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Apr 1, 2001
Being a Fool
As I stand here, looking through the binocular, contemplating such deep philosophical questions as “what’s that?” and “just how much like itself should any given thing be expected to look?”, it occurs to me that I am a fool. That this condition is widespread is of little consolation, and perhaps it’s no mistake that April Fool’s Day typically falls during Lent, a season that exposes our shortcomings. Turning the tables on common sense can open the path to insight, and a joke on one of us is a joke on all. Sometimes it seems that existence itself is a sort of monstrous prank, though whether we are perpetrators or victims is hard to say.Our best jokes are played upon ourselves, though not without some help from Providence.
I had the fortune to see the first swallow of the Spring. A Tree Swallow it seemed to me, seen near Balcony Bridge, on the 18th of March. Everything agreed with that identification, except that the color was rather dull, for which reason I reported it in the Log Book as a female bird. Thinking too much and not enough all at once is a habit of mine, and considering the matter later on, I realized that there was something strange, in that male birds typically lead the migration. They return first to the breeding grounds, where they establish territories from which to woo the later arriving females, so it’s unusual for the first sightings to be of anything other than adult males.
Doing a bit of research, I found that Tree Swallows are indeed the first swallows to return in Spring. Alone in their family, they eat fruit, as well as insects, which allows them to winter in North America, and to make their migratory move earlier than species strictly reliant on a good supply of bugs. These facts at least suggested to me that it was not inconceivable for a stray female to have found it’s way here. At least the timing was right, and it was more likely than in the case of a species that wintered only in the tropics.
I needed that much reassurance, despite the evidence of my eyes, in case anyone challenged the veracity of my report. Of course, if I’d just listed the species, without the sexual qualifier, there wouldn’t be a question, but that’s what I mean by thinking too much and not enough together. I was afraid of being exposed for the fool I am. As it was, nobody wrote any comment on the point, and the sighting showed up in an online summary, so I guess it was considered credible.
That doesn’t mean that somebody out there didn’t shake their head over my foolishness. The Log Book has its share of errors, and not all are subject to correction. That’s par for the course in birding. Observers of varying skill are out there, and sometimes it’s the least of us that are most eager to make report. The log at Point Pelee is nicknamed the “Book of Lies”.
I’ve never told you a lie, but I’ve certainly made some honest mistakes. Looking back at my earliest entries here, I’m appalled at my ignorance, especially in the matter of birds. After a year and a half, I feel like I’m making progress, but that mostly means being more humble about a slight decrease in the depth of my ignorance. So, if posts from early 2000 betrayed a woefully inadequate understanding of the complex process of molting, or mistook migrating Red-tailed Hawks for descendants of our local pair, I hope that these errors of fact did not detract from broader points I was making, regarding names and privacy. I don’t think anything I’ve written is so compromised, but maybe I just haven’t realized it yet. I reserve the right to make deletions or corrections, and I apologize for not actually putting much time into doing so. If I were to prepare the material for republication there are a few things I’d change, but as it is, I have a relatively harmless record of my own path towards greater understanding, and maybe that’s not a bad thing either. I should probably add some asterisks, with links to corrections, and I’ll do that, just as soon as...well, I’ll keep it in mind. In the meantime, double-check before you use any of these gems in cocktail party chatter. If you don’t know better yourself, who’s the fool?
You and I are not the only ones. Sometimes a little foolishness is a good thing. The post on names focused on the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, a bird misnamed, because, as any precise birder will tell you, it does not suck sap by suction, but laps it with a bushy tongue. But the poetry of the old name prevails, and a Yellow-bellied Sap Lapper just sounds silly.
I want my words to sound, not silly, but not so much authoritative, as merely true, with as much humility as truth deserves. Trying to express joy and wonder in technically precise terms will surely teach humility. What’s important is not to lose the ecstasy of the endeavor among the details of discipline. Ideally, the demands of the one should focus our appreciation of the other.
That did happen to me with the swallow.
The next of the new arrivals was the Eastern Phoebe. The Phoebe and the Tree Swallow do not look much alike, except when they do, and that’s the problem with birding: a lot of obvious things are not always so obvious. After I’d seen a few of the familiar Phoebes, I found one that perched in a slightly atypical pose, leaning forward, rather than it’s usual upright posture. In this position, the bird suddenly reminded me of the Tree Swallow, which had briefly perched in a similar attitude, and I had a moment of gut wrenching doubt. Had I actually seen a Phoebe? Could I be that foolish?
The birds are quite different in detail, but they are basically dark above and light below, of similar size, and both are, well, birds, so there is some similarity...
Awash in the presence of the bird, everything else seems to disappear. It’s hard to do anything but look. That’s what I mean by ecstasy, and that’s where the discipline comes in. Looking is not really passive, and by systematically examining details, ordering them within an overall impression, and maintaining a comparative context for the information, we can quantify our ecstasy in a manner that allows us to extend it beyond the moment, even if we lose some of the sheer existential fire in the process. And when that fire is lit again, we will recognize it.
The presence of the Phoebe drove the experience of the Swallow from my mind, to the point where I doubted its existence. This is no more than the foolishness that binds our limited perception. Luckily, I had learned enough about observing to satisfy myself that I had indeed seen a Tree Swallow. I had even made a couple of sketches, which help to cement fugitive memories. I could support my identification based on details of shape, pattern, and behavior. The bird swooped like a swallow, had the pointed wings and small bill, even the little bit of white just behind the wings, visible from above as it banked and turned. Any given detail is subject to individual idiosyncrasy, or perceptual distortion, and preconception can cloud our observations, but the range of evidence has convinced me of the bird’s identity.
As for the sex and color, well, I guess there is a modicum of doubt, and perhaps any doubt is too much. Life feels that way sometimes, and birding even more so, but I’ve been known to say that doubt is always reasonable, so feel free to disbelieve in my swallow if you like.
But I did see it.
And that’s no fooling.
At least I’m pretty sure.
Take it from a fool.
Mar 22, 2001
Strolling into Spring
Mar 20, 2001
Spring arrives at 8:31 this morning, and I’m heading to the Park to meet it. I’ll let you know what I find. Heard on the financial news that the stock market in Japan is closed for the Vernal Equinox holiday: you’d think we could do as much. Well, I’m going to do my part. Happy Spring to all!
Mar 17, 2001
For Saint Patrick’s Day, Something Green
A stone in the stream, grown green with moss, heralding Spring at Winter's end.Not rolling, but no stone goes forever unturned, undisturbed. The Park is a work of art, inflicted on the native landscape over a century ago, but a nostalgia even then. Stones were turned, and trees were planted, to turn the clock back to a more bucolic era. By the mid nineteenth century an increasingly urbanized Manhattan was in need of relief, and found it, in the form of an idealized vision of the countryside of its youth.
Remembering our youth brings us closer to our ancestors, just as dying will. In between, we are the keepers of their Tradition. We imitate what was, but our rehearsal is tinged by our own times, and if something of the stone is eroded, something is carried downstream.
If we measure ourselves against the creatures and the trees, let alone the stones, we seem to change quickly, holding but in memory what they hold in form. Yet theirs are Traditions too, and they have changed, if only over a time span exceeding our whole history. We flicker while they glow, but all alike join in consumption of the time allotted to Creation. When that Time is consummated; when all Traditions run their course, then we shall meet on equal terms, and find no difference between us.
Nor any between us and God.
Meantime, we take this day to face upstream.
Where it comes from is where it goes.
We may learn by looking either way, two-faced as we are, but holding heritage dear will help us to attract more of the precious particles washing over us: the settling gold of our origin. If we can take a form to which it will accrue, we will become a veritable boulder of gold, beyond value, and incorrupt.
Even so, we should be honored to support a mantling of Spring moss.
As precious in its way as gold, and in the time it takes to grow, holding our history in one green view,
before we roll downstream.
Mar 08, 2001
Litter
Another storm come and gone; Winter continues as before,With persistence more than force
The snow retreats, revealing layers underneath
Leaves that fell the Fall before blanket forest floors in brown
Assume the attitude of death, congruent with the soil
Here is a world unlooked at, but with the diversity of a rain forest.
It's the slain forest; the front line of decay.
Its denizens too small for us to see, we know them by their actions, or rather their results.
The more they do, the less there is.
What was gets broken down: macro-form lost as constituent particles rescind allegiance to larger outlines, following a finer course.
Things disappear.
Yet the litter remains.
Even in Summer it can be found, in hollows at the roots of trees, blown beneath the underbrush, strewn along the banks of streams.
Tons of it fall yearly, and the material cycles through the ecosystem, no doubt. We are assured that nothing's ever truly lost, at least as far as particles go, but last year, and the year before, are gone, and which year's leaves now lie here is hard to say. Sometimes it seems those of the Red Oak are indestructible, but there are never so many lying as ever have fallen.
Surely, they have built the soil here, in concert with the microbes, arthropods, worms, fungi, and other things, some of them nameless, engaged in processes we usually ignore, though they go on all the time...
Even so, we are losing ground. Literally.
On the steep slopes, and the well trod ways, pummeled under force of foot or flood, torn by wheel and claw, the soil continues to erode.
All the mulching that the maintenance crews can do is not enough to match the abrasion that this place endures. Its roots are loose in thinning soil that threatens to slip off the Manhattan bedrock, the last living plot draining away into the city that consumes it. The lovers and the users of the Park destroy it, even as they build it up.
A hundred Summers full of leaves have lain, and Winter hugs the ground as close as ever.
A thin sheet on a cold bed.
Feb 28, 2001
Ash Wednesday
As February ends, and Lent arrives, one wish has been fulfilled: I’ve finally seen a Woodcock. This surreptitious shorebird shuns the sea, favoring forest floors, where it may be found, probing in the thawing soil with its long bill, in search of earthworms, as early as February. That’s assuming you can see it. The bird sports what’s referred to as a “cryptic” pattern, which provides remarkably effective camouflage amid the leaf litter it typically frequents.The Woodcock needs any advantage it can get. It isn’t big, but it’s plump, and not exactly threatening. It’s an attractive prey species, with human hunters among its major predators. The bird cuts a queer figure, tottering on short legs, with no neck to speak of, but with big bulging eyes, set so far back in its head, that when you look at it from behind, you can see both eyes at once. This gives it stereoscopic vision backwards, which comes in handy if you spend a lot of your time sticking your face in the mud, and you’re vulnerable to attacks from above. Its odd appearance and behavior have inspired many folk names, including Timberdoodle, Bog-sucker, and, in honor of its aerial courtship display, Labrador Twister.
You will not see Woodcocks courting in the Park: they’re just passing through. In fact, the Woodcock is the year’s first migrant. We’ve enjoyed a fair assortment of wintering birds: Towhees and Thrashers; Kinglets and Carolina Wrens, but Winter wears on, and the Woodcock, making a pit stop on its journey back to the breeding grounds, is the first avian assurance that Spring too will return.
Still, Winter wears worse than the other seasons. The more so this year, as a cold December had us shivering well before the Solstice. It seems like it’s always been Winter, but there are still weeks to go, despite the Woodcock and its hint of Spring. The bird’s a tease, arriving for Fat Tuesday’s feast, then leaving us to suffer through Lent. It deserves to be eaten.
But that’s what Lent is all about, I’ve come to realize. It’s that point in the year when you feel (with some indignation!) that you’ve had enough Winter. There are hopeful signs about, not just Woodcocks, but buds forming, catkins and days lengthening, and maybe a mild spell has you thinking we’ll cruise on in from here, but no, it’s still Winter.
That’s Lent.
The long last third of the season, prone to violent mood swings. The winds of March may give way to a balmy day here and there, but there’s no mistaking it for anything but Winter. The Goddess makes Her ascetic gesture, and somewhere in the north country, an uneaten Woodcock is laughing at us.
Feb 19, 2001
An Official US Government Holiday
I’m sorry, but there’s not much I can do with Presidents’ Day.It’s not a Traditional holiday, except in the way that the birthday of the king might be celebrated, which is exactly the sort of thing this country was supposed to get away from, and it’s certainly not a holy day, but it’s on the schedule, and I’m not complaining. Of course it’s the government’s schedule, which amounts to proclaiming a holiday on your own behalf, a bit unseemly, if you ask me. The old habit of celebrating both Washington and Lincoln’s birthdays had more grass roots sincerity, but the Monday Holiday Act consolidated the too close February dates, and gave equal honor to all the chief executives. That’s Democracy in action, I guess, and the only way most of those guys could support a holiday. So for the sake of Richard Nixon and Warren Harding and all the others, I’ll condescend to take the day off. I’ll go to the Park, and watch a flock of Pigeons wheel and turn as one, without a discernible leader, and I’ll wonder how it’s done.
Feb 14, 2001
Valentine's Day
Love, it is hoped, will get us through February.The month has a low reputation, and Love is not much in evidence in the Park just now, at least not the kind that goes about trailing hearts and flowers.
Few are the flowers of February.
One does see human couples, but not so many as in warmer months, and these are too bundled for gestures of affection. And though a pair of Carolina Wrens maintain their bond through the Winter, one is sternly warned not to anthropomorphize their behavior. Other species take new mates yearly, and Hummingbirds are technically "promiscuous", but we must be careful not to project our values onto their habits. A penchant for monogamy is not to be construed as Love, nor does it make a species more Human.
And what of plants?
And other things?
Does the mycorrhizal fungus love its symbiotic root?
No. It is not allowed.
Love, it seems, is up to us to commit.
That may be too much of a responsibility: to have to find within ourselves all the Love this World requires.
We haven't managed it yet.
We will do better when we allow for Love among the "lower" life forms.
This need not be a self-projection, but a revelation of something beyond the self: that we proceed from the same Source as all of Life. Love is just another name for that Source. We like to think we focus it more acutely than the other creatures, and perhaps we do, but it's the same power that animates us all alike. If we cannot see that it surrounds us, we will not find it within us. Its ardor stirs the whole Creation, making equals of us all.
High Life or Low, we are no less than Lovers.
No less than Loved.
Even in February,
poking through the faded snow.
Feb 02, 2001
Well, the Groundhog's personal site is overloaded right now, but I heard that he saw his shadow, despite the overcast skies. Somebody knows something about the long-term forecast. And now I know I'm cool, 'cause I've been linked at dratfink.
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.