Mr. Wilson's Arboretum

Feb 02, 2001

Shadowcaster

Groundhog Day, and I suppose it's too much to expect to actually see a Groundhog today, but I know they're out there. I mentioned having seen one in the Fall, but I used the preferred name of Woodchuck. Preferred by taxonomists, that is: I can't speak for the rodent. Either way, it's the local Marmot, differing little from its compatriots around the globe, with the slight exception of its oracular powers. In fact, people read predictions in all sorts of animals, from bug bristles to pig innards. The Groundhog ritual seems tame, compared to haruspication. Accuracy is a different issue, but it seems to me that they usually predict more Winter, which would be in line with our current forecasts. (Not that humans do much better than Marmots in that department.)

Divination is subject to interpretation: it depends on how you look at things, more than what you look at. Look into the morning sun, and you will miss the shadow falling behind you.

The Groundhog cast no shadow, but shed a light upon my whole experience of Central Park. I've been visiting the Park since the mid seventies, but the sight of a Groundhog, some ten years ago, helped change my perspective on the place: I learned to see ecosystem, as much as artifact.

I've always enjoyed the Park, but I used to be more interested in its artificiality; its calculated landscaping, and its interplay with the city. I must have had a closer focus on that day, sitting above the bit of stream that feeds the Lake, just west of Balcony Bridge. I noticed something moving along the watercourse, fragments through the foliage, but definitely...what? Bigger than a Guinea Pig, but the same shape; squared off profile; coarser coat; longer tail; wilder somehow, but...
I went into the Museum of Natural History and found a back corridor with dioramas of New York State Mammals. There it was: Marmotta monax, the common Woodchuck, AKA Groundhog. I felt reassured, knowing its Latin name.

I'd seen Woodchucks before, on nature walks as a kid, or maybe I'm thinking of a Muskrat. There are all sorts of rodents out there, and not a few in the city. Squirrels are ubiquitous in the Park, and Norway Rats make a living all over town. The Park has Raccoons, too, which are fissipeds, not rodents, and bigger than Woodchucks, but more familiar somehow; suburban scavengers; nocturnal, but brazen. The Woodchuck is more retiring; harder to see, but there it was, in the middle of Manhattan. It seemed so improbable to me.

It was around that time, too, that the Red-tailed Hawks moved in, or at least I started to see them. I was continually surprised at how much there was to see in the Park: just about as much as you were willing to look at.

I've kept on looking, but that Groundhog was a true inspiration. I'd been looking into Shamanism, and the old ways, and I was prepared for the appearance of an initiatory animal, but I'd been expecting something shimmering and white, rather than a grimy rodent.
Revelation is nothing, if not the unexpected.

I saw another Marmot, a few months later, near the Zoo, but that was it for a decade. Then, last Spring, there was a note in the Log Book, reporting a sighting at the Shakespeare Garden. The entry was followed by a comment that this was great news, as they were assumed to have been extirpated.
Apparently not.
Or perhaps these are new ones. It's hard to imagine them making their way to, and through, Manhattan, but stranger things have happened. Last year, a Coyote showed up in the Park, presumably from Westchester, north of the city, where they appear from time to time, moving down from wilder country upstate. The authorities detained the canine, but the Woodchucks are no threat, and at least here they don't have to worry about being rousted out of hibernation by some hierophant of tourism in a top hat.

I never saw the Woodchuck from the Shakespeare Garden, though there were a couple of other reports. The area is mid-park; in the same general vicinity as my first encounter, and near where they were last know to be established, but in the Fall I found one on the Mount, in the far north end of the Park. I would assume it to be a different individual, but you never know. If they can get to the Park, they can certainly move around within it. Maybe they share my taste for the less trafficked areas beyond the Reservoir.

I took the reappearance of the Groundhog, in the first year of the Arboretum, as a kind of confirmation. Whatever its secrets, the rodent had helped to stir in me an interest in the Life of the Park; how the creatures and the plants pursue their own agendas, regardless of the doings of the local humans. Some work in concert with us; some stand in contradiction to our ways, but theirs are the ways of the World that gave us birth, and they are due respect for that, at least. Otherwise, our own shadow will obscure our path, when we should be turning towards the Sun.

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

Shadowcaster

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

The Sixth Day of Christmas

The Fifth Day of Christmas