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September 3, 2001

Laborious Days

Not working is one of those things that makes Humans different. We’ve accrued leisure enough to skew our schedules. The End-of-Summer Holiday marks the passing of an indolent season for some, but I’ve been working overtime; too pressed to write much, or even visit the Arboretum with the frequency I’d wish.
So it was nice to take a break, enjoying the hospitality of DMTree matriarch Jeanne, while all around Summer culminates in nuts and fruits, and a few early withered leaves, the cost of August’s week of heat, which averaged out an otherwise mild Summer.

But how can I divine from the recliner the effort that the Pokeweed must expend to turn its berries purple? Do they ripen for the purpose of the south-bound birds, or do the birds delay on their behalf? Do I rise at dawn, or sleep into the sun? Do we work to purchase leisure, or rest but grudgingly and from necessity?

We work to live.
Mere existence entails incalculable effort. Leisure requires more than that. So we honor laborers by resting, rather than by having everyone else pitch in. The lilies of the field have toiled all Summer, and gone to seed will make a working-man’s bouquet.
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August 28, 2001

Squint...
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August 8, 2001

Can We Keep It?

Back again, slithering through Summer.
Hard to work up much energy, but I’ve got to tackle that alligator.
Not literally, of course, but then, it wasn’t really an alligator, and I think I can handle a two foot long Spectacled Caiman if it comes down to it.

It was a classic tabloid news story: alligator in Central Park. Well, almost. Sewer-gators are a staple of the New York mythos, lurking beneath the surface of our psyche, if not our city. Here was a real one, albeit on the small side. A gator-wrangler was brought up from Florida to subdue it, which seemed like a bit of overkill. In the end, it was his wife who nabbed the poor thing, comprising, perhaps, a manifestation of the Goddess, embracing a traditional reptilian familiar. Or maybe it was more a dismissive jest of the Male power, spoofing the paucity of our local wildlife. I’m not quite sure, but the crocodilian supposedly got sent home, everybody had a good laugh, and nobody got hurt.

The Caiman was lucky. It’s no myth that people flush unwanted pets down the toilet, if they can. I don’t know why you couldn’t just hand the animal over to a shelter, but larger creatures require another strategy once they’ve worn out their welcome. Like dumping them in the Park. Which probably explains the foot-long lizard I saw the other day, ambling through the underbrush on the slope of the Point. As far as I know, turtles are the only reptiles that manage to live in the Park, spending most of their time in the water. This was no doubt a pet, likely let loose because it had a large tumor on its back, which may have degraded its exotic cachet. No cute news item here.

Wild animals are compelling.
Hence birdwatching, and every other approach, including zoos and hunting for sport. I’ve come around to the birding philosophy, in which simply seeing a natural occurrence of the beast (or plant, for that matter) is fulfillment enough. I don’t need to own it, and I certainly don’t want to kill it, but I’m afraid the two often go together.

I’ve kept various reptiles, amphibians, and arthropods. Even a skunk (very briefly). But all of this was as a child, and all it taught me was that to keep a wild creature is to kill it. Some may fare better than others, but it’s always clear that these exotic pets do not enjoy their captivity in the manner of truly domesticated animals.

Cats and dogs have entered into a mutually beneficial relationship with humans. They make good enough pets. Our world is their environment, and a good relationship with a domestic animal is one of the most humanizing experiences we can have. Wild animals signal the Mysteries of a natural world from which we are alienated.
We are ourselves domesticated.

A side effect (which is to say, an effect) of domestication is neoteny: the retention of juvenile characteristics into adulthood. Humans can be understood as neotenous apes. Like infants, we have scant body hair, as well as big heads, relative to body size. An oversize head means a big brain, which may have something to do with why our cognitive capacities appear to outstrip other animals’, but it’s still the juvenilism that makes the difference. It’s not just the size of our brains, but the fact that they keep learning, even after we reach sexual maturity. Learning is juvenile behavior. What we call play, when a child or a kitten does it, is actually an arena for exploratory and imitative experimentation. But while most animals settle into a routine of stereotyped behavior once they pass puberty, we keep playing, learning new things. We are virtually unique in carrying this behavior into adulthood.

Our neoteny may derive from a sort of “self-domestication” , a concept which could represent the transformation of Evolution from a physical to a cultural vector. Or perhaps we’re just not willing to admit how much of a two way street domestication is. We have been changed as much as the plants and animals we breed. And let’s face it, plants had the original “domestic idea” to begin with: staying in one place; making their own food. Maybe they started the whole thing.

Grains and farm animals are our most important domestics, but we don’t pay much attention to them. We want something wild amidst all our domesticity, so we keep our would-be wolves and wildcats, curled at the foot of the bed. Which is all well and good. There’s some sort of dialectic at work here, as culture and nature interact, and we may all be hot-house flowers in the end. I wouldn’t want to dissuade children from bringing home a wild thing or two, but I draw the line at harboring crocodiles. And leaving them in the Park is downright irresponsible.

Childishness may make us Human, but we’re going to have to grow up sometime, so I’ve got a compromise for those desiring a wild familiar. Come to the Park, and adopt a Grass Spider. Spiders make fine pets, if you insist on something unusual. A Tarantula was the most successful exotic I ever had, though she may not have seen it that way. Ten years in a glass box can’t have been much fun. I used to keep Grass Spiders in fruit jars, but why bother with the container at all?

In the Conservatory Garden, you can have your pick of arachnids. Summer’s hedges are covered with webs. Grass Spiders weave funnel webs: tubes that open into broad sheets stretched across the tops of the hedges. The spider sits in the shadows of the funnel, then races out to attack whatever insect finds its way into the web. Fierce predators always make the sexiest exotic pets. All you have to do is catch a fly or a grasshopper and throw it into the web. (This is OK, because they breed in vast numbers, and are meant to be eaten.) The spider will pounce, and you’ll get a thrill. You may even feel parental, but the spider won’t show much affection. If you look too close, it will dart back down the funnel, into the dark recesses of the shrubbery. Then you can decide whether to wait for it to reappear, which might take a while. Maybe you should just move on to the next web. Your choice will help us decide if you’re mature enough for a pet of your own.
Anyway, it’s good clean fun, and brings you closer to nature, as we like to say around here. So brush up on your fly catching, and be sure to bring the kids.
But please, no crocodiles.
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July 4, 2001

The Fourth of July

Independence Day is our country’s birthday.
Independence is a right (or rite) of adulthood, not of birth, when we require care from others.
We are born from something; we are born into something.
We are dependent coming and going.
A nation goes on longer than a person, yet it is not independent of its citizens. No one of us is America, but all of us are. And when we are gone, I imagine America will remain.

That’s how it is with the other species. Every Red Maple is just that: another Red Maple, replacing those that fell before. Every Robin bears the same two names: Turdus migratorius. Seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all. Rarely do we have time to see elsewhere in the World the individuality we find among our own kind.

So independence is a matter of perception, and, at least in this matter, ours is keen. Keen enough to see boundaries between people who are much the same. Homo sapiens all, but each with our own names. And our own lineages.
I’m moved to think of mine.

The occasion is an impending family reunion.
A family is not quite so abstract as a nation, but is much like one. Family groups appear, at least briefly, in many vertebrates, but the lines are lost among generations of unmarked individuals. Keeping track of the line is like drawing a border. A lot of the old countries really are families in a way that America is not, their boundaries drawn along ethnic “ranges”.
The American family is bred more of myth than genes.

In my family, in my mother’s line, the mythology is Scottish. We’ve reached our fourth American born generation, but you’ve got to start from somewhere. The details are not particularly mythological, but the romance of the old place endures, providing a sign under which to gather. For my part, I need to come up with a few suitable words, so to speak; a toast, perhaps. These things must be kept in perspective, and I don’t want to say that the affair is a distraction from the Park, but it will remove me for a while, and something, great or small, will be missed.

Much of history is missed in our 4th of July parties, but myth is well celebrated. As luck would have it, I met two Scottish gentlemen in the Park, keepers of History and of Myth. Maybe they’ll give me some advice on what to say.
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June 21, 2001

The Edge of Summer

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June 17, 2001

Fatherless Day

It’s now over eight months since I lost my father.
Since he died, that is.
I’ve learned a little bit about mourning, and mourning continues. I think the Traditional period is a year and a day. Mourning is a way of formalizing; of focusing the inarticulate ache of absence. The presence of his memory must replace the emptiness of missing him.
I feel better than I did, and I trust I will feel better yet.
Still he comes unbidden to my mind, in untoward guise.
The use of mourning would seem to be in gaining control of his memory, which constitutes my inheritance. All else is but his ghost, returning wearily to warn me against myself.
The ghost would rather rest.

I’ve lately seen the Mourning Warbler.
Named for its dark “hood”, the bird is no more grief-stricken than any other, though many of our songbirds are declining, and might have reason to morn. It’s the last of the Warblers to come through, signaling the end of the migration period, a cause for mourning only among bird watchers. Its late passage, along with skulking habits, make it one of the less often seen Warblers, and I missed it last year.

This time, one was pointed out to me in the Loch. I got a pretty good look, but not the thrill that comes from discovering the thing for yourself. I got that later, in typically unexpected fashion. I was heading to the exit at west 72nd Street, but ended up below it, in a cut where the Bridle Path passes under the street. I don’t often look for birds here, but the steep banks of the cut are covered with vines and brushy growth of the sort that certain species favor, and indeed, there’s a flash of yellow, and the ecstasy of surprise, and of recognition.

Before one sees a bird in the field, you’ve usually seen it in a book. You form a mental image; an expectation of how it will look.
It never looks quite like that.
Or like the picture in the book, for that matter. It’s always much more real and specific, and can even bring disappointment, if we are too taken with our imaginings.

I must say that the Mourning Warbler was actually more beautiful than I expected. The blue cast to the gray hood; the way it blackens at the face and breast; the richness of the yellow underparts, these do not always render clearly. In real life, it’s quite a striking creature.

Some say that death is like that.
A passage that will exceed our expectations.
Mourning shares no such belief, but proclaims its one hard fact in the face of Mystery.
The Mystery has not answered yet.
Still, mourning runs its course, and I will hope to emerge from it, not in control of his memory, but at ease with the truth of it.
And if that happens, by this time next year, I’ll have my father back. [link] [1 ref]

June 13, 2001

New in Town

Baby birds,
that's what it's come down to.
Most of the migrants have passed through, but a few will stay to nest, and the residents have already fledged their first broods. Most publicly, the Red-tailed Hawks on Fifth Avenue play to admiring crowds below, with three young ones making their first flights in the last week. People were cheering the Hawks on, in their ongoing confrontations with the Crows, although the corvids are said to be among the most intelligent birds, and the raptors are known killers. Nobody roots for a Crow. But there you have it, the intellectual as villain (black, no less), against the blithely murderous action hero. It sells in the Park just as well as Hollywood.

Actually, the Hawks' parental attentions are impressive, and it's hard not to write our emotions on their instincts. Still, most birds show the same tenacity when it comes to their offspring. Nesting is a delicate and highly fraught endeavor, and those who can accomplish it in the Park are to be congratulated.

The Hawks may be heroic, but it was a little Trickster took my heart, as I came upon a family group of Carolina Wrens, on what must have been one of the fledglings' first outings, in the Conservatory Garden last Saturday. I mentioned the parents back on Valentines Day, extolling their monogamy, but I didn't really explain what wonderful birds they are. Chief among their virtues is that they help me make it through the Winter. Not really migrant, they winter in the Park, and unlike most species, the male sings all year long. In those short, sere days of little to look at, and less to hear, there is nothing like the ringing Wren-song to summon my soul from hibernation.

I started birding in the Fall of '99, and the Carolina Wren was one of the first birds I got to know. A pair spent that Winter along the Loch, but they disappeared in the Spring, or maybe I lost track of them among the more exotic migrants. This time around I was aware of a good number early in the Winter, but they seemed to thin out as the season progressed, until the pair at the Garden were the only reliable ones. This is perhaps in keeping with their natural history profile, which claims that the northern edge of their range expands and contracts, depending on the severity of the Winter. Whether some perished, or just left town, I can't say, but at least this one pair made it through the worst Winter we've had in several years. I dared to hope they would nest here, but it still came as a surprise when I pointed my binocular at the high-pitched, sibilant twitter coming from a Yew, and found myself looking at four little ones, huddled on a single branch. They already had their parent's pattern, but with the juvenile proportions which automatically evoke our "oh, they're so cute!" response.

The parents soon appeared with food, and they're pretty cute themselves, but there's something about Wrens that goes beyond cuteness. Compact and cocky, they're bold and noisy birds, belying their small size. The ancient Celts considered them sacred, and told how the Wren became the King of the Birds. A contest was held, with the highest flying bird to be named the ruler. It looked like the Eagle would soar to the kingship, but the Wren hid away in his tail feathers, and used the raptor as a launching pad to the crown.
A Trickster, indeed.
Some strange remnant of Wren sacrifice still goes on in Ireland today, but our local species have sacrificed enough just getting through the Winter.

Birds cannot afford the long childhood we enjoy. Wrens and Hawks alike must quickly learn to fly and fend for themselves. In these brief weeks we gain a little insight into the speed of their lives, while pausing for a moment in our own. Cheering for Hawks, or peering into brambles after Wrens, is no more attention than we would give our children, or wish for from our parents. An appropriate attitude towards Nature will put us in both positions, yet leaves us ever viewing from afar, like Eagle-lofted Wrens, carried beyond our bounds.
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May 31, 2001

Put Away the Maypole

Too soon, the season runs its course.
The trees are fully leafed-out now, and though their greens are still darkening, the dense foliage has but few birds to hide, as the migration draws to a close, along with the month of Maying.

It all happened so fast.

Spring is part of a pattern, yet each Spring has a pattern of its own. This one came to a head in a brief spell of unseasonably warm weather early in May, but then, in an inversion of the usual pattern, turned cool and damp towards the end of the month.
Still, its charges are accomplished.

The calendar shows three more weeks of Spring, but the next warm front is apt to smack of Summer. The first broods of fledgling birds have already left the nest (these are local breeders), while seeds of Maple, Elm and Ash are in the wind. The Groundhog, however he spent the Winter, has overcome his fear of shadows, and was seen on the Mount last weekend.

Me, I just turn in circles, chasing after last year's patterns, or last week's, until the moment overcomes my preconceptions, revealing naked acts of being, patternless as Now.
These moments may be strung together, through memory and through anticipation. In such a way, we may discover just where it is we stand today.

Today we say goodbye to May.
I will leave you with what I sought at the beginning of the month, but, typically, could not obtain until its end. After a gray and rainy stretch, Memorial Day dawned with a morning beyond the dreams of those who slumber through the break of day. Fleeting in its glory, its lucent beams creased by the trees, igniting banks of dawn-spawned mist, one last May morning coalesced inside the camera lens.
This was it.
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May 29,2001

Beech Party
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May 28, 2001

Memory Day

Memorial Day again, and I think I’ve said that I don’t have much use for martial commemorations. There are no holy wars, and holidays are markers of another sort. For every war is meant to be the last, while every holiday is but the next, the latest repetition of our way of being. “Remember, lest we repeat”, they say, but what we remember is what we do; memory itself is repetition, and war is best forgot.

We remember, and we forget.
Memory cannot embalm the living moment,
nor forgetfulness vitiate the existential fact.
To turn towards, or to turn away:
the Holiday is in your choice.

On this day that ushers in the leisure season, memory serves to ingratiate the past in the eyes of the future; to ease the passage of the one into the other. The point of exchange is the site of celebration.

Here is a bargain between past and future, and the fulfillment of a promise.
The American Chestnut, recalled from the depths of forgetfulness. These are the trees that were planted last Spring, atop the Great Hill. The latest in blight-resistant cultivars, these Chestnuts seek to reintroduce a forgotten presence to the local biome. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Hill grows another Chestnut, this one a literal memory. It is not planted, but likely a sprout from what remains of one of the old trees, killed back by the blight. The roots do not die, but continue to put forth new stems, which eventually succumb to the pathogen, a fate the new trees are designed to escape.

For now, it’s all in the past and in the future. The trees look indistinguishable, though separated by heritage and potential. Between those poles, new leaves unfold, ephemeral as Spring.

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May 16, 2001

I went out one morning in May
Gathering flowers, all so gay
I gathered red, I gathered blue
Every little thing that a love could do

Appalachian folk song

What is so rare about a day in May?
That it falls in the fullness of Spring, and embodies every promise that the season holds.

I enter at dawn, 110th Street and Lenox Avenue, the Farmer's Gate. I scan the Harlem Meer, and its island, peaceful in the twilight. Later the shore will teem with patrons; strolling; sitting; fishing. Even now it is not deserted: the odd runner or dog-walker is always there. The Park is never truly deserted, but if ever it is peaceful, it's in the early morning.

Spring itself is less than peaceful. We have the luxury of observation, but the plants and animals are carried along in the seasonal surge. There is much that must be accomplished, and now is the time. To get closer to it, I head directly into the North Woods, climbing up the steep northeastern spur of the Great Hill, just west of the Meer. This is the part of the Park that most evokes a "real" forest. The Ramble, the other heavily wooded area, is more landscaped and picturesque, with its tightly winding paths. The North Woods is broader, more open. I climb the spur up to a trail that runs along the morning side of the Hill, where one can look both up into treetops, and down onto treetops.

It's the upper treetops that take the first sun. It rises from behind the city, silhouetting sharp angles, banning blind darkness with revelatory light. Working its way through tiny new leaves, among the flowering tips of Oaks, the sunlight discovers birds, first heard, now seen, intersecting May's first morning.

Finally, the whole slope is flooded with fresh daylight. Countless little leaves have appeared, on trees and brush, filling vacant spaces, filtering earth and sky through a glowing green reticulum. I pass along the dappled, Thrush infested hillside, reaching a small plateau that overlooks a steep descent into the depths of the Ravine.

Here is a place between. Poised above the sleeping valley, below the towering Oaks that climb the Hill behind me, I look out through the crowns of trees, onto the city far distant. At least it seems far, framed in foliage, like another country glimpsed in a dream. In fact, it’s never more than a quarter mile away, depending, of course, on which path you choose...
I turn away, heading downhill, into the dimness still lingering below.

Heliotropic flowers seek the sun, turning ever towards its rays. I move ahead to wait for it. Prolonging the morning, I precede the probing beams down the steep trail, to the bottom of the Ravine, where flows the Loch. The place-names in the Park are of two sorts. Some, like the Loch and the Ravine, go back to its creation, and indicate something of the designers' romanticized conception. Others have come from practical necessity, assigned by birders and others who need to say with some specificity just where something is. Hence we have Mugger’s Wood and the Maintenance Meadow, or the optimistically named Warbler Rock, to go along with such as the Ramble and the Sheep Meadow (long bereft of sheep). The Loch was once more of a lake, but it has silted into a shifting stream course, interspersed with islets which provide prime habitat for the migrant birds. The Ravine is really just the side of the Great Hill to the north and west of the Loch, with a much gentler slope on the east bank, where the margins of the North Woods give way to the Wildflower Meadow.

Over this eastern slope flows the morning sun, once it has cleared the city skyline. Lying as low as it does, the valley of the Loch is one of the few places in the Park where the bordering buildings cannot be seen. Not without some effort anyway, now that the leaves are coming out, delimiting the view. And on a morning such as this, you may escape, at least for a little while, the noises of the metropolis, which travel where vision cannot. The sirens of the city are not forgot, but here their call is easily ignored. Now the sunlight lies upon the Meadow, and leaks through budding Locust branches, backlighting Ash and Maple leaves, falling on Viburnum flowers.

At the bottom of the slope, the Loch creates a sort of tunnel, snaking through the trees. Trees arch above, and spread beyond, and ripple in reflections that seem to echo in the sound of flowing waters. The Spring-light penetrates, then permeates, the space, dancing across myriad leaves; rafts of green, that come as close as green can come to the color of sunlight. Some of the new-sprung foliage is so yellow as to recall Autumn, but this is not the time of decline. Everything is inhalation and exaltation, a gentle breeze like the Breath of Life, quivering among the leaves, flickering with birds, rippling like the stream that flows below, underneath the living, growing, canopy.

Here I pause a long while, lost in things green. At the center of the serpent; every tree a Tree of Knowledge. And this a morning unfallen. Yet morning falls by rising, and the climbing Sun finds me, lost to time, but still confined by it. I pass the better part of the morning along the Loch, and all my looking outward turns back on me, looking inward, with the time-lost gaze of reverie.

Morning is over. Most of the day remains, but it’s never quite the same. Not in May, in the Morning of the Year. All the things undone, or done badly, are still potentials of the morning, but now I must go and do them, for the Sun has overtaken me.

I will go on, of course, east to the Mount, and the Conservatory Garden below, electric with Tulips. On to the heights along the south shore of the Meer, till I’ve almost returned to where I started. Then it’s back into the Woods, but by a different path, looping around the north face of the Hill, and back to a high trail near the top, through a brushy sector full of low and viney growth. Here there are already signs of habitation. Once the weather warms, a few unmoored souls always find refuge in the Park, to varying degrees of tolerance. They range from amiable to menacing, and their presence has been known to surprise a binocular or two. Skirting the campsite, I descend the Hill, once and for all, reaching the Pool.

The Pool, perhaps the most intimate of the waters in the Park, is the source of the Loch, which flows from a waterfall at its east end. In reaching the head of the Loch, I have pretty much covered the north end of the Park. Below this point, one must go either east or west, as the central terrain is occupied by athletic fields, tennis courts, and then the vastness of the Reservoir, the largest open space in Manhattan.

Here our paths will part. By now, the afternoon is drawing on, and I’d advise you to head downtown. Survey the Reservoir; the Great Lawn; bird around the Ramble; stroll the Mall of Elms. You’ll find the sunset somewhere at the south end. That’s what I often do, and it’s plenty for any day of the year. But on a day in May, I may turn back, and wander once more where the morning was. A different scene, now seen by westering light. The color of the sinking sun is ever deeper than the morning, tinctured with its foreclosed possibilities. One of these, a day in the prime of Spring, is gone. Too few, the days of May pass too soon.
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May 13, 2001

Mother’s Day

Mother
Nature
Mother
Earth
Mother may I
place in order
all things
always
Mother first

I treasure my mother,
not the more so for having lost my father, (though the implication is surely felt,) but because she upholds the place of honor custom, and our hearts, assign her.
The site of Origin is always Holy.
She is the beginning of my World.
I am the issue of hers,
and only an imitator, seeking to gain some semblance of her wisdom, of her understanding, of her grace. I know it is customary for children to think their parents the epitome; the wisest of beings, but in the case of my mother, I have yet to be convinced otherwise. Everything I feel, and write, and do, flows from a stream she thought, and spoke, and read,
to me,
just to me,
in the beginning.

I derive from her mind, as much as from her body.
Her melancholy, and her joy, inform me, along with her habit of seeing more in things than what the surface shows. From her I learned that every point is the starting place, the entry point, into an interconnected world of poetry and history that’s wound around the meanest of facts. Such was the story she told to me at bedtime, merging with slumber, dreamed into my being. Still I hold the tale before me, the glass I view through, as I cast my eye upon the Park, and all of Life outside its gates.

Outside the gates.
If Adam and Eve had had a mother, I imagine we’d still be living in the Garden.
There are two ways back there:
tear down the gates,
or make this place into that one.
They amount to the same thing.
If we cannot find the Gates of Paradise locally, we’ll do best to try improving what we have here, and make our World presentable, the kind of place you wouldn’t be ashamed to have your Mother visit.
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