Art Drop #13: Woodland Microcosm

Noticing a window to another realm at The Celery Farm.

This is my favorite time of the year. As much as I love the riot of color that comes with the tree blossoms, forsythias and azaleas all blooming (sometimes all at once) from mid-April into early May, their time can be so fleeting that I find it hard to enjoy their presence. I suspect it’s related to age and the passing of time...

The colors of early spring in suburban New Jersey.

Eastern redbud, forsythia and weeping cherry blossom.

Late spring is another story though – everything is incredibly lush and there is no remnant of the previous winter whatsoever. It’s basically summer, but without the excessive heat and mosquitos. All of the flora and fauna are going through something akin to exponential growth. It’s a feast for the eyes, and when you add the sensory layer of audio from seasonal birds returning like the Baltimore oriole or the northern flicker, I just don’t think there’s a better time of year.

WOLF SWAMP TO CELERY FARM

It was one of these perfect late spring days last week when we went for a walk at one of our favorite places, The Celery Farm in Allendale, New Jersey. A freshwater wetland of 107 acres, The Celery Farm is an oasis of nature amidst the suburbs of north east New Jersey.

The Celery Farm, by Google Maps.

You may be wondering if they grow celery at The Celery Farm? They used to, and in fact it has a rich history. Before it became a nature preserve it was indeed a celery (and onion) farm going back to 1888. Before that the site was used for peat extraction, and prior to colonization it was known as Wolf Swamp by the indigenous Lenni Lenape people.

The farm was highly productive until the 1950s when the land’s propensity for flooding ultimately brought about its demise. After being listed for sale for decades the land was finally purchased by the town of Allendale in 1981 and preserved as wetlands, the first town to do so in the United States.

Remnants of agriculture at the Celery Farm.

What we love about the Celery Farm is how remarkably quiet it is for its location. The strip malls, appliance stores and car dealerships of Route 17 are less than 3,000 feet away as the crow flies but you’d never know it, and although you may occasionally have the sounds of a nearby lawnmower or arborist to contend with when walking the trails, in our experience Allendale’s brand of suburbia is much more relaxed than where we currently live (arguably our imminent move to Massachusetts could be distilled down to us simply wanting to escape leaf blowers).

The Celery Farm is not the wilderness by any means, but for a suburban nature preserve it does an exceptional job of transporting you somewhere else, if only temporarily.

FACTORY SETTINGS

I’ve been thinking about the woods recently¹ and how they feel like home to me, and safe. I grew up beside a forest in the north of England, and I spent a lot of time in it as a youth. Sometimes friends would come over who lived in nearby towns and I’d have to convince them that it was perfectly fine to go into the forest. Even with my assurance they still got a bit freaked out, and that was in an English forest with essentially no risk whatsoever.

Here in the US, no matter how comfortable you may feel there are some real risks depending on where you are exactly: bears, mountain lions, moose, snakes, poison ivy, poison oak, to name just a few. Those risks were brought home to me last summer when I had a brief encounter with my first black bear while alone in some unfamiliar woods in the Adirondacks. Oh, and there was that time some years ago in Florida where I was inches away from stepping on a rattlesnake. Despite those incidents (and maybe it’s naivete) I still feel like my factory setting in the woods is Relaxed versus Tense. Those friends of mine back when I was a teenager were definitely set to Tense, but with time I’ve realized they were simply outside their comfort zone of small-town homes, parks, school fields, playgrounds – it’s understandable.

I’m grateful that in being fortunate to grow up beside a forest I can now pass the sense of ease I feel within the woods on to our daughter, and hopefully that cycle continues.

Walking around the Celery Farm last week I was very much set to Relaxed and feeling like my creative neurons were firing (some days are better than others, don’t you find?). We took a different route than usual, which allowed me to see familiar sights from an alternate perspective – either compositionally, or via my relationship to the light and how it was falling being different.

ART DROP #13

This month’s art drop is my favorite photograph from that day. I spent a lot of time on the edge of this stream exploring the angles, the light illuminating the life in the peaty water, the reflections of the trees that almost seem to be underwater but aren’t, the surface of the water acting like an antique mirror.

The Celery Farm, Late Spring
Allendale, New Jersey, USA
by Tom Bland

It’s not the first time I’ve been drawn to this interplay between light, water, reflections and woodland. I think I am lured in by the layers and the illusion of there almost being another dimension present. You have whatever is visible in the here and now – in this case the plants in the lower corners, the overhanging tree, and the surface of the water – but, below the water looks like somewhere else. Push through that surface and who knows where you might end up.

Prints of this photograph are only available until June 7, 2024, with no further production of this work for at least a year. To learn more about the paper, sizes, and pricing click the button below to visit the art drop page on our website.

Thank you for reading. In our next newsletter we’ll share some more photos from The Celery Farm through the seasons. We might even go back there today.

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1. Credit goes to Stephen Peart for his prompt on Threads that provided the spark of an idea.