Call it 77 years, the time it takes to take to a place, and the place to you, in the way that the modest majesty of a pine would do. What is that tree, to you and me, but the surrounding soil, sun and rain? It is just this, but, all of this that carries on.
By way of Boston and New York, Nancy moved up with Jessica in 1969, married Randy in 1970, made camp and then home on Rupert's land, and had Joel in 1977. McKenzie and Jim, Charlotte and Derek, follow Ona and Gere on wooded paths that whisper a story still being told.
Then, the early days of Bread and Puppet Theater, when peaceful, playful, papier-mâché uprisings made worldwide spectacles for meaning and change. Her puppets and performances added voice to the strength of grassroots rising, still resonant and, perhaps, even more important today.
Always, the quiet force of her art: she devoted 50 years to work with the hands that thought and spoke a quiet reserve to reveal a reservoir of feeling, when the things that we make say more and longer than words can do. Forever after they will silently dance, laugh and play, as long as light meets their color-swept surfaces.
We pulled planks of old-growth pine from the woodshed to rough plane a heart-carved top that capped a pine box lined with bows and shavings for the trip to St. J. for the ashes to be interred by the rock that borders the pond. Look for her on the first snow, in the first signs of spring that hint at her legacy living on, in this place and its people.
