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Out Walking | Mar 2026: Drum Beat
8 minutes read time
I combine naturalism, history, diary, always in motion.
March may be my key piece. It is the longest video, and it feels iconic to me — the right time and place. This month seems to contain the full grammar: weather, politics, friends, music, gallery light, water, mud, protest, spring, death, food, thunder, and the body walking through it all.
A 9-minute realtime source becoming a 30-minute Deeper Listening | Mar 2026 is not just a stretched version. It is the month being asked to reveal its pressure.
We see people in this video. Does it matter? Legally? Do I care? They are friends. I do not wish to make stars of them, but they give the piece an anchor of reality. They belong to the month as much as the rain, the creek, the gallery, the songs, and the weather.
Do I reference Thoreau differently each month? Do I need to do that? Why or why not? Walking is already there. The question is how much to name, and how much to let the path speak for itself.
March is a month of unstable edges.
Under penalty of law, not to be removed, frack images flash by.
A Meteor Crater, Arizona bumper sticker. Ukraine and Palestine in the water, reflected.
Keep fighting.
Rain. A 1983 Lincoln penny on a black glove. A block of ice persists.
Rust, a fire hydrant, the creek flows by after heavy rain.
Railroad crossing.
Rebekkah Palov at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York, live performance.
Vanishing point, concrete and bricks, geometries.
Red berries.
Rust, an ant.
Black Diamond, Lehigh Valley engine, power lines, seed poles, wind.
First buds of spring.
The reeds by the lake.
A broken green chair on a bridge.
An escaped red balloon, a NYSE gas line flag, a truck on the tracks.
Arras Morgue, Last Orgasm Before Death.
A flat tire.
Slow blind corner. Proceed with caution.
Snow.
Free Gaza, end war, choose love.
At the gallery, Maggie Ens writes:
MAGGIE ENS
Artist Statement
I gather natural, artificial, and manufactured materials and assemble them into mixed media abstract forms that echo feelings of wilderness, kindness and spirit.
My work moves toward what is alive—toward creation, care, and reverence.
Guided by intuition and the agency of materials, each piece resists fixed meaning. It unfolds slowly, shaped by memory, karma, imagination, and touch.
Existing between chaos and order, the work asks for pause. It invites slow looking, offering not answers, but a space where connection can surface. At its core, the work is about connection—to place, to time, and to the space for presence within an accelerated world.
A traditional Irish song — “Will Ye Go, Lassie Go,” sung at Susie’s house for St. Patrick’s Day.
Forever young — Stiller and Maggie.
At Chamot Gallery, owner and stamp collector Charles Chamot with John Knecht. We see a sample of a stamp collection.
A historic stamp — New York American.
Divine Bones by Marc Sloan, album cover.
We see the St. Patrick’s Day gathering at Susie’s house, soulful group singing.
A tree is cut down in the town.
Surveying the scale of it.
Windy day, late March, more growth on the first buds of spring.
Wind and seeds.
Winter rustlings giving way to green.
Snowfall.
A sign: Speed Limit 30 blows in the 35-mile-an-hour wind.
Icicle deer — a miraculous encounter.
Airplane made of bread, geese, more rain.
A wedding party, rowers — all in the rain. A crow calls out atop a light post.
Art in the town — more elaborate than graffiti, painted on a public handball court.
Get in the box for Israel.
A bucket of pipes.
Waves roll in.
Gulls.
The swollen creek, the lake.
A plate of dumplings.
Rowers, waves.
No kings.
My boot. Walking. More rain.
Thunder. Dark skies. Rain. Lightning.
The realtime source follows the walk as a sequence of encounters. In the slowed version, these encounters become less like entries in a diary and more like states of matter. The dissolve holds them together long enough for change to become visible.
The film is not about arriving at the lake. It is about the interval: winter giving way, water rising, public language appearing on walls and fences, friends becoming part of the weather of the month. March does not simply move forward. It thaws, remembers, protests, sings, floods, and keeps walking.
I sign my name at the end with golden triangles.
Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as often as he used them–transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though they lay half smothered between two musty leaves in a library–aye, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surrounding Nature.
Henry David Thoreau. Walking. As published in Atlantic Monthly, 1862.
Official Story / Public Reckoning
March 2026
EPA / Lee Zeldin
EPA frames March as administrative correction and practical delivery: validating data, restoring confidence after East Palestine, renewing clean-air science advice, streamlining emergency incinerator permitting, supporting rural biofuels, and relieving farmers and diesel operators from burdensome equipment requirements.
Emphasis
- Data integrity and public reassurance after East Palestine
- Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee renewal
- Gold Standard Science
- Wildfire and disaster-response flexibility
- Renewable fuel standards and rural energy economies
- Diesel Exhaust Fluid sensor relief for farmers and truckers
Key rhetoric
- “Transparency”
- “Gold Standard Science”
- “Cut red tape”
- “American energy independence”
- “Rural economies”
- “Save Americans billions”
Foregrounded
EPA foregrounds operational competence: accurate sampling, expert advisory bodies, faster emergency response, farm income, domestic energy, and the claim that regulatory flexibility can protect health while improving productivity.
Minimized or absent
The climate consequences of transportation and fuel policy, the health burdens of weakened air-pollution controls, the political composition of scientific advisory processes, and the broader deregulatory pattern surrounding these individual actions.
Guardian / Dharna Noor
Noor frames March as public reckoning: state climate lawsuits, legal contradiction after the endangerment-finding repeal, worsening lung disease risk, and public-health groups calling Zeldin’s leadership a betrayal of EPA’s mission.
Emphasis
- State climate-superfund laws and fossil-fuel accountability
- Legal challenges to the endangerment-finding repeal
- Air pollution and respiratory disease
- Public-health consequences of environmental rollbacks
- EPA’s mission under Zeldin’s leadership
Key rhetoric
- Rollback
- Sue
- Preempt
- Endanger
- Betray
- Expose
Foregrounded
Guardian coverage foregrounds consequences: who pays for climate damage, who breathes dirtier air, who can sue, who has authority to regulate, and whether EPA is still acting as a public-health agency.
Minimized or absent
The official language of “relief,” “flexibility,” and “energy security” is not treated as self-evident protection. It is placed beside legal conflict, medical risk, and the charge that deregulation shifts costs from regulated industries onto the public.
The deeper contrast
EPA presents March as a month of repair: fixing bad data, rebuilding advisory science, removing delays, strengthening rural energy, and giving farmers and operators relief. The Guardian frames the same period as a month of accountability: courts testing climate authority, doctors warning about lungs and pollution, states defending climate-cost recovery, and public-health groups asking whether EPA’s mission has been inverted.
Key verbs
EPA verbs: validate, restore, appoint, streamline, finalize, save, support
Guardian verbs: sue, warn, expose, challenge, preempt, endanger, betray
Sources
- EPA. Trump EPA Takes Action After Uncovering Government Subcontractor Analysts Altering Measurements in East Palestine Train Derailment Clean Up. 2 Mar 2026. EPA.
- EPA. Administrator Zeldin Announces Selection of Members to the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. 9 Mar 2026. EPA.
- EPA. Administrator Zeldin Announces Proposal to Streamline Permitting Requirements for Incinerators Critical to Wildfire Prevention and Natural Disaster Recovery. 17 Mar 2026. EPA.
- EPA. EPA Finalizes Historic New Renewable Fuel Standards to Strengthen American Energy Security, Support Rural Economies. 27 Mar 2026. EPA.
- EPA. ICYMI: EPA’s New Guidance Removes Requirement for Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF) Sensors, Saves American Operators Billions. 31 Mar 2026. EPA.
- Dharna Noor. How Trump’s EPA rollbacks give US states new tools in climate suits. 8 Mar 2026. The Guardian.
- Dharna Noor. Trump policies set to increase rates of lung disease and death, study finds. 13 Mar 2026. The Guardian.
- Dharna Noor. US states sue Trump EPA over decision to repeal bedrock climate finding. 19 Mar 2026. The Guardian.
- Dharna Noor. US public health groups urge firing of EPA boss Zeldin, saying he ‘brazenly betrayed’ agency. 24 Mar 2026. The Guardian.
See also: Rebecca Solnit. As we prepare for 2026, remember we have the power to make our future. 30 Dec 2025. The Guardian. We enter 2026 with radical uncertainty about the fate of the US – but also with the clarity that people have the power to determine what it will be.
See also: Good News. The Daily Climate. Ongoing, 2017-2026.
See: Civil Disobedience
See: Welcome to Mr. Rogers Neighborhood
See: Birth of EPA
See: The Deeper Listening Series
See: Neil’s Mellow Pad
