Goose Creek (VA)
In Progress
In the shadow of the Blue Ridge and Bull Run Mountains in the Piedmont region of Virginia lives a 700-acre biocultural conservation farm, garden, and rare library dedicated to cross-pollinating humanities, arts, and sciences. Goose Creek (Cokongoloto) flows from the mountains to meet other creeks and grow into the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay.
As the former estate of Rachel "Bunny" Lambert Mellon and Paul Mellon, the Oak Spring Garden Foundation has been reimagined to welcome interdisciplinary global scholars and artists interested in the lives of plants and all things botanical. From short courses to residencies, farming to heirloom seed saving and exchange through the Appalachian region, Oak Spring is working to restore the landscape through biodiversity initiatives while growing reinterpretations its collections (whose library includes upwards of 20,000 objects) to bridge the threshold between library and landscape.
On land inhabited for centuries by Indigenous communities and also historically scarred by African American enslavement and civil war, the waterways that flow through Oak Spring's rolling hills and valleys interconnect with a larger national story that continues to unfold in the nearby capital of Washington, DC.
Listening with Water @ Oak Spring
Listening with Water is a site-based, acoustic water-harvest. Sourced from varied replenishing sites for Dear Body of Water, each water sampler interlinks nine recorded voices of water (1 minute each) into a 9-minute audio stream to invite contemplative listening, sounding and re-sounding. Even while sitting still at a distance, you can travel across time and place: here, to Goose Creek and other waterways flowing through Oak Spring (recorded May 2024). Remember that the human body is mostly water, both a body of water and an acoustic chamber, resonating with your pulsing heartbeat and humming nervous system, in or out of sync with the surrounding world. Close listening enhances aural literacy and sensory grounding, attuning and retuning. As a number, nine suggests gestation, so a question: What grows inside your imagination through listening? As you attune, what do you hear within this shifting interstitial space?
SEASONAL WORKSHOPS on Environmental Writing & Reading include:
Writing the Landscape
A 5-day residential short course in environmental writing. The purpose of this course is for participants to gain experience in what is often referred to as “nature writing” or “environmental literature.” Land, place, nature, environment, wilderness: what words tend to describe the natural world? This course will deepen understandings of landscape through language. Participants will read to hone their writing, and write to “read” the landscape, attuning attentions toward both land and language. Against the backdrop of the climate crisis, what narrative, poetic, and representational strategies expand or limit our perceptions of “nature”? How do personal and cultural histories and professional practices influence our ways of “seeing” (or not seeing) environments and interdependent inhabitants? In addition to reading, writing, and field practices, participants will keep an active notebook where process becomes part of the product. Both experienced and emerging writers are welcome. Topics will include: how to keep a writing field guide, vocabularies of landscape, expanding categories of “nature” and “environmental” writing, natural-cultural histories, embodied knowledges, ecotones of voice, (dis)placed perceptions, narrative timescales, interdisciplinary research methods, among other topics. Special focus will be given to forms of nonfiction around “nature writing” and “environmental writing,” from scientific to personal essays, with exposure to other genres and art forms to gain techniques and hone craft.
Literary Ecologies: Reading to Reinhabit the World
A 5-day residential short course in reading environmental literature. Have you ever wanted time to immerse in reading and in nature? The roots of ecology are seeded in meanings of “home” and “dwelling”—not merely a house but a life—interrelated with other lives. This short course engages literary readings (poetry, nonfiction, fiction) to connect the landscape of Oak Spring more deeply with senses of place. Ecology is not isolated but interconnected, as relationships between organisms and environments grow reciprocally with the more-than-human world. The act of reading environmental literature can hone the art of attention and invite more embodied ways of knowing (with fellow humans, animal and botanical presences, bodies of water and of land) to renew ways to care about our shared planetary home. Our short course will interweave some history of environmental literature alongside natural and artistic elements to expand our readings, including ways of being and "seeing," remembering and imagining, rewilding and seeding future possibilities. As you wander the paths of Oak Spring—around spring-fed creeks and ponds, forested woods and fields, moss-covered stacked stones, and essential soil under all—participants will read to reinhabit the world, to expand our sense of home on this living, breathing Earth.
Respecting Each Other & the Landscape: The Oak Spring Garden Foundation welcomes participants of all backgrounds. Participation in these courses require mutual respect for each other and for the landscape. Landscapes and inhabitants carry layered histories that remain alive through living descendants and institutions, to be acknowledged and addressed as we all co-create a shared present with possible futures. Each participant carries a partial perspective of the world, shaded by cultural histories and backgrounds, hindered or benefitting from systemic injustices. Virginia, as a state, is inscribed with histories of colonialism, Indigenous decimation, and African American enslavement. Contemplate your personal presence in this place with humility among fellow participants, so we might facilitate a collective space where everyone feels welcomed and empowered to share and to listen to diverse perspectives.
More Coming ~ Stay attuned!
WATERSHED
Goose Creek—Potomac River—Chesapeake Bay—Atlantic Ocean