Mr. Wilson's Arboretum

Jan 25, 2001

Settling into Winter

It's one third over, but that's the head start of the Holidays: by the time the season comes into focus, it's already well under way. We can use the break. No longer New Year, but this year, and the same old Winter as before. The very model of that which must be got through.

This looks to be a "traditional" Winter, such as we haven't seen since the mid nineties. With all due respect to global warming, it seems that the recent mild Winters have been due to the El Nino/La Nina cycle, at least in our neck of the woods. The planet as a whole has shown increased temperatures almost yearly, but our particular weather has indeed followed the pattern expected of the Pacific (but not pacific) events: dry and hot, followed by cool and wet, while the opposite effects occur out West, where wildfires have raged. Now we are said to be back to "normal", and we've already seen more snow than the last three Winters combined.

We've also had a genuine January Thaw, after a colder than average December. Covered and frozen; then melting to exposure, the landscape of the Park takes a real beating under these conditions. At least there is less foot (or paw) traffic to exacerbate the situation. Early morning in the North End finds the Park less peopled now than at any other time of year. That's a trade off between seasons, but a fresh snowfall brings out the crowds, and a party atmosphere prevails. Children bring sleds and saucers; adults bring cameras, and try to catch a special moment, before the fairy dust goes graying slush.

That's all very nice, and I generally approve of the populace making good use of the Park, but it's not necessarily what I come for. The revelers arrive on the heels of the storm, but I'm there during the worst, (or best) of it. Whatever the weather, I feel like somebody ought to go out in it: so I do that. Not as a macho thing; to experience extreme conditions, but more as a matter of verification, like Thomas poking into Christ's wound. (There's the difference between faith and knowledge, and the reason that Thomas is the pseudoepigraphic (or inspirational?) author of Gnostic scripture.)

Not that I can spend as much time out in it as I would in kinder weather, but if it's not too inclement, I can spend all of the sunlit hours: the days are short now, another trade-off between seasons. Nevertheless, walking in eight inches of pathless snow will tire you more in an hour than would a whole day of leisure strolling. Exhilaration eventually gives way. Sometimes, that's when things get interesting. Sometimes, that's when it's time to go home. Every moment in the Park deserves attention, but not all are equally rewarding. Still, the improbable orange glow from the breast of a Red-shouldered Hawk, illuminating a damp gray day, can mitigate more than the weather.
Winter?
We'll get through it.

Jan 15, 2001

Martin Luther King Day

...and the occasion for one last year-in-review. This time to treat diversity not through variety, but in the way the same place differs over the course of the year. A lot of our identity problems stem from...well, our identity, or our insistence on the sanctity of the same. And I mean “same” literally. Our faith that our ever changing selves, no less our social or racial groups, represent a continuity, and a signal truth: that while all may change around us, we remain ourselves; the same. All else must be measured by its failure to be us. Maybe we’d feel less proprietary if we changed our looks from season to season, the way so many plants and animals do. Race is just a way of dealing with local circumstances, but we are the great generalizers, learning to deal with these through cultural and technological means, while our bodies have not caught up with our languages. Our forms retain biological solutions to specifics of environments we have left behind. But we are still the same people, Black or White, as a bird, the Loon, say, is the same, though in its different plumages, of Winter or of Spring. An Oak is an Oak, with or without leaves. All of which brings up the point that in order to really know an Oak, or any tree, you’ve got to know its variant faces: its naked limbs; its Winter buds; its leaves, both green and red. Just so, we won’t learn all that Humanity might be, unless we are willing to learn more about it than we know about ourselves. The only ones who can teach us this are the Others.
Give them a chance.

Jan 06, 2001

Epiphany

By definition, an epiphany is a manifestation, a showing forth, of the divine. In the parlance of the perceivers, it has come to mean the recognition, more than the showing. Not all that’s shown is seen, or, at least, not seen by all. Certainly that’s the case with the birds in the Park. No matter how hard I look, how many birds I see, there is invariably some unseen wonder noted in the Log Book, reminding me that there are people out there seeing more than I am. Seeing something different, anyway. I doubt that anyone else sees exactly what I do in the Park, but it’s evident that a lot of seeing gets done, well beyond what the average stroll-in-the-parker takes in. Still, I don’t think all the possible sights are exhausted. I’ve wondered if the birds keep a log of species that were in the Park, but went unseen. One wants to see everything, but in this World, contingencies are such that it just doesn’t work out that way. Which makes each fragment, every flitting bird, or briefly focused sunbeam, an epiphany of its own. The recognition that there’s something special going on here sanctifies our vision. Just as the Magi, with their arcane knowledge, saw more than a baby, we may learn to see, verified against the field guide of the heart, more than a bird.
This is where the star has come to rest.

Happy Holidays,
and now, back to Winter...

Jan 05, 2001

Settling into Winter

Martin Luther King Day

Epiphany

The Twelfth Day of Christmas

The Eleventh Day of Christmas

The Tenth Day of Christmas

The Ninth Day of Christmas

The Eighth Day of Christmas

The Seventh Day of Christmas