June 07, 2000Lost CherriesI’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. |
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