[Keyboard sounds]
Narrator: Recently on Catoctin Mountain Park's Facebook page, we asked
Narrator: what your favorite part of Catoctin Mountain Park is because of the way it feels, smells, sounds, etc.
Narrator: Award-winning poet and Artist in Residence Sarah McCartt-Jackson puts it all together...
Hi everybody, my name is Sarah McCartt-Jackson
I'm the Artist in Residence here at Catoctin Mountain Park.
I'm going to read a poem today that was written collaboratively
by myself, by visitors, and people like you on Facebook.
So these are your words and my words put together about Catoctin Mountain.
[Bird and forest sounds throughout]
It's nice to escape the city and go to the mountain;
Find solitude and a green that smells like grass.
[film projector sound] Where the trees enchant me until I'm twelve years old in 1966;
And back again, where my daughter is four and discovers the soft fur of moss.
We climb the boulders named after beasts;
To look out across what once was a new valley.
A freedom that stirs us.
Sun peeks through the tree leaves;
Dapples it's light on chipmunks and deer.
Fills a moss-covered forest floor;
And ripples down to the river that sounds like it's talking.
A seedling surprises us as it takes hold and pushes up through new soil;
The fog and clouds smell like more to discover.
We welcome the adventure of a drencher;
Horse trails that lead us by bridle or by foot;
To a quiet and stillness that unfurls like a fiddlehead fern;
Reaches out like a hand from the past.
Where a camp cabin can feel like home and a vista like an old friend.
We gather around the hearth for company;
When snow drifts cover roots and stone.
Await spring when the creek fills up until it splashes over;
As if the rocks are moving underwater.
Moving in the underground of our bodies.
Beyond the lush; The wood thrush's song.
Beyond the birds; The people we return to on land
that draws us in like iron fillings to loadstone.
We access ourselves until May apples bloom in us;
Make of us a forest floor.
We nurture stonefly nymphs and waterstriders;
Cut leaf toothwort, and toads.
As if we hold something in one palm, and then then other;
Remembering it's heft.
And we don't stop here. We add a hour to our trail;
A mile to our life.