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Independence From...?
Our Nation's Natal Celebration is ever referred to by its date, and it marshals Summer’s symbols, as much as those of nationhood. Still, more attention is given to the rubric of this day than to many another official Holiday.Proud of ourselves, we are.
And not without some cause. Or, at least, I will allow that America is “The Greatest Country In The World”, and other such patriotic pieties.
The thing about Home is that those who live there always feel that way about it.
Even the Wasteland is but a debasement of the best place.
We are not yet totally debased, but lax, perhaps. Lazing in the lap of Summer, lingering into the long twilight, careless with firecrackers.
The incendiaries, in conjunction with the flag, recall not so much our war of origin, as that later, vaguer conflict, the War of 1812. Bombs bursting in air; flag still there...all of that business.
We barely remember what that war was about. A generation after the Revolution, Enlightenment ideals had given way to a less philosophical confrontation. Our National Anthem is a relic of that war, and the Park contains another: the Blockhouse, where the flag still flies, albeit with some added stars. Built in 1814, it remains upon the rocky northern height, guarding against a British attack that will not come.
George Washington famously warned against foreign entanglements, yet what are we, other than entangled? We pride ourselves on independence, but what are we independent of? Britain? We still rely upon Her language. Our racial and ethnic tensions are rooted to this day in the colonial entanglement of “old” and “new” worlds. The Blockhouse looks out over Harlem, a Dutch name now borne by another people’s ghetto: a presence which unjustifiably dissuades some from visiting the north end of the Park.
In America, we exalt the individual, but who among us stands alone?
Self and Other; Individual and Community; Citizen and Nation; these are dialectic names for the same old Mystery.
We might use this occasion to learn Its ways.
A Nation is not Nature, and one cannot closely study the natural world and still feel independent. The body of the Goddess is woven of relationships. Predator and prey are interdependent, conflicting only as individuals. If we no longer need fear being eaten, still we may learn something from those plants which want us to eat them.
They are dying for their country, while teaching us the art of cultivation.
Is it wrong, then, to feel a puff of Pride?
In Self, or Country, is it not justified?
Can preen in one, but not the other?
Has not Pride its uses?
Ah, there forever lies our crisis:
The worst sins bear the best excuses.
Exalt the All, with individual humility.
No contradiction, on a deepening Summer evening.
Be glad of Home,
but remember that the World beyond defines it.
Let each voice join in song, in anthem,
the one that we have overwritten,
a palimpsest of our desires:
And there with good fellows,
We’ll learn to intwine
The Myrtle of Venus
With Bacchus’s Vine.
In the shadows gathering beneath the Blockhouse, Fireflies flicker silently.
This is their season.
Theirs are fireworks worth patronizing.
Let the bombs burst where they may.
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.
Point of View...
Memorial Day
The way we celebrate Memorial Day is more honest than what we say about it. Lip service is given to the dead, but the “unofficial beginning of Summer” is what’s enacted. I’m not sure whether it’s just incongruous, or dialectically appropriate, to memorialize our war dead at the season of rebirth. However that may be, we put more of ourselves, or at least more money, (by which it seems these things are measured,) into the barbecues, the sports, the sales, than we do into remembrance. It needn’t be so. A poignant possibility is being missed, unless you’re deeply moved by the playing of Taps, just before the Indy 500. Vroom.This displacement is testament to the power of the Traditional Holidays. If a Holiday is really there, it will be celebrated, one way or another. This, then, is America’s Maying. A little on the late side, but still probing that margin we’ve discussed here, between Spring and Summer. Celebrated with typical populist exuberance, and not a little coarseness. As I said: honest.
No doubt the memorials are honest too. If they are subsumed, it’s only because, facing the Mystery of Life and Death, Life will choose Life. So we place flowers upon the graves of war, on this that once was Decoration Day. I have a few to strew, but they are for us all, for all of Life makes the same sacrifice. I would not belittle warriors, but do regret their necessity. Still, it’s an irony that their efforts have earned us the luxury of forgetfulness.
The luxury of remembrance is earned by virtue of having already celebrated May, in its due course, leaving room for today's memories.
Let us remember, then, the Dead. That died in war, or otherwise. Many have died of war that were not soldiers; they deserve no less, if not the same, regard. Then there are those, not warriors, who nonetheless found life to be a battle that they could not win, while others lived and loved it well, but died the same.
The Spring is fading.
Continuity is guaranteed.
Achieved, the ecstasy
withdraws. We all know
how this cycle goes.
But who knows where?
We live our lives for the sake of the Dead, as much as for the unborn, that yet shall join them.
As will we.
To decorate this strait, only the finest flowers will do.
The Robins of Spring
I've seen the Snipe, I've seen the Kestrel. I've seen hawks, and herons and swooping swallows. I'm up to twenty six warblers, as well as Orioles, Tanagers, Grosbeaks, Flycatchers, and, not least of all (well, actually it is the least, or at least the smallest), the Ruby-throated Hummingbird. For years I visited the Park, and never saw these birds. The variety is astounding, but most of the birds in the Park at any given time are members of a few common species. One cannot quite afford to ignore them. In order to see something unusual, one must be well versed in the usual. The better you know the locals, the more the migrants stand out. If you instantly recognize the silhouette of a White-throated Sparrow, you won't follow it, instead of the Cape May Warbler that's one branch over. This makes for a lot of learning. You need to know them in light or darkness, perched or flying, wet from bathing, or fluffed and drying. The same bird can look many different ways. So, for all that there are two hundred species out there, mostly you see the same ones over and over. And when you're sure you know them, you should probably check once more, just to be certain.I've seen a lot of Pigeons, or Rock Doves, to be proper. I've seen a lot of Starlings, Grackles, Crows, and Sparrows. And Robins. Lots and lots of Robins. Now, the Robin has a reputation as a harbinger of Spring, and they do migrate, but many nest here, and some stay all Winter. You can see a Robin in the Park any day of the year. It is perhaps the best loved of the regulars. For one thing, it's more colorful than most of the birds living in association with humans, and they're not so dependent on our waste as are the Pigeons and the House Sparrows. (Actually, it seems to be a general rule that those birds which share our habitat are drabber than members of the same species living in natural environments, which may also say something about those of us who share their circumstances.) Anyway, people like Robins, and, in fact, the bird embodies a nostalgia for our European heritage. The name was bestowed by colonists who were reminded of the smaller European Robin. The two birds are only distantly related, but they share a color scheme, and their behavior is similar. Both are approachable, and do not shy from humans. They frequent parks and gardens, as well as forest floors. They forage on the ground, making them more visible than canopy oriented species. "Robin" was once as common a name as "Bob": both are informal types of "Robert", thus the name embodies a friendly familiarity.
There is another Robin associated with Spring, also a familiar of the Wood. Take a look at this bit of poetry, anthologized in the first edition of the Oxford Book of English Verse. The last two stanzas make it clear that the text is from a Robin Hood ballad. Editor Quiller-Couch makes no mention of the fact, instead appending his own title, "May in the Green-Wood". For him, this conventionalized introductory passage could stand on its own as representative of a whole genre of English poetry that celebrates the Spring. The cutting is a bit highhanded by today's editorial standards, but the point is well made. The so-called Greenwood Tradition provides the context not only for the Robin Hood material, but for a range of other ballads and legends as well. It has an identity of its own, beyond the specifics of any plot.
Robin Hood's origins are obscure. Scholars have sought to identify him with some historical figure, or have seen in him a reconfigured pagan spirit: Rob o' the Wood. Interest has tended to focus on the dramatic aspects of the legend, rather than on the sylvan dimension in which they occur, but it's exactly that zone which I'm concerned with. In the Greenwood, many paths meet beneath the Trysting Tree, and Robin Hood's identity results from this conjunction. The theme of social justice: robbing from the rich to give to the poor, is today thought of as the central motif of the legend, the stuff of action movies. It was certainly important in the Middle Ages, but Robin was also adapted to another, less proactive function, as a leading figure of the May Games.
The first recorded reference to Robin is from the 1370's, when "rhymes of Robin Hood" are mentioned in passing, in Langland's Vision of Piers Plowman. The legends may date from as early as the 12th century, but characters and plot lines continued to be added, in accordance with contemporary mores, for several hundred years. The poetic fragment cited above is, in fact, the beginning of "Robin Hood and the Monk", which may be the oldest written work about Robin to be preserved, dated to around 1450. Looking at the full text (from Rochester University's excellent site) we can see that the Greenwood introduction is but a small part of this lengthy ballad. For purposes of narrative, there is only so much to say of the Greenwood, but for purposes of ecstatic orientation, there is everything to experience, if not to speak.
What we cannot speak of, we must approach in other ways. A large body of ritual accrued around the season of rebirth. The Maypole we remember, along with Morris dancing, but the season was honored throughout the month, with a variety of activities, some rising to the level of ceremony, others more along the lines of what we would call a party. The first footnote to the ballad reiterates my point about the timing of the festivities. The aptly named Professor Knight is perhaps a bit pedantic, going so far as to suggest that Chaucer is confused, but I think that we agree on the main premise. April or May, Spring or Somer, however phrased, what is being celebrated is Rebirth, in all its flowering lushness. The fullness of Spring, not its incipient signals, nor the darkening greens of lazy Summer. As a custodian of the woodlands, Robin was incorporated into these celebrations: the Games of May. He guides us on the uncertain journey between the order of the town and the pathless chaos that obscures the heart of the forest. As a friendly guide, he inhabits the sun-dappled margins of the woods, much like his avian namesake. Those not well adjusted to the landscape may be led deeper, into darkness, there to be despoiled. Robin's method of robbery is more in the nature of a test, and not unrelated to procedures of Shamanic initiation. The traveler is invited to a hearty feast, and afterwards is asked to pay. An honest soul who offers what he has, though it be but a penny, is sent safely on his way. Those that would hide their riches are summarily relieved of them, and sent back from whence they came, unable to make progress.
The Greenwood domain embodies the feminine presence of the Goddess. Robin's role as Her minion is displaced onto his conventionalized devotion to the Virgin Mary, which is expressed throughout the various texts. The earliest Robin Hood tales are otherwise remarkable for their lack of significant female characters. His consort, Marian, arrived later, from across the channel. What links them is ostensibly a chance of naming, though I suspect the connection runs deeper. Robin and Marian are the title characters of a popular French pastourelle, which is assumed to have been confounded with the May Games on the one hand, and the Robin Hood stories on the other. The pastourelle, or pastoral, is a romance form, unlike the outlaw ballads, but it is similar in that the characters gain identity from their surrounding landscape. As the name implies, this pastoral zone is not so wild as the Greenwood, rather the protagonists are shepherd and shepherdess, but they are removed from the town, and their country context serves to legitimize a level of sexuality not properly embodied by the more "civilized" townspeople.
However it may have been, the pastoral Marian seems to have made her way into the Springtime rituals as Queen of the May, and in England her paramour Robin became coincident with Robin Hood. Their pairing would lend his legend the romantic dimension it was lacking. Without that quality, I doubt the tale could have lived on in popular consciousness, as it has to this day. But here I want to return to Robin the bird.
I suspect that the old-world Robin, being a smaller bird, flits more than its American counterpart. Not that our Robins can't flit a bit, if need be. Flitting is emblematic songbird behavior. Maddening and mesmerizing for the bird watcher. They take wing faster than one can see, alighting at a distance for another moment, only. They are like quantum particles, inexplicably appearing out of nowhere, then gone without a trace. They flit along the forest eaves, intersecting broken sun, filtered beams of golden-green. Eyes that once could follow these saw more than we today can see. And saw it all with naked eye, unaided by binocular. As the bird moves in mystery, so too the sunlight moves. Or rather, doesn't. But guided by our eye's mind, we see the light play over leaf and trunk, and spill upon the ground like fluid. The Light is steady; a trembling world but intervenes.
This confluence of man and bird, sunbeam and eyesight, does indeed, in my estimation, hearken back to a Tradition deeper than the Christian Middle Ages. Traces of Shamanism are evident, Celtic and older. Spirit-identification with a bird is a common Shamanic phenomenon, and continues to be documented by anthropologists today. I want to speculate about something less demonstrable, other than through a dappled argument that works from the inside out.
Thus we come to the quintessential attribute of Robin Hood: his bow and arrow. The Paleolithic origins of this device predate Robin by millennia, but his deployment may help us to understand its genesis. What I want to argue is that the bow and arrow does not represent weaponry, as such. Its utility is of another order, though marred by that which mars all of Creation. In the Robin Hood tales, the bow is rarely used as a weapon. The real fighting is done with swords, while archery seems a higher, almost spiritual, calling. The bow is used for idealized contests of skill, which epitomize the natural virtue of the forest-dwellers, who always outshoot their cultured rivals. Its other main usage is in poaching the king's deer. Obtaining illicit venison is not depicted as a violent crime, but rather represents a just use of resources, in harmonious accord with the natural economy of the Greenwood.
The magic of archery lies in its literalization of the act of seeing. The technology is just a means to that end. It was not devised under the impetus of some mechanistic vector, but through the inspiration granted to those students of vision, the Shamans of the foretime. What we call inventions, they understood as gifts of the gods, or teachings of the native spirits. They projected their own vision into the birds, and learned of them the art of flight, by way of a device that mimics the swift path of an eye that finds with certainty its intended target. They borrowed a few feathers, lashing them to the tail of their fledgling. This "bird"; the arrow, became a vehicle of ownership, pointedly imparting the lesson that what is seen is thus possessed.
An artificial bird teaches the mystery of vision, and lays claim to what it "sees". The archer and the bird watcher differ by degree, but not in essence. Today, we can be initiated through binoculars, looking without killing. The messy business is handed off, unseen, to others. But every Robin serves reminder that our gaze is a responsibility. Nothing we see is thereby unaffected. All that we see deserves our best regard.
Mother's Day
Blowing, and Blown Away
Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
The birds are here!After a damp and chilly April, migratory songbirds have arrived in force, along with warmer weather from the south. The weekend bathed in an almost tropical ambiance. The humidity was high, the temperature over ninety, but rather than the torpor of Summer, the very air seemed alive, animated by bioprocesses. Consumed and then expelled by animals and plants alike. Heated by the sun from above, and from below by last year's leaf litter, finally making way; decaying in the face of the new season's hunger for organic sustenance. You could all but see growth and dispersion occurring before your eyes.
Through this density of Spring flew countless birds, while near as many bird watchers followed them on foot. Actually, the term "bird watcher" has fallen into disrepute; another example of the Name problem that I've mentioned here, previously. We tend to chafe at any name imposed upon us, finding there a focus for the worst of our identity. "Bird watcher" seems to conjure up the image of a socially inept nerd, bereft of masculine values. The new word is "birder". Vigor has been added through concision. We eliminate the modifier, and simply turn the word bird into a verb: I bird the Park, and so I am a birder. Such changes seem to help at first, but soon they wane, for the identity itself has not altered. Perhaps we will be "birdists" next, but when people ask if I'm a bird watcher, I say "no, I'm just looking".
Whatever you want to call it, looking at birds is good clean fun. It seems to fall somewhere between sport, hobby, and vocation. Certainly there is score keeping, for those so inclined. I'm up to twenty-four Warblers for this Spring, seventeen in one day. No great feat, compared to the experts, who will see closer to forty by the end of the month. To me, it's more about actually getting to know the bird, rather than checking it off on a list. There is a genuinely ecstatic thrill to a good sighting. Encompassed in the circle of the binocular field, the bird is yours; a transitory possession (birders don't say "I saw a Prothonotary Warbler", but rather, "I had one"). Having located a bird of interest, one tries to keep it in view. In and out of the foliage, following obscure suggestions of movement, (not the wind, no, not that sparrow,) as long as this bird is before my eyes, just so long am I truly alive. One's own existence is verified by another's. There is a certain reassurance in that the birds are known quantities, cataloged and named, with names they never do complain of. Not that we haven't changed their names from time to time, to fit the currencies of Science.
The birds are more reliable, if less exact, than Science. Weather influences their progress, but each year they follow much the same sequence of arrival. The Park lies at the confluence of two major migration routes. A green landmark in an urbanized area, it is an attractive resting point on a journey that may span two continents. Upwards of two hundred species are seen in the Park over the course of a year, mostly during the Spring and Fall migration periods. A few will nest here, but most are just in transit, without consideration for the pleasure they afford their observers. Most highly prized are the Warblers: small, colorful birds, with over fifty different species, and a wide variety of plumages. Some are plentiful, others not so. With a little effort, one may be assured of seeing many beauties, but also there are rarities to keep your interest, and drive the future. Birding maintains a fine balance between reward and effort; the hope of the unusual fuels a deepening familiarity with what is common.
So I've seen a lot of birds. I've seen Wilson's Warbler, commemorating Alexander Wilson, the famed naturalist and artist, who named many birds, and whose name is the same as mine, though I was not named after him. Two names the same, or one we share? I've gotten a bit confused trying to put names on blurs, or separate those Thrushes that "cannot be distinguished in the field". And I have hardly even begun to address the issue of song. Bird song is a delight, and there is no music more Traditional. As far as I know, the birds have been singing the same songs as long as they have sung. Except, of course, for those finches on the other islands...
Anyway, among the birds I saw last Saturday was the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, which brings me to the point I meant to get at to begin with. The Cuckoo, and its song, are central to the oldest secular song preserved in the English language, which, fittingly, is an ode to Spring. The song is Sumer is Icumen in, and the bird is actually a European Cuckoo, but it's Traditional to identify traces of one's home in far off places, and the family is the same, so I'll take a cue from our colonial Cuckoo any day, even if its vocalization does differ from its clock-inhabiting counterpart. At least ours is not a parasite.
The song, (the human song), is an early artifact of Middle English, the language that resulted from the imposition of Norman French onto Anglo Saxon, after the conquest of 1066. It's a language at once familiar and obscure. We seem to get the general sense of it, but keep running into indecipherable passages that collapse the whole edifice. One naturally assumes that sumer corresponds to summer, but the sense has changed. I prefer the translation that renders the line as "Spring has come in" , which agrees better with the imagery of the lyric.
I won't get into the controversy over "verteth", which some have been reluctant to translate as "fart". Apparently the old manuscript did not have a lyric advisory label. Let me note instead that "bloweth med" does not refer to wind, or honey wine (or vomiting the same), but means "the meadow blooms". To blow is an old term for blossoming, which we don't hear much any more, but we often refer to things blowing up, with reference to explosions. We would do well to meditate on how the descriptive aptness of the term issues not from windy force, but from the slower power of a flower, and how that may be stronger, in the end.