Vasily Polenov painted Birch and Ferns when he was just 29 years old. We may well imagine he discovered this alive, green space while investigating the wild places at his grandmother's estate at Olshanka. Notice that the artist keeps all of his focus on the forest floor. A study of the forest floor suggests someone who is walking slowly, taking time to see deeply.
There's nothing to suggest we're on a woodland path but rather off, in the thick of it. There is a marshy spot at the base of the white birch tree and moving to the right in the foreground. A large fern grows at the base of the birch which tells us we're in a cool, damp place. Ferns won't grow where it's hot and dry. The light is filtered or dappled. We might imagine bird song and the smell of leaf-decay.
Thomas Merton (who lived in a hermitage at Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky) wrote in the fifth volume of his journals:
"The profoundest and happiest times of my life have been in and around Gethsemane and also some of the most terrible. But mostly the happy moments were in the woods and fields, alone with the sky and the sun — and up here at the hermitage."
A new acquaintance asked recently about my seminary years (some 45 years ago). I often think of those long four years, but I have almost no recollection of the classroom time where I was usually thinking, "Where am I? What the deuce is this all about?" But I do remember vividly the almost daily, long walks I took on the vast seminary property, in all seasons, at all times of day and evening, when I could escape to the fields and forest and discover places like the one Vasily Polenov has come upon here. There, I had an acute sense of being alive, that God was near and sustaining, and that everything would be all right.
