March 10th-April 19th, I will be Artist in Residence in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, one of the many visual artists, performers, and writers in this nearly three year old program. Each artist works with young students who come to the Cuyahoga Valley Environmental Education Center (CVEEC) to learn about the art and science of the Cuyahoga Valley in specific and our environment in general. In addition, artists work with other visitors to the park, and we work on our own art while in residence. 
            As a lifelong diarist, I thought this  would be an opportunity to keep a semi-public journal, in addition to writing my own poems and my much more private journal. I have brought with me the 12 volumes of the journals of Henry David Thoreau, an American writer with whom I have had many conversations throughout my life. When I went to Europe to study at age 22, his Walden was one of two books I carried with me. (The other was the American Library edition of Twentieth Century American Poetry.) Later in my life, there was a period when I couldn't read Thoreau. So male. So 19th century. I am back reading him again, neither devotee nor enemy, a writer who knows a good diarist when she reads one.
           These six weeks constitute a time when spring comes (or doesn't) to much of the northern half of the world. Thoreau did a good job of capturing this time in his place as he describes the extreme cold and sudden warmth, days so warm he could sit on a mound of melting snow with his jacket off, days so bitter they seem crueler than winter. I'm hoping to get down in words just how the spring of 2003 goes down, both in the valley and in the larger world, where as I write this introduction, war looms.