People: The River Walker
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| A wreath being made |
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| Bits and pieces of nature to work with |
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| Each vase is unique |
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| Lena Eriksson |
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| Lena made this gate |
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| Lena's bark vases |
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| Looking for hidden treasures |
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| Roadside art |
Lena Eriksson has loved nature since she was a small girl in Sweden. “My mother used to ask me why I didn’t walk to school with the other children,” Lena remembered recently. “I told her that when I walk to school and see a tree or flower, I like to pick it or smell it and the other children laugh at me.”
You can find Lena nearly every morning, her dog in tow, walking along Pagenstecher Park to the river, where she picks up interesting twigs, leaves, seed pods, drift wood and grasses.
Back in her garage workshop with the bits of nature that she loves, Lena creates bark vases often decorated with seed pods or leaves, along with wreathes and more elaborate driftwood fences and seats.
You may have seen some of Lena’s handiwork and not known it. She started finding small rock creations left along Dock Hill Road by another passerby and she would add touches to it -- a feather, a piece of word -- forming a dialogue with the other person who also added to the piece.
Lena has lived in the village since 1982 and for 37 years she was a flight attendant with TWA. When she wasn’t flying all around the world, Lena loved coming home to the quiet peacefulness. “After all the activity at the airline or in airports, this has been like a sanctuary for me,” Lena said. “To walk down here, to look at the creek, at the trees, is a sanctuary.”
On a walk this week, Lena pointed out some intrusions to her sanctuary -- an area at the entry to Dock Hill Road where she says the village dumped rubbish and compost, smothering trees a year or so ago. Further down, a fresh piles of asphalt and excavated earth sit on the roadside.
Despite these distractions, the simple pleasure of finding a unique seedpod or leaf still brings Lena down to the riverside daily and she hopes that she will be able to enjoy its undisturbed beauty for years to come.
To contact Lena Erikkson about her work, call her company, River Walk, at 534-3132.
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