Field Notes 2022: Mathew Weitman

February 2022: Mathew Weitman

Explore Bloedel Reserve through the art, writings, and uniques perspectives of the Creative Residents during the time they are visiting the grounds. These entries give you a peek at works-in-progress, sources of inspiration, approaches to craft, exploration of new techniques, and more.

Night Walk: A Collage of Process

During my time at the Bloedel Reserve, nothing was more generative for my creative work than a walk through the grounds late at night. I have attached a few selected field recordings, photos, and fragments of poetry from various night walks I embarked on throughout my residency (February, 2022). My process was, more or less, to wander in the dark, stop and listen, jot down a few ideas (I often couldn’t see what I was writing), and return to the house with pages of messy notes I wouldn’t look at until morning.

Despite the late hours of these walks, I still managed to wake up early enough to see the heron labor her way to the bird marsh, scatter the lovely deer from the flowerbeds, and watch the coyotes trot away from the rising sun. When I timed it right, my morning walk would conclude just as the first guests of the day were arriving. Back at the house, I’d drink some coffee, sift through my notes, and write until the reserve closed (stopping only for lunch). The following fragments either made their way into poems, inspired other ideas, or were discarded—until now, where they once again exist in a heap of messy notes.

Fragments:

How strange to think of the woodpecker sleeping in this stinging quiet…

In the end, the world is small enough for tracks of pine needles to lead to your stocking feet…

I take my poetic license everywhere, even driving…

Fogdoms for herons… hollows for coyotes…

To wake worldstung, in the enchanted company of dogwoods…

Consider the monolithic (planes, sea, desert, etc.) vs the enveloping (forests, mountains)…

This is the year I’ll invoke my name in a poem, like Rumi, and drink 300 cups of sorghum wine…

Aesthetics in the designator or weeds…

I hadn’t yet considered my grifting: the poor rivers that feed my verses are still polluted and troutless…

Even a cypress cannot account for the distance between a trampled fern and cloudhang…

Douglas firs, lost in fog…

Forgive me, for dreaming of the simple elegance of my manuscript with an ISBN near the old growth stump…

The swordferns weedwacked from the gardenpath, and arranged in ascetic piles… they look so comfortable…

As if the crocus you sowed had your eyes, and turkey tail mushrooms grew up the maple trucks to meet you, and shake your dirty hand…

No basilica rivals the architecture of beech root…