'“What Clarence Means to Us”
We moved to Clarence in June of 2018. Almost six years ago now. When we came to our little farmhouse at the bottom of North Mountain, there were lupins in the ditches and in swathes up rises. The movers had arrived an hour before us and the driver meandered a bit up and down the road as he waited. When I retire, he told us, I think this is where I want to be. He, too, it seems, felt the magic that is Clarence. And Clarence is indeed a special, magical place - steeped in history and community and wild, lots of wild.
I have come to realize that I have come to where my heart has longed to be. I have drifted in my life, now, to the foot of a mountain; with acres of grass and meadow and woods and ancient orchards that hide beneath the soil; and cows that low in the morning fog and butterflies that dance above the goldenrod.
My dreamed longings have married with the view.
It is quiet. In that I no longer hear the backdrop of the swish and whirr of continual traffic or colliding trains in the machine-deafening train yard; the overheard angry conversations and the frightening siren sounds late at night. It is loud. In that it is cacophonous with the sounds of horses, and cows, and chickens, and dogs, and crickets, and frogs, and cicadas; the whooping shrieks of the coyotes chasing the arcing moon, the calls and twitters and whistles and songs of so many, many birds my head whirls with trying to know them. And the wind - that comes up from the bay and over the mountain to dance with our trees in our woods. And has many songs - but never sings with the fog.
This place of Clarence, this humble farm and its more than a century of history; this place of verdant woods and gentle meadow and (occasionally) salt-tanged air, is an artist. She spins the gossamer clouds into mare's tails. She paints the meadows with wildflowers and butterflies. She forms gullies and streams with the soil and water and pulls lichen-scabbed stones from the earth. She sings - always.
I am her noviciate. I am here, at the foot of the mountain, with graveyards buried in moss, with generations and generations of people who have loved this place too. Old buildings and old orchards and a history that is strong. And my heart is receptive, welcoming. Like the silent, eye-filled woods at night, or the shimmer of the sleeping river, or the hush of the listening moon. In this place, Clarence, where, unbeknownst to me all these years, I am meant to be.
Linda Hegland, 2024
Clarence - A Place
Clarence is a place
where time is slowed to still photos.
In the shadow of a mountain
constant afternoon winds
lift the bulrush-hemmed skirts of the river.
Here there were orchards, long gone,
but in some fields ancient
apple trees tumble
together in brakes and thickets.
In the spring apple blossoms
still scent the valley.
Where there are abandoned orchards
were once a farmhouse
and an orchardist.
Nothing left of either but a stone
foundation for one and a gravestone for the other.
The stones of old houses and fallen
gravestones hide in the woods -
the ghosts of orchards,
the ghosts of people
who came together
to be together.
Ageless barns and houses tend
to show strong characters of will,
courageous plans were made once;
courageous people settled here -
dreams of apples and peaches and peace.
Clarence is a fulfillment in solitude,
a silence, a place where memories
come and you must catch them
before they evaporate.
Clarence is a place of still photos.
At each end of Clarence
dragons’ breath sunrises and
sunsets that torch the clouds
and mute dusk into night.
Harvest moons in star-spattered skies
above fields and beasts.
Clarence is a place of good people -
the kind that invite you to tea
or leave pickles and honey
at your back door;
who hang long lines of laundry
to dry in the salt air that comes over
the mountain from the bay.
People who wave at you, smiling,
as you go by as though
they, themselves,
are flapping sheets.
Clarence is a place of still photos,
a place to find your footing
and lose your heart.
A place that holds its history
close . . . like treasure.
