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Home and Away
Took a field trip out of the Arboretum and into the Wild.Not too wild, maybe, but getting wilder.
Doodletown is an abandoned community. Now incorporated into Bear Mountain State Park, the area is replete with revolutionary-era history. Supported by local iron mines, the town prospered into the 20th century, but declined when the mines closed, after WWII. By the end of the 1960s it was a ghost town. Most of the buildings have since been leveled. A private graveyard still overlooks a small reservoir, and a decrepit road defies the encroaching brambles. Tangles of Barberry and Rose are now home to a notable variety of nesting birds: Warblers; Woodpeckers; Grouse; not to mention the butterflies...
Fifty miles north of the City, the area is recommended as one of the best birding spots in our general vicinity. In need of a change of scene, and with the first full day of Summer to celebrate, I arranged an excursion, through the good graces (and Volvo) of my friend Matt. DMTree's mainspring (CEO? CPU?), Jim, was also induced to make the trip.
Now, I know I've presented the Park as an apparently endless Cornucopia of interesting material, but it never hurts to see things from another vantage. And it's always good to get out of the City, especially once the humid heat of Summer arrives, as it has. Besides, the Park is over crowded now, with everyone who can't get out of town seeking such relief as can be found hereabouts. In this regard, the Park performs its civic duty, but is less attractive to me. More than ever, it's best to be there early, and preferably on a weekday; circumstances which are not often easy for me to arrange.
We arrived at Bear Mountain early enough, and found our way down to the old Doodletown Road, at the heart of the nesting territory. The trail led among tumbled slopes and fallen trees, with traces of the old town peeking through the swelling underbrush. We walked amid a buzzing, wheezing, ringing, twittering soundscape, the vibrations of which permeated the whole environment. Birds and bugs were everywhere, from the ground to the top of the canopy. At least we could hear them all around; seeing them was another story. Oh, we could see the insects all right, the ones that swarmed about our heads, anyway. Plenty of butterflies, too: Swallowtails and Hairstreaks; Anglewings and Fritillaries; Browns and Blues; and more. But the birds; well, I’m thinking I should have done better with those birds.
I don’t mean to put a bad face on the experience, but the truth is that this little encounter with nature-in-the-raw was profoundly humbling, and certainly serves to put Central Park in perspective. The “real world” conditions (such as they were in that strange landscape, at once decayed and rank with growth) were much harder to negotiate than the artfully orchestrated precincts of the Park. There, whole flights of migrants are compressed into a small, accessible area, making for relatively easy viewing, especially if one knows the ways of the place. On the breeding grounds, it’s the birds who are at home, and seeing them is not so simple.
The enterprise was not as well planned as it might have been, (is it ever?), and the timing could have been better. The foliage is heavy now, obscuring the views, and courtship displays have given way to fledging. The young birds were not quite ready to leave the nests, so we didn’t see them, either. And I was concerned with my friends, afraid that this might prove an unrewarding introduction to birding. I tried to impart all of my wisdom in the matter, which pretty much boils down to: Find a Bird; Then Look at It. They seemed to enjoy themselves in spite of my instruction.
After we’d blown the best part of the morning getting oriented, we finally did start to see some things. Deer, and a Garter Snake, and yes, a few birds. We waited a while, which is often what it takes, and eventually Warblers appeared, flitting among the trees, and bobbing through the underbrush. We had good views of the promised Hooded and Cerulean Warblers, but I must say I did feel a bit inept. Things were different than in the Park. I swear, the birds moved faster: they knew where they were going, and I didn’t. I had a hard time sorting things out; even birds I know well looked somehow different. Vultures were circling; we did manage to separate Black from Turkey.
A number of obvious things hit me a couple of days later, which is not a good reaction time for this sort of thing. That blur that looked like a football pass? Ruffed Grouse. That low level, red-brown bird that Matt kept reporting? Eastern Towhee. The most ubiquitous song of the day? American Redstart.
I think.
Let it be said that the plants presented no such problem.
Or, actually, they did, but they didn’t stress me so.
Exactly what was going on, in terms of the regeneration of the formerly inhabited area, is beyond my botanical abilities to understand fully.
But I sure did get to see a lot of Tulip Trees.
Again, I realized that it would have been great to be there earlier, to see them in bloom, but then we would have missed the Mountain Laurel, which blanketed the higher elevations with white blossoms. There were native Sycamores, too, not those Planetrees you see all over town. The Sycamores were hanging out on the bottom land, as is their want, while the Tulip Trees seemed to march up the slopes, where they appeared to be giving the Oaks and Hickories a run for their money.
I could have spent the whole day looking at the flora, and that’s part of the problem: I’m just not prepared for the sheer density of the real world.
Or it’s expansiveness.
Nowhere in the Park can you find a view like this one.
Or can you?
Three days after descending into Doodletown, I was still a bit vague. But it was the Traditional day of Midsummer, June the 24th, and observation was in order.
Maybe this was the real Holiday?
One thing the Park helps me do is to reorient myself.
Often, this is done by following habitual paths, but my overdose of wilderness had disabused me of the need to seek out the more remote areas I typically favor. Instead, I wandered rather aimlessly through the populous southern half of the Park, more bemused, than bothered, by the crowds. It crossed my mind that if this was Midsummer, and Sumer, (or is it Somer?) is really Spring, then there really is no early Summer, since the season “officially” began but three days ago. Fair enough, then. Summer is a full-blown thing; no little-bit-of-Summer; no easing into Summer; it arrives as epitome, forgoing gradation.
I’m pretty sure there is a late Summer, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Worrying about this sort of nonsense, I almost missed the Catalpa flowers. They’re among the more lavish of our native tree blossoms, but I’d been inattentive; preoccupied with birds and such. There aren’t many of these large-leafed trees in the north end of the Park, so I’d made a point of looking for them earlier in the week, and was taken aback to find that the blooms were gone from a grove near Cherry Hill.
The largest Catalpa in the Park is near Gapstow Bridge, on the 59th Street Pond, and it blows later and longer than the other specimens. I saw plenty of Catalpa blooming along the highway on the way to Bear Mountain, but that wasn’t going to make up for missing it at Home. Fortunately, the tree was still going strong. Access was impeded, however, by the latest rehab project, which has the Pond area fenced off for the Summer. I couldn’t get the proper close-ups, but I managed a few pictures; evidence, at least. Don’t even ask about the Osage-orange, or Sassafras, or Tupelo, or any of the other things I failed to show you this Spring. Too much to keep up with; and too late now; no turning back. Maybe we’ll see some fruits, later. Otherwise, it’s “wait till next year”. Come to think of it, even when you see the thing, it’s still “wait till next year”.
Summer is Here and Now.
Enjoy it.
There’s plenty of room in these longest days. Too much for me to stay out from dawn till dark. But Summer evenings are inviting, and I found myself revising my habit: ignoring morning; working my way up from the south end of the Park; and making for Turtle Pond at dusk.
Turtle Pond, (which is in fact full of turtles), is mid-park, underneath Vista Rock and Belvedere Castle, just south of the Great Lawn. It’s western shore is inaccessible, hard against the butt end of Shakespeare in the Park, which happened to be in session on this fine evening.
I must admit, I hadn’t come without a reason.
Let me call it a Hope, and not an Expectation, for I think that expectation may have been part of my problem in Doodletown: what happens is never quite what one expects.
Perhaps it was a species of Faith.
Mostly, it was a note in the Bird Log, which I’d seen earlier in the week, relating a somewhat unusual occurrence for the Park: Black Skimmers over Turtle Pond at nightfall.
This had been going on for several days, but I hadn’t been able to fit it into a tight schedule. There was no telling whether they would keep showing up each night. No knowing what brought these coastal birds to this modest bit of wet amid the green amid the City.
They changed a pattern, just as I had.
A man gazed at the water and asked if I was waiting for the Skimmers? He’d been there till 9:00 yesterday, but they hadn’t shown.
No Expectations, but...
I walked away, moving along the bank, loosing the light...
Ten minutes to 9:00, and wait, yes, that’s definitely something, black on top, white on the bottom, forked tail, fast. Yes, definitely a Black Skimmer. An amazing sight! Racing across the Pond, leaving a trail like a jet plane, no, actually it’s just above the water, plowing the surface with its bright red lower mandible, which is a good deal longer than the upper one. Textbook feeding behavior, but this was not a textbook. This was real.
Even when you get what you expect, the experience is different.
I watched the Skimmer incessantly circling the Pond. It never stopped moving, but it kept changing the pattern of it’s circuit. Even so, it revisited the same paths over and over. Often just a few feet from my spot on the shore. After a little while, it was joined by two more, and then another. Four, or was it five? The little group of birders that had formed had trouble keeping count, as the Skimmers sped about, in tandem or on intersecting paths that disappeared into the darkness at the other end of the Pond, then zoomed back into view.
Yes, this was Real, in the way that life is “real”, if not in the way that the wild woods beyond the City are more “real” than the Park's. One location does not obviate the other, but they provide mutual perspective, creating a sense of depth, as in the parallel scopes of the binocular.
Each, in absence, is as a dream, to one who must engage the other.
A Midsummer night’s dream.
Stage lights from the Shakespeare Theater tinged the waters with unnatural illumination. The Skimmers flickered through a shimmering reflection of fluorescent blue, their trails flashing across the Pond like meteors across the sky. Here was a conjunction unknown to any natural reality, except for the one we live in.
The play was over, and I finally left.
The Skimmers were still going, but that’s their business.
By that time, it was too dark to know for sure what I was seeing, but I didn’t care.
I’d finally found my way Home from Doodletown.
Sweet and Stinky, Summer Arrives
Even as I’m working on this post, the Summer Solstice is occurring.Usually, it’s on the 21st, but Leap Year throws things off a bit, in the course of making its correction. This year, the Solstice is at 9:46 PM, EDT, so the 21st remains the first day of Summer. Many Traditional cultures begin the day at sunset, a marker more concrete, in its way, than the abstraction of midnight, which seldom really marks the mid point of the darkness.
As with Christmas, the celebration has slipped a few days from the exact time of the Solstice. June the 24th is Traditionally Midsummer, the half-way point of the year. We don’t make much of the occasion, saving our Summer holidaying for the 4th of July.
I meant to have more of a post together, but Summer is the season of laziness, so I don’t.
I’m not talking about the constrictive, hibernating laziness of Winter; this is expansive laziness; relaxation to the point of liquidity.
Lie back,
breathe deep,
and...smell?
Oh yes, Summer has many odors...
Father’s Day
I’m put in mind of another way in which we differ from most living things; in that we form familial bonds that last throughout our lifetimes.To be bound up in generations intertwined is not the way of Life, as such. Parents must give way to children, who must themselves become parents, and give way. A path is made through Time, but it is only opened through departures.
Our species makes that path into a chain, which links, if it does not bind.
Our continuance of the reciprocal relationship between parent and child mirrors the self-awareness that characterizes genus Homo. The recognition of the Self, and of the Parent, are identifications of the same order. Human Culture provides a context in which these identities need not be limited to breeding behavior.
As I think of my father, in his age, and my youth, I realize that he knew, and communicated, in his own way, many of the Mysteries that I have pointed at in these pages. That I have had to learn them for myself, despite his efforts, is a measure of the degree to which Humans also participate in a nature which seeks no more than continuity, without regard for consciousness.
Dad’s consciousness has always been an inspiration to me.
Much of what I do in the Arboretum is a recapitulation of the nature walks that we habitually took when I was a child. Most summer Sundays found us looking at bugs, or plants, or stars, or whatever it might be. What was clear was that it was all interesting, and that it all mattered, in some crucial way; a way requiring our attention.
That we frequented nature parks, rather than amusement parks, was perhaps an economic indicator, but there was an implicit assumption, almost a morality, as well: a premise I have sought to live up to, ever since.
What my father seemed to suggest to me was that, no matter how restrictive circumstances might be, we always have access to larger worlds of nature and of culture. These worlds are virtually free, and they repay attention with a sort of pure value (an ecstasy), worth more than anything which can be bought.
If every parent could teach this lesson to their offspring, the World would be a better place. It’s a lesson that anyone can learn, but it can only be taught by someone who Knows. I’m thankful that my Dad is one of those.
White Out
Today is Pentecost, the day on which the Holy Spirit descends upon the disciples of the Christ. This page is certainly not meant as a Christian exegeses, and you may note that I did not touch on last week’s Feast of the Ascension. My concern with the Holidays is not so much in following a prescribed path, as it is to find a path; learning why a day is marked, and determining which are fit for celebration. In practice, this means taking some note of all our “official” holidays, as sanctioned by the federal government. These are Holidays by law, affecting us whether we will or no. They generally provide a day off for much of the populace. How we use this compulsory free time can say a lot about us.There are other, unofficial, Holidays which are widely honored, and these, too, tell us much about our needs and uses. Valentine’s Day and Halloween both have Traditional roots, but have retained their relevance by adjusting to changing times. Even the much maligned “commercial”, or “made-up” holidays cannot be ignored, if they fill a genuine need, Mother’s Day being the most successful example.
The most important Holidays reveal truths about our culture, as we struggle to find an appropriate stance to take in their regard. Christmas and Easter are nominally our “biggest” holidays, or, at least, Christmas is most vigorously celebrated (with money), and Easter is the highest holy day of our most prevalent religion. Because we separate church and state, Easter is not a federal holiday. Still, we manage to include it in Spring's school holidays, which means a whole week off; a period only matched at Christmas. Strangely, Christmas is a governmental holiday, but it is celebrated as the apotheosis of Capitalism, so apparently there’s no real conflict there.
Look closely enough at any Traditional system, such as Christianity, and you will find that every day has its special meanings, though some days mean more than others. Minding these meanings can keep one busy, and also, in line (Lectionary Resources is useful for keeping up). Our World has tended to cram more meaning into fewer Holidays, while treating the rest of time as all the same. This allows us to focus on other things, but we may find we have wondered far from the path, becoming lost without noticing.
For my part, I’d just as soon tell time by watching the grass grow, which also works. I didn’t really mean to treat Pentecost, considering it to have been implied in my Easter posts. Still, I am concerned with ways in which we may obtain the Holy Spirit, and I’m also reminded that the issue of Whitsun came up in relation to the Robin Hood and Maying material.
Whitsun, or White Sunday, is a British name for this day. Most references cite a tradition of holding christenings on Pentecost, just as the disciples were baptized on that day with holy spirit. The white garments worn for the ceremonies are said to have lent the name. Knight’s footnotes to “Robin Hood and the Monk” offer a deeper (and to me, preferable) reading, linking whiteness to the blossoms of Spring. He mentions this in the course of arguing for “Somer” as late May, but this year, Whitsun falls well into June. The date is figured from Easter, which is the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring after the Vernal Equinox. This year, the Equinox fell on the full moon, pushing Easter (and thus Whitsun) back, to the latest dates possible. That the most important date in Christianity is determined by a variable natural cycle illustrates something about the appropriate use of literalism in approaching the Spiritual.
As far as the Holy Spirit goes, It’s said to have come down that Sunday as tongues of flame, though it’s more often represented in the form of a dove. I think I’m on record as saying that everything in Creation is accomplished through the agency of this Spirit, if we can but see it. Therefore, I see Pentecost as an event not of acquisition, but of recognition. We may all learn to recognize the sanctity of existence, even if we do not note the dove descending, as in the paintings of old. Keen powers of perception will be needed, indeed, if we are to see how a thing well symbolized by burning tongue may just as soon be called a dove.
Still, a Dove's a bird; get out your binoculars!
Here are a few white flowers I saw through mine.
Lost Cherries
I’m going through migration withdrawal. Where once a motion in the branches might have signaled a new discovery, now it reveals but another Starling, or Robin, or Blue Jay. Just the regulars, going about their business. Gone too are the hordes of birders. Only a few die-hards work the Park now, looking for nesting behavior, and the occasional oddity. I’m trying to remember how it was that I occupied myself before the passage of the passerines.Actually, I had no trouble spending almost all of last Saturday’s sunlit hours in the Park. It was arguably one of the finest days of the year. Clear and bright, pleasantly warm, but not too hot. A perfect late Spring day. We haven’t had enough like that. This Spring has been on the cool and damp side, and the better weather has been sandwiched between some heavy storms. These have done a good deal of damage. One of the biggest English Elms on the top of the Great Hill lost a major limb. Nearby, close to the Blockhouse, a large Sweetgum tipped over at the roots. Almost any big storm will knock down a few trees, mostly Black Cherries. They seed naturally in the Park, or sprout from roots and stumps of fallen predecessors. Many of these second growth trees display what the lumber folks would call “bad form”. Others might call them picturesque, but they are prone to decay, and they often grow on eroding slopes, making them that much more likely to fall down.
At its best, the Black Cherry is a fine tree. It’s our largest native Cherry, known for its horizontally striated bark, which crackles with age. A medicinal syrup can be derived from the bark, but you’re more likely to run into an artificial flavoring in most of today’s products bearing the name Wild Cherry. The wood is said to be great for carpentry, but the only time you see it in the Park is when a tree is damaged.
The downed trees can be depressing, but only in a way which reflects the Park's un-naturalness. When a landmark of landscaping falls, it degrades the Park’s aesthetic for a generation. The Cherries, on the other hand, sprouting and falling, are behaving pretty much as they would in the wild, where they are mostly a short-lived successional species, quickly colonizing open spaces, before giving way to climax species.
So, if chronicling the Park makes one hypersensitive to its losses, it’s important to remember that the process of renewal is also at work here. One sees it in the flowers; those publicly displayed sex organs. Ironically, a freshly fallen tree provides the best look at details of crown and blossom, short of climbing (which is illegal in the Park). Storm-felled Cherries offered these views of the new blooms. Cherries have a deep horticultural heritage, but American Black Cherry less so than most. The ornamentals bloom early in the Spring, but the Black holds back, and when it blows, in late May, the flowers are tiny, though artfully clustered.
Every plant has it own flowering time, just as the birds arrive on schedule at their breeding grounds. Reproductive niches are concentrated in the Spring, though there’s always some life form that will make use of an alternative strategy. Competition is fierce: it’s a jungle out there. Or at least a meadow.
The value of attuning to Nature’s rhythms is not always realized by following them. In this case, the stricture of these sexual schedules serves to illuminate, by contrast, one of the greatest gifts we have received, and one which differentiates us from the other animals. Unlike most Mammals, Humans are not subject to estrus, but remain sexually available all year long, allowing courtship to operate on a whole different level, a level that may be called Cultural, but which leads inexorably to the Spiritual. Sex epitomizes ecstasy, but does not exhaust it. That we have been granted leeway in this matter opens our Life to possibilities which the birds and the trees do not dream of.