In June 2024, Maine Audubon and Monson Arts offered a three-day retreat titled “Creativity Workshop: Exploring Borestone’s Mountains, Ponds, and Old Growth Forests through nature journaling, storytelling, and artistic expression” at Borestone Mountain Audubon Sanctuary, led by Maine Audubon Director of Conservation Sally Stockwell and Melissa Sweet, illustrator and Maine Master naturalist. Here, Sally writes about the experience.
Here is the message I wrote to myself and received in the mail two weeks after I returned from the Monson Arts Retreat at Borestone Audubon Sanctuary in June, 2024:
Why is it that this place holds so much magic and inspiration for me? Fills the soul. Bonds built with fellow “guests” who share a passion for people, place, wonder, and beauty. I weep with joy!
What’s so special about Borestone? Big old trees. Cracked bark. Dead standing and down wood, serving as woodpecker homes and nursery logs for the next generation. Bumpy ground. Sky filled with expansive yellow birch, red spruce, sugar maple canopies. Twin flowers, Labrador tea, and sheep laurel rise from a deep thick carpet of mosses and lichens and splash our eyes with a colorful palette of pinks, whites, yellows and greens. Bird songs and frog calls ring in our ears. Less than 1% of Maine is still graced by a forest as old and complex as this one. I am excited to share its intricacies, intimacies, and specialties with this group of 12 artist naturalists.
Over the course of three days, in a program hosted by Maine Audubon and Monson Arts, we discover and explore still water, moving water, jumbled rocks, volcanic mountains, steep steps, metal rungs, wooden stairs, bouncy trails. We swim in smooth fresh cool water. We take a sensory walk and look, listen, smell, taste, and feel—without naming anything. We stare up into the night sky, searching for stars that are slightly hidden by the bright moonlight. We paddle silently around the pond, taking the long way over to our rustic sleeping cabin, listening to the rich chorus of gray tree frogs encircling the pond. I catch a singing male to show the artists while they work furiously at filling in their journals; they all take a break to admire the camouflage coloring, the sticky toe pads, and the bright yellow throat that expands when calling.
We draw inspiration from these adventures for our nature journaling exercises prompted by artist Melissa Sweet, my co-lead. First we set the table with 10 “rules,” including:
Rule 4. CONSIDER EVERYTHING AN EXPERIMENT
Rule 8. DON’T TRY TO CREATE AND ANALYSE AT THE SAME TIME. THEY’RE DIFFERENT PROCESSES.
We learn how to look at and draw the forest from three different perspectives—near, middle, and far—and make a Venn diagram of a log with lichen, then a close-up of just the lichen after peering through a hand lens. We use either pencil, pen and ink, or two complementary watercolors to add depth to our drawings. We make a shadow picture of a flower, branch, or mushroom using contrasting light and dark. We create a sound map of everything we hear using various marks, squiggles, and arrows. We write poetry using words from pages of a dictionary or botany book, and a sunprint from grasses, moss, and leaves. We take notes on what we are seeing, hearing, smelling, and learning, and fill the small nature journal given us at the beginning of the retreat with our stories, drawings, experiments, and remembrances.
Morning, noon, and night we gather round the large dining table in the central lodge to feast on homemade, locally-sourced foods, and share tales about our daily pursuits. We learn about some of the fascinating history of the region from our Assistant Manager Nate, and gather around Caretakers Alexandra and Kermit as they serenade us with folk tunes played on guitar, autoharp, and accordion.
Most of us sleep well in the scattered bedrooms and revel in the fact that cell service is difficult if not impossible to find, and getting to and from these lodges involves a 4WD trip up a very steep road, a small motorboat ride across two ponds, and a hike up the slate stairs to reach the historic lodges.
Leaving is hard. Both the place and the people have captured my heart. I only hope I don’t have to wait too long before coming home again.
Interested in the 2025 Retreat to Borestone? Learn more and sign up here: https://maineaudubon.org/events/nature-journaling-at-borestone-mountain/
