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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.