20/02/2026
Wendell Berry's poem "The Peace of Wild Things" offers a balm for the soul in times of anguish: “When despair for the world grows in me / and I wake in the night at the least sound / in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, / I go and lie down where the wood drake / rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. / I come into the peace of wild things / who do not tax their lives with forethought / of grief...” In these lines, Berry describes a ritual of retreat into nature's quiet presence, where creatures live without the burden of anticipation or regret, granting the speaker a temporary liberation—“I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
Dan McCarthy's *Crane in the Woods* (2025), a five-color screen print (18" × 24", editions available through the artist's shop and select releases like NPR collaborations), visually embodies this very sanctuary. The American artist Dan McCarthy (b. 1962), renowned for his graphic, evocative posters often blending natural motifs with serene, almost meditative atmospheres, depicts a solitary crane standing amid a dense stand of trees. The composition centers on the bird's elegant silhouette—long neck, poised stance—framed by tall, vertical trunks that rise like silent guardians. A soft, glowing backdrop suggests twilight or dawn: subtle gradients of deep blue-black fading into warm peach, rose, and amber hues filtering through the canopy, evoking the "still water" and "day-blind stars" Berry invokes. The crane, patient and unhurried, mirrors the great heron feeding in the poem—embodied calm in a shadowed, enveloping forest.
McCarthy's screen-print technique lends the work a crisp yet dreamy quality: flat areas of color layered for depth, minimal detail allowing the eye to rest rather than search. The woods feel vast and intimate at once—branches interlace overhead, undergrowth softens the ground—creating a space of enclosure that protects rather than confines. The crane's presence is not dramatic; it simply is, embodying the wild things' freedom from "forethought of grief." This stillness invites the viewer to enter the scene imaginatively, to lie down metaphorically beside the water's edge (implied by the bird's habitat) and surrender anxiety.
The print resonates deeply with Berry's message: when human worries—global despair, personal fears for the future—overwhelm, nature offers no answers, only respite. The crane does not promise change; it demonstrates existence without torment. McCarthy's restrained palette and balanced composition amplify this peace—cool shadows balanced by warm light, the bird's form a quiet anchor amid vertical lines. In a 2025 edition that feels timely amid ongoing global unease, the artwork becomes a portable refuge, much like Berry's poem: a reminder to seek out wild places, to observe creatures who live presently, and to borrow their grace for a while.
By pairing Berry's words with McCarthy's serene crane, we glimpse a shared truth: freedom from despair arrives not through escape or denial, but through immersion in the world's unaffected rhythm. For a time, in the presence of still water and waiting stars—or in the quiet gaze of a bird in shadowed woods—we too can rest, unburdened, and remember what it means to be free.
