tension's glitter, boats...sense of journey..black iron ore beaches on NY side I run on

ISLANDS
Formation, settlement, abandonment...
Odzihozo ( The Abenaki Maker deity)

BLOOD AND WATER
1776,1813, Indian battles before written history,
the skeletons dug up this year in old North End--(soldiers of 1812 war)

THRUST FAULT
Lone Rock Point...force of Geology, time, and yearning.

CROSSING (Return across same waters...)

Lake and Islands in October Light

2009-04-29T05:14:00.000-07:00

Island Studies, 3,1,2 ( paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper)

Three fast sketches made from the beach wall at Mark's Bay in South Burlington, VT, near sunset , October 11, 2008.

The idea was to capture energy rather than detail: the pulse of water, sunlight, sky, and landforms.

Evening Shore

2009-04-23T08:26:00.000-07:00

Evening Shore- (Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
acrylic on canvas, April 2009)

Dawn Shore

2009-04-17T05:33:00.000-07:00

Dawn Shore- (painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor on paper, April, 2009)

Two Poems About Samuel de Champlain

2009-04-16T05:35:00.000-07:00

(Mark's Bay, Lake Champlain- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,

acrylic on canvas, 2008)

Samuel De Champlain

Astrolabe, lead line
lineaments of ungratified...
desire: 29 voyages 1599 to 1633

Master mariner, marriage
perhaps unconsummated ?;
childless but for
three adopted Indian daughters,
Faith, Hope, Charity,
later lost to politics.

But found so much land and
water between fog and clear sailing!

Observation, involvement,
engagement- chose sides in battle.
(but, in all fairness, a man of

moderation, the
middle path: witness his
distaste for torture, his
essential human kindness).

The Good Catholic,
tolerant of others, Protestants and
Indian souls to be saved
(this succeeded only with sick native
children
baptized at death’s door)

Did he take offense
at metrical Psalms sung
loudly from Protestant, Huguenot

ships- a quarantined “church” in the harbor?

Years later, Helene, his wife,
takes orders in an Ursuline convent.

His grave unknown,
an astrolabe his only
surviving object,

Place names and a
rich topography,

Rivers and bays,
a monumental silence.

-----------------------------------------------

Rich and fecund river mouth
islands of nine or seven summits,
spruce and birch, white pine, beech

Champlain saw:

"ospreys, heron, curlews
thrushes...
others in infinite numbers
that come in their seasons..."

Lists among the
hawks and falcons:

"Less common than those named, one
with gray plumage on back
and white on the belly, as
large and fat as a hen,
with one foot like the talon
of a bird of prey, with which
it catches fish; the other

like that of a duck.
The latter serves
for swimming in the water when he dives for fish.

This bird is not
supposed to be found, except in
New France. "

Is there a continuous line
from Norumbega to here and now?

Does
migration assume another
dimension across
boundaries that don’t exist?

-Kevin Macneil Brown

from NORTH COAST DREAMING/LUMINIST DIARY (Liminal Editions, 2008)

Available at Bear Pond Books, Monpelier, Vermont

or here:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/luminist-diary-north-coast-dreaming/2152993

Passage

2009-04-14T04:24:00.001-07:00

Passage- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor on paper, 2009

Departure Map

2009-04-12T06:00:00.001-07:00

(Kevin Macneil Brown, mixed media, 2009)

This link will lead you to some soundworks I composed and recorded in 2006, inspired by explorations of the lake and shorelines:

http://search.jukeboxalive.com/player/player.php?sid=1638116&method=play

Champlain and the Power of New England Time and Space

2009-04-12T05:46:00.000-07:00

(VIEW FROM ISLE LA MOTTE- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
acrylic on canvas, 2008)

CHAMPLAIN AND THE POWER OF NEW ENGLAND TIME AND SPACE

By Kevin Macneil Brown

One need only read Samuel de Champlain’s 1632 treatise on seamanship to know that the French explorer was not only a master mariner, but also a man of good humor and deep, careful thought. And it should come as no surprise to learn that, after long and difficult voyages, Champlain could always find the best harbors, the safest anchorages. After all, such an ability, along with courage and clear thinking, is part of the mariner’s—-and the adventurer’s –-art.
So why would I be surprised to find that, in northern New England, when I come across a place of particular power, where water and land intersect and interchange, Champlain would have been there—-with all his senses and faculties wide open and engaged-- before me, before any of us, 400 years ago.
*

I learned about Champlain when I was eight years old. I was spending one of many summers in the seaport, fishing city of Gloucester, Massachusetts, the place both my parents came from. Beauport was the name Champlain gave to that beautiful long harbor with its enclosing arms of land to the east and west, when, after a brief offshore visit in 1605, he thought well enough of the place to return and explore it in 1606.
That long-ago summer my grandfather showed me a tarnished-to-green copper plaque -—I think it was in East Gloucester, somewhere among all the little art galleries, the jumble of boats at dock or pulled up and resting on dry land that seemed to fill every available open space. On the plaque was an inscription honoring Champlain’s arrival.
Champlain had anchored offshore, landing his party with the usual flotilla of small boats. He eventually made a beautiful and accurate map of the region, one that showed the location and architecture of Native American villages, and he wrote in careful detail in his journal, describing flora and fauna, the shapes of land and water.
Thanks to Champlain I could--and still do--imagine that time and place. And to this day, when I return to Gloucester, I cannot look out beyond the surf of Good Harbor Beach or the white breakers on dark Bass Rocks without seeing French ships out there, riding at anchor in line with what are named now Straitsmouth and Thacher’s, those long, low islands just ahead of the horizon.

*

Though I spent summers in Gloucester, I grew up in New Hampshire, in the foothills of the White Mountains. New Hampshire’s seacoast is, of course, contiguous with those of Maine and Massachusetts, and on the 1605 voyage, Champlain and his men, sailing in the waters of what is now Casco Bay, caught sight of those mountains looming granite-gray some 60 miles inland.
In New Hampshire, even a hundred miles from the shore, it seems that you always know the ocean is there; that big rivers like the Connecticut and the Merrimac are never far from being subsumed in their estuaries and, at last, the open Atlantic.
In land-locked Vermont it’s a different story. Yet even here the closest thing to a coastline bears the name—-and thus the presence—-of Samuel de Champlain.

*

When I came to live in Vermont more than 20 years ago, I found out the hard way that I missed the ocean with all my being. My love for the mountains, the hills, the forests, farms, and villages was never in doubt. But there was also a craving for salt air and long, open horizons; a craving that actually hurt my heart—-a palpable presence of yearning deep inside me.
Over the course of a few years I read about Champlain’s 1609 voyage down from New France to the waters of the big lake with Indian guides and escorts; his involvement in Indian battles, leading to what were likely the first warlike European gunshots fired within sight and sound of the big lake; his optimistic--and, to our minds, perhaps, misguided--belief that New France could welcome the new world’s native people into a peaceful, plentiful Christian assembly. Following that foreshadowing, I learned about the lake’s later history as both a corridor of trade and a pathway for war and invasion.
I also learned about the lake’s sacred and central place in Western Abenaki cosmology and religion. Bitagw, they called it: land and water in layers, alternating. With all these things in mind, I let my imagination follow its own voyage as I went for long, scenic runs alongside the shoreline in Burlington, Charlotte, and Shelburne, loving the views of blue water and dark pines and not-so-distant mountains. I even began to get a small taste of my beloved ocean from Lake Champlain, even if it was a taste noticeably lacking in salt.
But none of this prepared me for the power of time and place I would find one day at Champlain’s ancient anchorage --and the likely locus of his landing-- on the western shore of what we now call Isle la Motte.

*

In Vermont’s Champlain islands, crossings are at the heart of travel: bridges, causeways; the sandbars they are built upon. And one is never far from the way blue and silver-streaked water reflects the light of sky and sun, the mantled blue haze of mountains. In October there is a russet glow on hayed meadows and on the reeds and rushes in shallow waters, a lush smell of late apples on the trees in failing afternoon light. And again, almost always, a streak of lake water on some horizon.
At the Fisk Quarry on Isle La Motte, not far from the northwestern shore, are the remains of the ancient Chazy Reef formation that formed when this place was beneath the long-gone Iapetus Ocean. (I use the word “place”; but exactly what does that mean when this physical evidence itself has been in motion; when, before the continents reached their current location, those ancient events actually took place close to the Equator, near what is present-day Zimbabwe?)
At Fisk Quarry, layers of limestone—-like frozen, silenced time-- are open to our sight and other senses. Striated and sculptured blocks of stone rise over pools of still water, and fossilized remains of Ordovician Period creatures sit right there on the surface of the rock, where rain and snow and sun can find them now, some 450 million years after they lived.
Finding the shoreline from here and following it Northwest leads to the site of an event much more recent in ancient history: the place where Champlain made a landing in 1609, marveling in his journal at the length of this island and its forests. On this shore is the site of what became the French Fort Saint Anne in 1666-- the short-lived first European Settlement in what was later to be Vermont. The ideals Champlain had held were part of the past. These soldiers and Jesuits said what was likely the first Mass heard on Vermont shores, and then garrisoned themselves against Indian attacks. One can imagine the intensity of living in that tiny island community, nearby to those waters in all seasons-- from sultry summer to wind-swept, snow-covered winter; with the cold autumn fog rising from open water to warming sky in the morning; in the winter an iced-in wilderness outpost made up of soldiers living packed together in isolation and a state of alert, far from what they thought of as home.
The gray-brown beach is there today. There’s a long view across water to the New York shore and the looming Adirondacks: serried, and dark except for the places where rent clouds pour out autumn sun to silver the bare, rocky summits.
On the rolling land that overlooks this scene are spread the grottoes and chapels, the statues and luminaries, of The Shrine of Saint Anne De Beaupre. It’s a place for prayer, built on the remains of the abandoned French military fort by Vermont Catholics at the end of the 1800s. Up against the hillside stands a stunning and and colossal golden statue of Our Lady of Lourdes.(In the early 20th century she watched over a cathedral in Burlington, and was rescued from a fire in 1972.) Crowned now with electric light bulbs, in season she sends her light out above the Stations of the Cross and over the waters.
Champlain might well have approved. He was a devout Catholic, even adopting three orphaned Indian girls and naming them Faith, Hope, and Charity. After his death, his wife Helene took orders and entered an Ursuline convent in France.
Champlain’s bones most likely rest in Quebec-- what was once the New France he helped found. The whereabouts of his body are not known for sure, but his astrolabe, the tool with which he measured the positions of celestial bodies to find his place on the ocean, remains as a relic. It was found in 1867 by a 14-year-old farm boy at the site of a rough Ontario portage, right where Champlain dropped it in 1613.

*

Inland, in Montpelier, on the same morning that I began to read Champlain’s journals and Samuel Eliot Morison’s wonderful biography of the explorer, I walked into town to work. Along US Route 2-(which itself was once an Indian path) in the breakdown lane above the Winooski River bank, lay the ripped and wind-scattered pages of an old, discarded world atlas: sun-faded, mud-smeared maps spread at random intervals for a half-mile or so along my way. It seemed strangely appropriate; in tune with the moment.
A few years later, on my first trip to Isle La Motte, I ran on the beach. Little waves broke against the shore, and I made sure to put my feet in the water, even though it was late October, cold, gray and overcast. Moving in that water and under the pale sky, I could feel, in an instant, the long stretch of time and space—-of history, myth, and geology; of human hopes and fears and prayers-- that arrived at the here and now.
The copper sun shone through for a moment, a burnished pale disc in the afternoon sky. Its light made a streak of silver across the water. That light might have marked—-for just a moment-- the line those Indian and French boats followed, leading them to what they found.

(This piece was originally published, in slightly different form, in THE MONTPELIER BRIDGE.)