"Quiet Footfalls" at Eagle Pond Farm
Remembering Jane Kenyon and Donald Hall
It was one of the great honors of my life to meet and work with poets Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon. We met in 1992, introduced by my friends Kennison Smith and Mary Lyn Ray, to collaborate on an effort to protect land around Mount Kearsarge.
Jane had not yet been diagnosed with Leukemia. Donald himself had been through his own battle with colon cancer, emerging in remission. Their generosity of spirit was overwhelming to me.
I fell in love with them both that day: The irascible old man, whose love of baseball and fondness for silly old keepsakes - the value of which could only be measured by the ways in which they swelled his own heart - and his beautiful, brilliant and tragic soulmate who’s love of the place they had chosen to make their life together took her almost daily deep into the contemplative woods of Mt Kearsarge with her beloved dog Gus.
Jane died in 1995, at 47, and Donald, who had already written much about his Jane, wrote some of his most beautiful, soulful and heartfelt work about the process of first struggling against Jane’s illness and then grieving and living alone following her death.
Donald died in 2015.
Following Donald’s passing an estate sale at their Eagle Pond Farm scattered many of their earthly possessions to the four corners of the world, in the loving hands of many admirers. But a small and dedicated group of friends and admirers of Donald and Jane independently purchased as many of the most precious mementos as they could afford and have formed a nonprofit 501 ©(3) corporation, (At Eagle Pond, Inc.”) to continue the legacy of these two extraordinary people.
At Eagle Pond, Inc. was established to preserve the farm and what Don and Jane brought to it, as well as to open the house to visitors, offer public programs and events that honor and examine Don’s and Jane’s work, while inviting reflection, too, on place and poetry in all our lives, and providing residencies where writers can take up their own work at Eagle Pond Farm.
The images that follow are a few of the scenes I captured during an early spring visit to the farm after the estate sale with Mary Lyn Ray - a wonderful writer in her own right and a sparkplug in the efforts to create a sustainable legacy for Jane and Donald.
This effort is not sanctioned or done on behalf of the good folks of “At Eagle Pond” but you can learn more about their efforts here, and make a contribution to them. Half of proceeds from the purchase of any of these, or other images at the Eagle Pond collection of my Gallery site, will be donated in your name to the effort.
“Quiet Footfalls” At Eagle Pond Farm
Footsteps in the snow create a pathway to the doors of the barn at Eagle Pond Farm, home of poets Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon. Jane and Donald were much-beloved poets nationally and community members in the informal confederation of towns around Mount Kearsarge. At the time that Jane died of leukemia in 1995 she was New Hampshire’s Poet Laureate.
Printed in an original edition of 100 signed images on fine art rag paper with archival inks.
50% of the net price from sales of this image will be donated, in your name, to the foundation seeking to preserve Eagle Pond Farm in memory of Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon.
Legends of the Fall at Eagle Pond Farm
Signed Originals Unsigned Open Edition Prints
An old trunk sits in the woodshed at the rear of the home of Donald and Jane. A window, whose glass had come loose and fallen to the floor, had presented a pathway for falling and blowing leaves of previous autumns to enter the shed and take their place among the keepsakes of rural life.
An Outlaw's Lament
Signed Originals Unsigned Open Edition Prints
In one corner of that same woodshed, antique bottles line a shelf.
From that shelf arose this image. In creating it I tried to understand what motivated Donald to create or maintain this collection of old bottles over the years. My interpretation of the scene was that his grief over Jane's loss led him to keep this as an homage to the days when they were outlaws and wordsmiths together. “Outlaws”, for poetry is almost always an expression of rebellion against the wordy, inefficient, and traditional. Thus the image of Jane and Gus on the back left wall - almost a “WANTED” poster from an old west scene.
The Rocker at Eagle Pond Farm
Signed Originals Open edition prints
An old rocking chair sits in the barn beneath a window as light streams in at Eagle Pond Farm, suggesting the loss we all have suffered at the passing of these two remarkable people. The barn is an outbuilding at the farm.
Jane Kenyon's Dictionary
Signed Originals Unsigned Open Edition Prints
Jane Kenyon's dictionary sits atop her desk at Eagle Pond Farm. A soft light flows into Jane’s writing room.
Portrait of the Poets - Donald Hall & Jane Kenyon
Signed Originals Unsigned Open Edition Prints
Donald Hall was a baseball aficionado, and both he and Jane were collectors of small, seemingly inconsequential items, like the antique marbles shown in this montage portrait of the two poets. While the material value of the “inconsequential items” may have been modest, these items filled their hearts with joy, a measure of the beautiful hearts of these two extraordinary people.