Staff photo by DARWIN WEIGEL
Sara E. Leeland, co-founder of Chestory, recently edited a book of writings by Tom Wisner titled "Gather 'round Chesapeake."
![Staff photo by DARWIN WEIGEL
Sara E. Leeland, co-founder of Chestory, recently edited a book of writings by Tom Wisner titled \"Gather \'round Chesapeake.\"](/storyimage/PN/20111005/NEWS/710059827/AR/AR-710059827.jpg "Staff photo by DARWIN WEIGEL
Sara E. Leeland, co-founder of Chestory, recently edited a book of writings by Tom Wisner titled \\"Gather \'round Chesapeake.\\"")
Words and drawings of a well-known Calvert environmentalist, artist and educator have been sorted through and published in a book that teaches the importance of the relationship between the people, waters and living creatures that surround the Chesapeake Bay.
Along with writing and singing songs about the water and watermen, Tom Wisner, also known as “the Bard of the Chesapeake,” wrote hundreds of poems and reflective pieces about the Chesapeake region.
Before he died in April 2010, he began sending emails of his work to Sara Ebenreck Leeland and asked her to compile his work into a book, which she did, calling it, “Gather ‘round Chesapeake: Tom Wisner’s Vision.” Leeland, who read through “hundreds and hundreds of pages,” said she wanted to organize the book through images and not analytically, selecting passages that spoke to her and brought his message of the importance of connecting with the water and land.
The book, which is now available at the Calvert Marine Museum, “reads like poetry,” she said.
Wisner, who lived in both St. Mary’s and Calvert counties as an adult, and as a boy fished and crabbed on the Potomac River and its tributaries, writes in vivid storytelling descriptions about his connections to the water and all living creatures.
The book is for anyone who wants to understand the Chesapeake more deeply or wants to learn more about the place he lives, said Leeland, who with Wisner co-founded Chestory, a nonprofit that archives the story of the Chesapeake through verse and song and offers workshops. He had a gratitude for celebrating nature’s life, she said.
“I think teachers would get a lot out of it because Tom was a teacher,” Leeland said. She mentioned Maryland’s new mandate for environmental literacy for students saying that teachers of all levels could create lessons from the book.
The chapters each portray an image, which come out of the images of Wisner’s works, Leeland said.
“I was trying to get it to be the voice of Tom,” she said.
Anne Harrison of Lusby, who knew Wisner for 10 years and has helped sift through Wisner’s work at the museum, said that “she let Tom’s voice come through. Sara gave shape to his creative juices.”
Wisner wanted to educate people through science and art to have a relationship with the earth, Harrison said.
Vicki Rhoades of Sunderland, who was friends with Wisner about 15 years, also said that Leeland captured Wisner’s vision of understanding mankind’s relationship with the environment.
“The poems Sara chose were very, very meaningful,” she said, adding, “I think he would be very pleased.”
Chapters relay messages
The book talks about Wisner’s philosophy in teaching children about the environment.
“An important function of aesthetic work with children is to help them appreciate the mysteries of the unique qualities of other living things,” Wisner wrote.
The book is divided into chapters with titles such as, “Celebrating Nature’s Life” and “The Life of Rivers,” and Leeland gives an introduction in her words, then Wisner’s writings and poems take over.
The book includes Wisner’s “Patuxent Wade in” poem, which he wrote in 1984, and his “Tribute to the Twenty-Year Wade.”
The book also takes segments from Wisner’s textbook that he wrote, and taught a course from at the University of Maryland University College called “Life in and around Chesapeake Bay.”
“There, at more length than anywhere else, he presented his multidisciplinary educational philosophy, with chapters on science, history, literature, art and crafts, film, religion and ethics, symbols and mythology,” Leeland wrote of his 287-page book.
In the “Seasonal Rhythms” chapter, Wisner’s poems and stories talked about Chesapeake’s migrating birds, its spring woodland blossoms and the miracle of life the water brings. In “Winter Solstice,” Wisner writes, “We’re nourished by the waters that rain into forest and fields to make streams gliding from the shadows of the upland woods...”
In the “Spiritual Pathways” chapter, Wisner writes that his mother taught him that “God was in the contours of the landscape, the flows of the living rivers and the rhythms of each season.” In poetic verses he writes that his songs are his guideposts and charts along the journey of his soul, and that spiritual learning comes backward, beginning mostly in the dark and “choosing paths from impulse, by following your heart.” Wisner writes that the goals of his work are to deepen his own spiritual connections to the ongoing story of the universe, experience the community of life in all he does and “to focus on Earth as teacher and the deepening relationships with the planet.”
charvat@somdnews.com
Purchase a copy
“Gather ‘round Chesapeake: Tom Wisner’s Vision” is available for $10 at the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons or at www.chestory.org and www.amazon.com.