Month: May 2022

Contemporary Nature Writing: Creative Works Portfolio

Reflection

Throughout this semester I learned that my motivation for writing comes when I am really interested in the topic. Nature is one of the key aspects and passions in my life, so writing about it has gotten me more into writing than anything else really has. The biggest surprise had to be my interest in poetry. I can remember dreading poetry throughout my education. But this was different, I found nature poetry easier to understand, and I had a greater desire to understand and analyze poetry than I ever had before. If someone told me freshman year that I would get into poetry, I would have told them they were crazy. I have even gone to pursue it in my own time. I bought myself a copy of Turtle Island by Gary Snyder and read it over spring break. 

Fiction

Sam Fuller

Changing Vines

2011 – England??

It was a lovely summer evening with a warm breeze. The sun was just setting over the horizon, creating a field of deep red and mauve. Deion and his family were sitting on the porch of a local restaurant, taking in the view. It was Charlotte’s sixteenth birthday, an exciting time for any teenager. Deion was excited for other reasons, he finally got to share one of his passions with her. 

The captain’s list of a restaurant is one of those simple pleasures of Deions life. Each a little different, with its own unique selections of wines throughout the world. They give a preview of the style and taste of the sommelier. 

He opened the red backed menu and read down the columns. He scrolled through the selections, red, white, rose, finally to sparkling. Ah, that’s what I was looking for. There is no better way to celebrate than with champagne. Charlotte had had some of his own wine at home, as is pretty usual for kids growing up in France. He remembers from his childhood, his grandfather slipping him sips at the age of seven. But this will be the first time she would be able to try something else, and in a public setting, where high quality products are best enjoyed.

He scanned through the list of usual suspects, Moet, Bollinger, Veuve Clicquot, of course the restaurant also carried his own label, Lavigne Vineyards. Then he saw something that made his heart sink. It was categorized as a champagne, but it shouldn’t have been. The last wine on the champagne list read:

Nyetimber Classic – Sussex, England – € 200

He couldn’t fathom it, he simply could not believe a French restaurant would hold an English sparkling wine in the same category as champagne. He had heard rumors of how the English wine scene was improving because of their changing climate, but he refused to believe that it could be held to the same standards of the legendary labels that came from the chalky terroir as Champagne. What had started as a celebratory night, had quickly turned into one marred with confusion and anger.

2013 – Harvest

The barnyard door creaked open, and the morning sun shone onto Deions face. Out beyond the white framed doors was heaven for him, his vines. They were the source of his livelihood, the source of his family tradition. His whole life, his fathers whole life, and grandfathers and great grandfathers and so on and so forth had been about these grapes. He had gathered his small team of farm hands in the barn for the first harvest of the season. He took pride in the fact that he owned one of the last independent vineyards in all of champagne. Over the years the big names like Moet and Krug had all been bought by multinational corporations. Not Lavigne, he had a few offers but he could not bring himself to sell his farm. What would my father say if he was still around, or his father, is what he thought whenever he got the now familiar visit from a team of well dressed lawyers waving papers with outrageous sums of money on them. No, the Lavigne Vineyard was too special to him. Plus it would put the jobs of his crew at risk. Many on his small farm team of ten had been with the farm for at least a decade. He couldn’t put their jobs in jeopardy.

This was normally a familiar time of year for him, his family, and his crew. The hard labor of harvesting grapes for wine was a family tradition for the Lavigne’s, imbedded with a deep sense of history. Deion himself had been toiling these fields for the last fifty years. This year was different though. He organized his crew almost a week earlier than when they would normally start harvesting. His daughter Charlotte had approached him earlier that month about the start of harvest.

“Papa”, she said in a hushed tone. He had been walking through the vineyard when she approached him. Strolling through his hills of wines and grapes was a habit of his right before the harvest season, much like a captain touring his ship. He hadn’t noticed her until she was right behind him.

“What is it my dear.” 

“I was wondering if I could talk to you about this year’s harvest.” Recently she had grown an interest in the farm, a fact that continues to surprise him. He had always hoped his two sons would take after him and assert themselves on the farm. He briefly looked away from her to see what Noel and Jules were doing. Not seeing them on the quick scan he made of the field, he assumed they were engaged in their normal acts of absurdity. Without waiting for him to answer, she continued.

“Have you thought at all about harvesting the grapes earlier this year?” He looked at her quizzically. 

“I was planning on getting started the third week of September.” The third week of September had always been the start of harvest season, it had been that way for decades. 

“I’ve just been hearing that a lot of vineyards nowadays are harvested earlier because of the temperature.” She was right of course, Deion had heard it too, but he didn’t want to believe that it was an actual issue. Since temperatures had been rising over the past few decades, it changed when the grapes would rippen. If they ripen too early, then the wine will miss its characteristic acidity and freshness that is synonymous with Champagne.

So there he stood with the crew and his daughter, ready to start the harvest, two weeks earlier. Once again Noel and Jules were nowhere to be found. Why don’t they take an interest in the vines like Charo does, don’t they realize I am continuing this for them. 

2018 – Mildew

“Ah merde!” Deion exclaimed as he crouched to his grapes. Another one of his vines had the tell tale pastel yellow markings. Downy mildew. It covered the vines and leaves. His grapes will not grow, stifled by the algae that now infects his land. This had become a common sight. Specks of light yellow and brown appear on the vines like the freckles that appear on his face after he spends too much time in the field.

 “You must start taking it easier on yourself,” his wife Elaine would proclaim when he would spend too much time under the sun. If only this problem could get solved by my wife simply nagging. She had always worried about him, and for good reason. He spent too much time with his vines. But why wouldn’t he? He had been working in this field since he was eight years old. It was all he knew how to do. 

It had not always been like this. For a while, production was good, his grapes were healthy. But it hasn’t been like that for a few years. The good old days felt like a distant memory, fading into obscurity. His mind clinging onto those thoughts, much like someone would cling to life. He desperately wanted to fall to his knees and start crying. He is on the verge of losing what had been his whole life, his whole family’s life. But he did not want his daughter to see him, she was about a dozen vines away. He did not want her to know the danger the family tradition was in. Most likely she already knew, she was more on top of it than he was. His family have tended these fields for generations, one of the most famous and well respected vineyards in all of Champagne. The book on that life is in its last chapter, the region is changing, the world is changing. The leaves and vines had wilted in front of him, dried by the plague that infected his country. How could algae destroy me?

“What’s the matter papa?” said his daughter. She now stood over him.

“Hmm… oh nothing nothing, don’t worry about it.” He realized he must have looked distraught. He did not notice her walking over here. He must be more careful, this was his problem not hers. “Here, help me to my feet” he said, extending an arm. 

He came to his feet to view his land. The rolling hills dotted with curved vibrant green vines had been his playground since he was a boy. He remembered walking the fields with his father and the family dog, observing the vines, making sure they were healthy. He loved the feeling of the chalky soil beneath his feet. It’s this pale dirt that gave his life meaning. Without it there was no vineyard, no wine, no champagne.  He now walks the field with his daughter, but it wasn’t the same. It did not have the same connection, now that the terroir that gave Champagne its reputation has turned on the farmers who live there. Different dog, different land he thought. 

Poetry

West Beach 

By Sam Fuller 

The cawing of seabirds 

And the crashing of waves 

Fill my ears. 

But it is silent. 

The sky is a stroke of a brush. 

Golden, magenta, rose. 

But it is dark. 

It is the same as it was, 

But different now 

I remember a time 

When rust and iron challenged the waves,  

like a matador challenges a bull. 

The state came as a mediator for this challenge. 

Hope was their motto 

Hope for a clean beach 

Hope for clean air 

Hope for the Rhode and all its Islands 

Hope for humanity. 

Where is the hope now? 

Now that the ocean rises 

And does not recede. 

Now that white tails 

Outnumber white heads 

In their hope they forgot 

Why we should be hopeful. 

Hopeful for the sun to fall and the stars to dance. 

Hopeful for the birds to sing 

And the pheasants to croak 

Hopeful for the crabs to scuddle. 

Hopeful for children to see all of it. 

We twist the knife 

And it twists us with it. 

Back and forth we fight 

The earth until we can fight no more. 

We have suffered from our prosperity. 

Was it worth it? 

Was it worth our trial now? 

We stand before a judge 

Guilty of matricide,  

And we face these charges. 

What are we hopeful for? 

We have forgotten what it means. 

Our world did not forget us. 

Hope is the anchor of our soul 

Place your hope in people, 

Place your hope in the world. 

We are one in the same. 

Look out at the canvas 

Look at the sunset, not with superiority, 

But with kinship, 

And hope. 

Creative Nonfiction

Sam Fuller 

The Persistent Mystery 

To survive, humans require very little. Food to sustain, water to hydrate, and shelter to stay safe from things that could cause harm. In modern day life, it becomes a lot more complicated.  But do humans simply want to survive? Is that what separates us from the rest of the animal world? Is our drive to experience beyond survival what disembroils us from our cousins in the kingdom Animalia? I cannot peer into the mind of that Bluebird perched on my feeder or the clam that comes up in my rake, and neither can you, so we will never truly know the answers to these questions. But it does allow us the ability to explore our own need to experience. Simply surviving on basic necessities is boring. This thrill of living can be achieved in many ways, but the simplest and most accessible is through nature. Many people think you need to search far and wide to find such rousing places, but truth of the matter, it can be found anywhere. I found it in my hometown of Block Island, RI. Quiet, classic New England, with the quirkiest people. But it is not the people who get me excited, no, it is the island itself. The winding trails, the towering trees, the magnificent beaches, with enough ponds for each day of the year.  

I enjoy my time being home on the Island so much during the summer that other parts of the year I feel a sense of deep sorrow and longing for my little slice of paradise. The beauty of the place is hard to recreate, it can be, but it is hard. The part I miss the most is the mystery. That cannot be replicated. There is something about the place that keeps me coming back and asking questions. The way the landscape seems to change from one side of the island to another. The endless trails and possibilities. Dotted with greenways, it almost seems an impossible choice to pick one. But there is one I go to pretty regularly. Right across the street from my house and down a dusty dirt road is The Maze, appropriately named. The place seems unassuming enough to start, but you are almost immediately struck by options. Multiple trails branching out, all enticing you to follow. One option will take you to a field of yellow and amber pastels, daffodils blowing in the wind. Another will have you trekking through mud and vines, eventually reaching the sandy shores of an eastern beach. Other greenways will lead you to an interior forest, a winding path overlooking the clayheads, fields, ponds, and all sorts of landscapes. 

Once I came across a part of The Maze that I had never been to before. It was so different from the rest of the trails. The ground was not the compact soil and grass that my bare feet were so accustomed to. It was as if no one had walked there before. The long blades tickled my ankle, and the sprinkle of gravel pierced my soles. Even the trees were different. They were bent, warped, and scraggly. Their branches reached out like arms, grasping for any passersby. The canopy blocked out much of the light, with only a few beams shining through. It seemed to envelope all the sounds around me. I could no longer hear the methodical crashing of the waves, and birds seemed to tacit their singing. What was this otherworld I had entered? It all seemed so different. All the hustle and bustle of the busy island was gone. I kept walking to see what was ahead, my mind at ease as I took in this new place. The landscape didn’t seem to change, the same ancient trees followed my journey, silently watching me. All of a sudden, I was out of it. I was back to my recognizable world. A stone wall stood in front of me as a comforting friend, as if it were going to guide me home. Sounds started coming back, the wind whistled through the field that was now in front of me. The waves crashed against the cliffs far in the distance. A host of sparrows flitted through the grass, chirping as they went.  

I hung right and kept walking along the wall. In this recognizable place I could zone out and ponder what I just saw. How had I never been there before? Why did it seem so different from the rest of the maze? While I wasn’t paying attention, an animal bound right up to me. “I know you” I thought. It was Wally, my uncle’s golden lab, staring at me with his dopey grin, gesticulating wildly. I followed him for about thirty seconds, and led me right to his house. I had gone from a place of such mystery and unfamiliarity to a place I visited almost daily. It was still early in the morning, so I decided to see if anyone was awake. I walked in with Wally, to find my aunt and uncle sitting at their dining room table, staring out over their view of the island. I didn’t tell them about the landscape I had just visited. I am not sure why I didn’t, and I am not sure why I didn’t turn back to see it again. At the moment I probably wanted to get home, to rest my feet. I have tried to find that place again, failing each time. I yearn to experience that again. I have so many questions that need to be answered. I will continue to wake up early for my hikes in the maze. I wander as if I have no cares in the world. But I do have a care, I want to learn more about that place I saw, I want to experience it again. I want to obtain the unobtainable. I hope to one day find it, but part of me wonders if I should just let it be. Should I just let it be a memory, my emotions macerating in the mystery of the place? It is the mystery that keeps me going back.