Spots of Time: Writing and Thinking Walk

Frederic Church designed carriage roads to maximize views of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains. The organizing aesthetic for these vistas was a romantic ideal of the sublime and the “language of Nature.” Contemplation of these views was meant to provide inspiration and comfort – in poet William Wordsworth’s words, “spots of time…[where] our minds/ Are nourished and invisibly repaired.” This tour, led by poet Celia Bland and art historian Susan Merriam, faculty at Bard College, will put the gorgeous panoramas glimpsed from Olana’s carriage roads in dialogue with some of the unexpected perspectives of contemporary and Romantic poetry.