Jean Zimmerman

April 18, 2024 · 10:21 am

Are cherries cheery?

Or do they have a tinge of melancholy?

Perhaps both.

After all, April is the cruellest month, as T.S. Eliot put it so memorably.

He followed: breeding/lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/memory and desire, stirring/dull roots with spring rain.

Didn’t mention cherries. But could’ve.

We took a stroll under the cherry blossoms at New York Botanical Garden.

There is no place you can go in the Garden to not hear the noise of traffic on nearby city roads.

No matter. NYBG is an urban arboretum, after all. With the most fabulous cherry orchard.

City dwellers need flowers!

I thought about a book I’m working on.

It’s a bit of a challenge. Nietzche said, There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.

Trying to work it all out is taking mental energy, emotional energy.

Perhaps why I like the weepers. Prunus pendula.

My dreams are full of words and phrases. You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write, said Saul Bellow. My experience is that that is not always true, unfortunately.

You can make mistakes waking at midnight in bed as much as with morning coffee at your desk.

Hemingway said, Write hard and clear about what hurts. You’ve got to muscle past, much like the twisted trunks of a cherry, old and new.

Cherry blossoms are perfect. Always. In this they put our human efforts to shame.

Perhaps better to visit the lilacs. They do smell delicious, after all.

Or the Japanese maples, their early leaves so, so soft.

They’re just coming into themselves, joining the cherries.

I’m hoping my writing will bloom as well.

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Tagged as books, cherry blossoms, Creativity, ideas, New York Botanical Garden, New York City, Trees, Writing

March 16, 2024 · 4:50 pm

I’ve known these trees and stones, these streams and trails forever.

Growing up in the Village of Hastings-on-Hudson in southern Westchester County, Hillside Woods was a personal oasis. Not deep forest, not a virgin tract, but one hundred acres that formed the backdrop of my life — and so many other peoples’ as well.

When I heard about an effort to escort deer out of Hillside Woods, I relished a chance to help mend this broken urban forest, to heal it, to restore what’s been lost over time.

The experience offered so much more as well.

Over the years, with the explosion of the deer population in this small municipality, the animals’ biological need to browse had resulted in an almost total decimation of the forest understory. The lovely critters form a natural part of the local ecosystem, of course, but in large numbers they can ruin a forest.

The Village erected a deer exclosure in Fall 2023 around 30 acres as a way of starting to bring back the health of Hillside Woods. “S” gates at intervals allow people and dogs to walk in and out of the place.

Like any attempt to bring deer out of a wooded area — and the Hastings endeavor modeled itself on many other successful ones —this one represented an ongoing process. A bold new attempt was needed to complement the not-perfect exclosure.

So I joined in the deer drive.

Organizers with the Village had been careful to instruct people in advance about how the process would be managed.

“Now that the exclosure is constructed, we will gently usher deer within the 30 acres of fencing through the exit in its northwest corner and seal it shut. We need 100+ participants to walk in a slow, meditative line from the east side of the exclosure westward.“ Any deer met along the way would be nudged out one remaining gap in the fence.

Questions were natural. What was this experience going to be like? I think everyone who convened in the all-purpose room of Hillside Elementary School wondered that.

Perhaps a few were feeling a little apprehensive. Would we find deer? What would their behavior be? Would they bolt? Would anyone trip, sprain an ankle?

This was a perfectly beautiful day, the last Saturday in winter, with more than a hint of spring in the air.

Daffodils bloomed in the school’s flower beds.

Later, I surveyed volunteers: What was your favorite thing about today?

Seeing the positive community building, said Tom Kenney of Hastings.

Seeing the degree of participation in something I value, preservation of natural spaces and habitat for birds, said Linda Brunner, a Yonkers resident. Ruth Kotecha said, I was involved in protecting Hillside Woods from development in 1989, and I’m just so happy to see that now that we own the woods we’re going to save them.

Community building, agreed Nicholas Reitt. Gene Ruseigno of Yonkers said. All the people chipping in, and the main thing is there are young people here.

The community coming together, said Cat McGrath, who heads up the community group Protect Our Woods.

I’m always excited when I meet a birder, said Bob Sullivan of Philadelphia, because I’m a wannabe birder.

Hiking through the woods was Mahopac resident Greg Montano’s favorite thing about the day. His teenage son agreed, word for word.

Nature enthusiasts gathered from well beyond Hastings’ borders to help. The mayor took part. The videographer for the local cable channel documented.

The head of the rec department attended, as did the chief of police and the local EMT’s.

One cracked beforehand, We hope we won’t be seeing you later!

Before teams of around a dozen people each marched off to the Woods, the scores of volunteers gathered to hear a briefing by Haven Colgate, Chair of the Village Conservation Commission, who spearheaded the project.

What was your favorite thing about today? Jane Davis of Hastings: Just being outside in the woods on a sunny morning.

Then we entered, walking single file along the southern boundary of the Woods.

“Pods” of deer escorts arranged themselves in a loose line, then as a group moved calmly toward the northwest perimeter.

Deer drivers self-selected into two teams. The “steeps” tackled the rock outcroppings to the east of the Park, the hillsides after which Hillside Woods were named.

And there were the “flats,” participants happier on the more level terrain. Lovely weather! someone called to me. A woman joked, The deer aren’t here, they’re editing my flower garden!

I saw a few blooms, most notable for being the only ones along the way.

The fence looked remarkably delicate. Almost pretty. Especially when I realized how crucial that fence would be to bringing back what are called “spring ephemerals,” the first forest flowers of the season. None grow here now, nor have they for many, many years.

I found landmarks everywhere from earlier happy times. Memories of strolling by the Vernal Pond, with its thunderous orchestra of peepers.

Hanging out at the Chimney.

All the trails, so familiar from taking the trails there with my dogs and a lot earlier, roaming with teenage buddies, far from prying adult eyes.

No deer to be found this morning. A good thing! They would now find their suppers in other locales. I found it possible to begin to imagine forest floor leaf-out in the future, the resurgence of greenery and blossoms.

Spirits were high. Friends greeted friends. People made new acquaintances. Randy Paradise said he liked best talking with people I hadn’t met before.

What was your favorite part? Teenager Victor Valentine was definite. The really steep part! Same for Rich Lovejoy: The steep climb!

Being outdoors in really nice weather, said Katie Leune of Elmsford.

Just being with the community — and the sun! said Sharon Kivowitz.

Getting my foot stuck in Vernal Pond! joked Lindsey Taylor, showing off her muddy shoe.

Part of the day’s good feeling clearly derived from fellowship with neighbors, part from the sense of doing the right thing. My favorite part was community togetherness, said Ramsey Faragallah of Hastings. Lucy Corrigan agreed: A sense of small-town community that reminded me of my childhood.

Seeing the community come together to support an environmental effort, said Arthur Magun.

The community aspect, said Elise Zazzara.

Connecting with the people, said Jonathan Billig.

John Zeiger: It was a good introduction for the community to environmental stewardship.

Volunteers gathered garbage as they went.

There was a lot of trash to collect.

Quite a lot.

Mayor Niki Armacost said her favorite part was collecting trash with so many lovely Hastings people.

Other surprises lay amid the leaf litter. Some magic.

Late in the hike a coyote appeared, posing on a boulder above the Vernal Pond before skedaddling away.

Gil Reavill, leader of billy goat group 4, took a moment at the windup on the northern edge of the Woods to declaim an ode he’d penned along the way:

We are the Steeps!

We cover ground in bounds and leaps

When the hills get hillier we get sillier

Let those who prefer the path to be flatter

Go their own way — it doesn’t matter

We are the Steeps! We are the Steeps!

We pray the fates our feets to keeps

Afterwards, pizza in the all purpose room, welcome sustenance for happy but perhaps a bit tired participants. A total of one hundred and one citizens had taken part, as well as numerous Village staffers.

What did organizer Haven like best about the day? She was succinct. The weather and the vibe, she said. Go Hastings!

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Tagged as deer, deer exclosure, forest, Hastings-on-Hudson, woods

March 10, 2024 · 10:20 am

I wanted to meet the first woman botanist in America

so I adventured to the place where she grew up in the 1700s.

I am about to fly to Minnesota to give a presentation on The Untold History of Women in Arboriculture. Any effort to understand the American forest has to take into account previously overlooked, discounted, disenfranchised or forgotten expressions.

My presentation will treat some of the myriad women not often mentioned in the canon.

Here is part of the story I’m going to tell.

Jane Colden is a tree person who is largely forgotten today. She happens to be my current historical girl crush. Her life is a secret history, buried in timeworn assumptions about what women of their time did or did not do, should or should not do.

Jane lived in upstate New York and rendered groundbreaking examinations of plant species. She shared them with some of the foremost scientists of the day.

One thing to remember here. At that time, it was next to impossible for women to be experts in plants or trees. Women were not encouraged to attend school. They did not learn Latin, the official language of taxonomy. But if a woman did become an amateur scientists, she tended to go toward botany. This was likely due to women’s role as family caretakers. Because so many plants were used for medicine at that time.

Women were also linked symbolically to flowers.

Nature was something of an indulgence for rich gentlemen and ladies like Jane, as suggested in this famous painting, “The Swing,” from exactly the same time, by the French artist Fragonard.

Born in New York City, Jane spent most of her life at Coldengham, a 3,000-acre farm owned by her father in a wilderness area near present day Newburgh.

Cadwallader Colden was a high-ranking official in New York’s colonial government, and he liked plants. He documented the state’s flora using the new Linnean system of classification. He created ornamental gardens near the family’s stone mansion. There was plenty of habitat for wildflowers and woods, which Jane loved to explore. She shared an interest in horticulture with her mother, Alice Chrystie Colden, a keen gardener.

In 1743, Dr. Colden published a treatise which described the plants on his land, with the help of his daughter Jane, who was then 19.

When queries from fellow botanists became too time-consuming, he recruited Jane to help him. She earned her father’s praise. He wrote a colleague, “Jane is more curious & accurate than I could have been…her descriptions are more perfect & I believe few or none exceed them”.

Jane gathered information from Indians and “country people” as she went.

She documented her findings in a manuscript that ultimately contained 340 illustrations with detailed descriptions.

Soon, renowned botanists were writing her rather than her father. Among those who admired her work were Benjamin Franklin and naturalist John Bartram. Jane dedicated her efforts to trees as well as plants.

She drew dogwood. Hickory. Walnut. Black gum. Basswood. Cherry.

White birch. White oak.

In 1757 Jane sent some of her meticulous plant descriptions to Bartram, who pored over her letter and vowed to preserve it in his collection of treasured missives from European botanists. Moreover, he wrote, “I should be extreamly glad to see thee at my house & to shew thee my garden.” It seems Jane never did venture out of New York, instead nurturing botanical exchanges that allowed her to enrich the garden at Coldengham with plants from all over America and the world. A letter to Bartram included a list of seeds she desired from his nursery, some of them indigenous to climates similar to New York’s and some reflecting a more experimental approach.

Jane’s father could not stop singing his favorite daughter’s praises. He wrote in another letter, “As it is not usual for women to take pleasure in Botany as a Science, I shall do what I can to encourage Jane in this amusement. It fills up her idle hours to much better purpose that the usual amusements eagerly pursued by others of her sex.”

It seems Jane was not all that idle.

British merchant and plant dealer Peter Collinson congratulated Jane’s father on his “daughter’s Likeing to Botany,” remarking with polite condescension, “It is a Delightfull amusement & a pretty accomplishment for a young Lady, for after the knowledge of plants, it may Lead her to Discover their Virtues & uses.”

Three years later, having examined “several sheets of plants very Curiously Anatomised”, Collinson was more impressed. He praised the “Scientificall Manner” of her work in a letter to Bartram. He added, “I believe she is the first Lady that has Attempted any thing of this Nature.”

Collinson’s assessment was perfect: “She deserves to be celebrated.”

In 1759, Jane married a physician named William Farquhar. She gave up her botanical explorations in favor of housekeeping. She gave birth to her only child in 1766. Jane died of complications from childbirth along with her baby that same year. She was 42.

We have no knowledge of where Jane’s grave is located.

Two hundred years later, a local garden club published some of her drawings in a bound volume. It’s hard to track down now.

Something else I like about Jane. A visitor wrote a colleague complimenting Jane’s achievements. He added a P.S.

Jane, he said, “makes the best cheese I ever ate in America.”

Some of the great naturalist’s recipes have come down to us in a folio entitled Memorandum of Cheese made in 1757. She records on foolscap the ingredients she used, the milk and the rennet. It seems she sold some 348 pounds of butter as well. She made some mistakes, she says. Finally, she writes, “I made it after my mother’s old manner, and it was a tender good curd and lost very little rich whey.”

Now I really wanted to understand the first woman botanist in America. So I paid my visit to Coldengham.

It was hard to imagine these environs as a place dominated by “bears and other wild beasts,” in the words of Jane’s father when the family first moved in.

Just about any morning, cars and trucks race through the intersection of Stone Castle Road and Route 17K in the Town of Montgomery. They barely notice the ruin there.

Cadwallader’s son, Cadwallader Colden Jr., inherited the property when his father moved to New York City (another story) and built his own mansion here in 1744. It was pretty impressive. A 1959 article from The Newburgh News described the inside: “The house had 17 large rooms, nine open fireplaces with mantels, two bathrooms, a butler’s pantry, three wide halls, and 10 foot ceilings….” The paper went on to note the “grey field stone houses” and interior paneling that had been brought from England, features that represented the height of opulence for the area.

The home fell into disrepair over the years. By the 1940s, all of the windows were broken and missing, the rooms vandalized, anything of value stolen. Some of the parlor’s paneling, however, did wind up displayed in a period room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Now I searched for any place haunted by the ghost of Jane Colden.

Warning signs all around only whetted my appetite. I made my way through a tear in the orange snow fencing and waded through a thicket of multiflora rose to see the ruins close up.

Don’t try this at home. I still bear the ankle scars.

I discovered that much of where Jane lived was lost to time.

Where was naturalist Jane amid the brambles and old stones? I kept hunting.

Then I found her.

Three ancient osage orange trees stood together, a then exotic species that might have anchored Jane’s ornamental garden.

And then, there it was, off to the side, the remains of the summer kitchen. Where the greatest cheese maker in America would have prepared her famous cheese.

It wasn’t everything. But it was something.

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Tagged as arboriculture, botany, Jane Colden, Trees, women's history

January 4, 2024 · 3:43 pm

It might seem counterintuitive, yes, or even disingenuous:

to talk about a 2024 resolution to be less annoying, less grandiose, less showoffy, less of a know it all, and to do it in a blog that showcases me, me, me.

I know. It is true.

And yet, hiking the Fay Canyon trail this morning I can’t help but ponder my resolve, how I might achieve it, and how I might write about it here. And illustrate with my own photos, of course. I might not even have used those words, counterintuitive and disingenuous, incorrectly. But see how I full steam ahead as though I did?

Bear with me.

Juniper, oak and manzanita dominate this forest landscape.

The oaks are different than we have back east. Gambel oaks, Emory oaks. Interesting growth habit, unusual leaves.

Plenty of beauty all around.

I’ve always loved manzanita for its dead and live parts intertwined.

A little way in I come upon my first alligator of the day.

The alligator juniper, magnificent, and even a conjoined specimen, my favorite.

Me, me, me. My favorite, which I’m telling you about here. They’re so hardy, their roots can grow into rock.

Which one is your favorite, though? Slightly less arrogance, slightly more consideration for other people.

Conjoined junipers abound. Husband-and-wife trees, not rare here in Sedona. I’m taking lots of photos.

Hikers pass me on the trail. I overhear snippets of conversation about trees, technology, how many eggs are left in someone’s refrigerator. Should we go out and buy more? says the first. Her companion: Probably not necessary.

The ground underneath the juniper’s branches swims with berries, their blue coated with a fine white powder.

Tell-tale sign of some animal.

Coyote? Fox? Javelina? A person scolded me once for offering a photo of scat in this blog. I love its mystery, though, the story it tells of other creatures in these woods when our human backs are turned. I follow the stream bed, hiking the dry wash.

I reach the end of the trail, the end of the box canyon.

I see a jumble of boulders adorned by the backpack of a human lucky enough to find themselves amid this place’s grandeur.

Another sign of humans, a marker that seems kind of corny and almost quaint in our digital age.

Time to turn around, head back to the parking lot, out of this fantastic realm.

I pass some novel sights along the way.

Hello! I love you. Won’t you tell me your name?

More gorgeous lichen.

Time-roughened bark.

A juvenile specimen.

More old and new, combined in the bark of numerous grizzled junipers.

Oddly, then, my impulse to pursue my goal of less ego, more modesty, becomes replaced as I walk the path along the wash.

I remember another resolution I’ve made, equally powerful: to try to live in the Now.

I reach a little clearing and find myself standing still. Suddenly there are no humans within hearing distance. The only acoustics: birds twittering in the undergrowth and above. I look up.

I scan down the trail, where I’m headed.

I turn my focus back to where I’ve come from.

All around me is such intense beauty.

And I have an epiphany. This, actually, is the Now. This is the only moment.

My feet are suddenly rooted to the sandy ground.

I can’t move. I look around some more.

I start to weep. Look up again, helpless. The morning sky smiles down, my only friend.

Gaze around me.

Everything so quiet, so still, so perfect. Peaceful. Luminous. It’s a kind of active contentment I can’t recall feeling before. My worries about the past and future recede. I know those concerns exist, but they’ve faded to the edges, temporarily invisible.

Can every moment resonate like this one? Can I live in the Now, if not always, then more often? I’m not sure.

I never want to leave this place, this moment.

After standing there stock still for a while, I remember I said I’d return by a certain time. I move off my sandy perch and head back down the trail. I see some unfamiliar things as I go.

Some details I missed on the way into the canyon.

Pass a few folks laughing, tromping down the trail, having their normal conversations.

I’m back to normal too, but with a powerful feeling I know I’ll carry with me into the Now of 2024.

Should we buy eggs today? Probably not necessary.

What we have to put in our mouths at this moment will do just fine.

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Tagged as birds, hiking, juniper, manzanita, New Year's Resolutions, oak, Photography, Sedona, travel, wildlife

December 31, 2023 · 1:33 pm

Take a closer look.

What do you see?

It’s almost the new year.

Time to look within.

How will you change?

What parts will endure?

Is the past alive?

Is it dead?

Somewhere in between?

Is life short?

Sometimes seems that way.

Is life long?

Could be.

It’s all relative. We need to name things, somehow.

Of course.

Sometimes it’s beautiful.

Well, it’s always beautiful.

Look closely at someone you love.

Try to see into their soul.

Can you go there?

Will they let you?

If you’re lucky, yes.

It’s artificial, this threshold.

The difference between the 31st and the 1st.

But it is an opportunity.

To pause.

To see.

Is everything just as you would like it to be?

This is your choice.

Your chance.

Take it.

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Tagged as Arizona, cactus, New Year

December 20, 2023 · 12:33 pm

Winter color so vivid all around

at Wave Hill, the historic estate in Riverdale, the Bronx. Always a magnificent public-access arboretum, but perhaps especially beautiful on this brisk early afternoon in mid-December.

Berries all around. Not only crimson holly, perfect for the season.

But purple. The aptly named beautyberry.

Shakespeare wrote about boughs which shake against the cold,/Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. He might have been describing one of the most majestic trees here, a weeping beech.

The birds, though, are still at Wave Hill in full force.

Making a mad racket and perching on branches specially decorated for them.

Garlands of things they love to eat. Berries, yes. Also, even more delectable for them, the fruits of the Osage orange. An ancient species that dates back to at least the last ice age, when seeds were most likely spread by mastodons, sloths and other creatures that consumed them.

Squirrels like the seedballs too, hence the one we find partially devoured along our way.

To celebrate the fir tree season, we pay a visit to the conifer grove.

Gorgeous specimens all around.

So many different species.

Each beautiful in its own way

Some exotic, like a China fir.

There is even a giant redwood cultivar. A real redwood, like they have on the West Coast.

Is it possible to overuse the descriptor beautiful? On this day, no. Everything is beautiful.

We take the Woodland Trail, which winds along the edge of the property. We see evidence of the human hand tucked into the corners. This isn’t an old-growth forest, after all!

A private school adjoins the property. We hear children shrieking on a playground as we go, having fun at recess. Find a gazebo — nice place to sit and reflect, if that’s your thing. Ours is more along the lines of walking to stay warm on this cold early afternoon.

Someone was here before and loved someone.

A hand-hewn belvedere. Think about the people employed here to build it long ago, probably old-world stonemasons who gifted our country with their expertise.

So much texture in these woods.

Hackberry.

Black cherry.

Sweet birch.

Lichen.

The intricate embroidery of oak leaves underfoot.

Something odd, a measuring tape around a trunk.

Wonder if someone trying to get a DBH left this tool by mistake. This is an arboretum, after all. Or are they trying to girdle the tree so that it will fall over time? Nah, who would do that to a fine old Northern red oak?

Mysteries. Who tagged this tree and for what inventory?

How could any tree be as beautiful as this one with braided twin trunks? Tell me if you find one.

Wave Hill isn’t only about trees and plants. There’s history here too. Illustrious visitors spent time on the estate, with an overnight guest list including Thomas Huxley and Charles Darwin. A teenage Teddy Roosevelt summered here. Later, as governor of the state, he became very active in preserving the view across the river.

Did Roosevelt’s Wave Hill summers have anything to do with his adult efforts to create the National Parks system? Inquiring minds want to know.

Arturo Toscanini also put in some time here. He’d play concerts on the lawn. His guests included Queen Elizabeth II and John Foster Dulles. Mark Twain stayed at Wave Hill between 1901 and 1903.

There are numerous historic buildings, and I’ve often wondered where specifically Twain resided. We know that he set up a writing retreat in the branches of a chestnut tree.

In her memoir, his daughter Clara quoted Twain as saying: I believe we have the noblest roaring blasts here I have ever known on land; they sing their hoarse song through the big tree-tops with a splendid energy that thrills me and stirs me and uplifts me and makes me want to live always.

We go in to get warm in one of the buildings, the one with a ballroom and a great old fireplace decorated for the holidays.

Twain also wrote, This dining-room is a paradise, with the flooding sunshine, the fire of big logs.

I greet old friends at Wave Hill, great trees I’ve visited time and time again over the years. The grand littleleaf linden.

A particular sweetgum.

The crazy looking red of the Japanese red pine .

Go up close and see the delicately beautiful thatch of needles in its crook.

We pass a quiet place where spring bulbs slumber. I’ve seen this careful sign before.

Then, at the end of our walk, the copper beech. There are two here, actually. One is perfectly balanced, untouched by time.

The other, though, down a slope, I like just as much. She has bark that has been scarified over the years by people engraving their initials and hearts.

In her book about the beech, Casting Deep Shade, poet C.D. Wright tells us that the druids grew wise eating the nuts of the species. This being a mast year, I find tons of beechnuts underfoot at Wave Hill.

Some tree folks don’t like these autobiographical messages on beech bark, opining that the practice of carving disrupts the tree’s vascular system. But look at the health of this tree, probably two hundred years old. I like the engraved graffiti, because to me it proves people’s strong, abiding connection with trees.

It seemed a mere toss-up whether she said, “I love you,” or whether she said, “I love the beech-trees,” or only “I love—I love,” wrote Virginia Woolf in Night and Day.

Thoreau wrote, I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.

Love is like a tree, wrote Victor Hugo. It grows of its own accord, it puts down deep roots into our whole being. I like to think of some lost soul tramping miles through a forest, too shy to unburden himself to the person he cares for, and surreptitiously taking switchblade out of pocket to pronounce, indelibly, the sentiment I love—I love.

Herman Hesse wrote, When we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy.

We leave the estate.

Passing by more beauty as we go.

Wind up at a favorite deli only a few blocks away for some sustenance after our poetic excursion —somewhat less poetically, with one of the best sandwiches in New York City. This pastrami might be historic. Even beautiful, if you consider its taste in your mouth.

Almost historic, almost as beautiful as the landscapes of Wave Hill.

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Tagged as arboretum, beech trees, Bronx, New York City, Riverdale, Wave Hill

November 21, 2023 · 10:18 am

Six miles in to Boynton Canyon and out again

is not an easy hike for me.

My typical walks tend to be half that. But sometimes you’ve got to push yourself.

Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts, wrote Elbert Hubbard, the most interesting guy you’ve never heard of.

An anarchist/writer/publisher/philosopher who lived at the turn of the twentieth century, Hubbard went down with the Lusitania when it was torpedoed in 1915. He continued, There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.

I happen upon that quote before I start out on the trail this morning. Something pertinent from the rest of my life, a pithy quote from Maya Angelou: Easy reading is damn hard writing. Both statements speak to me on this sparkling azure-skied morning in Sedona.

I’ve hiked this box canyon many times and have once before made it to the end. I’m determined to achieve the same goal today.

At the beginning of the trail, the lit-up rocks all around are astounding.

Are these sandstone cliffs even real?

Yes.

Going in, the pygmy forest of manzanita rolls out all around.

I have loved this path for years.

Walking a bit further, alligator junipers along the way are like old friends.

Many of them are kissing trees, trees whose stems have grown together over time, my favorites.

I find a carpet of gambel oak leaves underfoot, now, in late autumn.

And I reach a glade of bigtooth maple.

Blush pink and crimson all around.

Ponderosa pines take the stage after a while. One has its delicate lichen party decoration, ready for the holidays.

I lean in, inhale. The scent of butterscotch.

Some minor miracles. How on earth did this happen?

I’m beginning to huff and puff on the slight, continuous incline, trying to make it look easy when people pass me by.

Does the forest speak to you? I promise it would if you hiked through Boynton Canyon and experienced its magic.

Above I can see some black streaked formations, the ruins of ancient cliff dwellings marked by old cook-fire smoke. Or perhaps that is my imagination.

Some people jog past me.

I tend to think it’s better to saunter – John Muir’s preferred word for taking a hike – rather than racing along.

There’s so much to see along the way.

Do you ever think you are the smartest person in the world? The coolest person in the world? The most important? I sometimes do, I admit it. This hike, this climb, will knock that right out of you.

Ego can be good. I know a man who is 102 years old and chipper. He talks about himself pretty much all the time. And I’m fairly certain that his mighty ego is how he’s survived and prospered thus far.

Mine is rather large, too, which can be annoying to some people, I know.

Now, people coming down the trail can see how red-faced and sweaty I am. Keep it up, they say, you’re almost there. Don’t worry.

I notice handholds along the way, stones and roots and trunks, seemingly placed in exactly the right spot to help a person up a jumble of rocks.

Some of them are as smooth and polished as metal from the touch of so many human hands over time.

I am grateful for them.

I usually go too fast, but I can’t do that on this trail.

I nearly trip and fall a couple of times. I so don’t want to take a tumble and break a leg, a rib, wreck my face.

The ponderosa pines and alligator junipers and gambel oaks and bigtooth maples all form a chorus and whisper to me as I go.

Take your time, they say. Stop when you need to. Stay out of other hikers’ way. Grab the handholds that are offered you. Don’t feel ashamed that other people get there at a different pace!

Finally I reach the end of the canyon, the top, which consists of a broad plateau high up in the full sun, with soft air rippling across. The apricity up on the rock is amazing (smarty-pants stuff: apricity just means the warmth of the sun in winter).

Yes, the end of the canyon is nice. Is it nicer than the forest along the trail?

Other folks are here enjoying the view. Or resting after the climb.

I break out my electrolyte-infused water, a cheese sandwich. Or fromage, as I refrain from telling the French hikers seated alongside me.

I do say to another couple, Have you smelled the ponderosas along the way?

Ever the know it all. If you go up close and stick your nose in you’ll get a whiff of butterscotch.

I didn’t know that, says the woman. I think they’re jack pines, says the man. Men! But it irks me a little. I could be mistaken, I say. I often am. All the way back I wonder, are these actually jack pines, or ponderosa pines? Maybe some of both? I’ll have to go online and check when I get back. I always want to be correct. Again, ego.

Taking the trail on the return, I notice things I hadn’t before. Warm breezes. Cool breezes. The intoxicating fragrance all around, drifting up from the brown pine needles scattered on the forest floor.

Critter holes.

Pecking holes.

A dry creek bed. I’d love to hear that stream roar after the rains of springtime.

I almost fall a couple more times on the way down, my feet now feel so tired and klutzy.

But seeing things from a different angle provides an opportunity for reflection. I’ve heard of so many deaths close to me recently. People who passed away in the hospital. Died in bed.

How can I render my life more meaningful? Can I approach the world with less ego?

I hear young people coming towards me on the trail trading quips concerning what they know about trees. Branches? says one. Trunks? says another. Roots? General hilarity. At least I don’t say something smart alecky to them!

I hear other people puzzling things out as they go. Is this boxwood? says a kid. No, says the father. See the red stems? I’m tempted to call out manzanita! but stop myself. I overhear someone else say, Javelina, and his companion says, What is that? And he answers, The wild boar that lives around here.

It sort of surprises me the number of people who don’t greet me on the trail when I say, Hi. But maybe it’s not all that surprising, as the hikers are passing this panting old codger with blue hair. The most important person in the world?

Sort of invisible, actually.

I come out of the woods at a site marked by mysterious to me but no doubt essential markers. I’ve caught my breath, gulped some water. Ready to reenter the unforested world.

Life instructions from the box canyon, in four easy steps. From the smartest, coolest, most important person in the world. The person who almost just fell flat on her face in the forest.

Life is short. Use the handholds. Don’t know it all.

Take your time.

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Tagged as Boynton Canyon, Sedona, Trees, Writing

November 19, 2023 · 5:15 pm

Plants have names.

Even those plants most people would walk right by and have no idea what to call them. In the desert, maybe, especially.

It helps if you’re lucky enough to be with someone who knows most of the names.

Like my brother. He seems to be acquainted with everything we pass this morning on this quiet little trail in Sedona.

Of course he knows the juniper.

The prickly pear.

Manzanita.

And the pinyon pine.

But also the things most hikers don’t know. Crucifixion thorn.

Banana yucca.

Saltbush.

Nightshade.

Catclaw. If you pull it this way, it’s sharp, he says. They make honey out of it.

Of course there are a few species even he does not know. Wright’s silk tassel, for example. Or sixweek’s three-awn.

Or wait-a-minute. Its minute seemingly past.

I think those sound like Medieval ones, titled long ago.

When you can walk around and name natural aspects of the world around you, it gives you a feeling of satisfaction. Even elation.

Elated is how I feel on this little trail today in sight of some of the biggest mountains around.

These rock formations so dramatic under the lowering storm clouds, especially fronted by beautiful wreckage.

Not, perhaps, as subtle as wait-a-minute. But both are arresting.

Mysteries do occur also on this trail, things we cannot name. Gorgeous, syrupy, silvery sap.

A very humble stone, its bald head poking up amid the shrubbery.

A rock embedded in the red sand.

A metal structure whose use is lost to time.

A puddle. The simple wetness of a pool. So unusual in the high desert.

As is a drum. Why is it here?

Just to make a sound.

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Tagged as cactus, juniper, Plants, Sedona

November 17, 2023 · 4:56 pm

Had a little rain last night.

Really? You don’t say.

We’re used to the regular deluge back east, especially lately. But here in the southwest, of course, raindrops are so rare as to be remarkable.

There hasn’t been any rain in Phoenix in months. And even when drops do fall, as they did for a bit yesterday, much of it is what’s called virga, precipitation that evaporates before reaching the ground. Today, even dry things glisten.

I walk among the rain-refreshed plantings in the desert garden.

Something we take for granted in the northeast: rain. Something they take for granted in the southwest: having a big honker of a saguaro right outside your back door.

The birds seem happy.

Munching prickly pear fruits.

I feel happy. Unwinding, unspooling, recharging my batteries.

I like to say I’ve been working so hard. But really, working? Does that make sense when you enjoy all the things you do? Maybe enjoying is better. I’ve been enjoying so hard.

Palo verde. How chartreuse can a plant be?

Everything is magnified here under the puffer clouds.

The fringe of mesquite.

So infinitely delicate.

A scatter of pods.

Does the saguaro know how ridiculous it looks sometimes?

Bougainvillea speaks to me.

Don’t work so hard. Don’t enjoy so hard. Fall into the petals of a flower. Nourish yourself. Here on the path, I’m all by myself. I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity. So said Albert Einstein.

Not totally alone. Communing with a bee on the Mexican petunia. Mexican petunia? Invasive! Who cares? Not me, at the moment.

Speaking of invasive, palms.

They stretch themselves upwards. If it rains, it rains. If it doesn’t, they’re still there, holding the sky aloft.

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Tagged as cactus, desert, flowers, happy, Phoenix, saguaro

November 5, 2023 · 6:15 pm

There are many great trees in New York City.

Yes, true. But what about the Great Trees of New York City? This is the brainchild of New York City Parks, which is reviving a project that was last completed in the 1985 with the goal of identifying the most iconic trees in all the five boroughs. Ordinary citizens nominate exceptional trees, as many as they want, as defined by their historic, botanical and cultural significance.

Having been fortunate enough to be appointed a judge for 2023’s Great Tree Search, I am excited to start off on some new adventures. My assigned beat is the Bronx, a great place whose eclectic neighborhoods stretch all the way from the swellegant precincts of Riverdale to the famously underserved South Bronx. It’s also a place I’ve spent considerable time as a consultant on tree preservation for NYC.

This time I go some places I’ve never been before, and discover a fantastic meshing of arboriculture and history. I enlist Gil as a driver, because it’s hard to drive in New York City traffic and spot trees at the same time, even gigantic trees. We have a spreadsheet to guide us that cites peoples’ nominations as well as some of their comments about why a particular specimen is worthy of the distinction.

The first entry on our list is quite civilized. A ginkgo on a small street abutting Webster Avenue.

Ginkgo biloba dates back 270 million years, and was thought to be extinct until it was rediscovered by a German scientist in late 1600s Japan. A group of Chinese Buddhist monks made it their mission to save and cultivate the species.

It is one of the few trees useful for food foraging in this urban jungle. Yes, the fruits are slimy, smelly. But each one holds a nut at its core (actually a seed) that is sold in Korea, Japan and China as a “silver apricot nut.” They are usually roasted prior to eating and used in desserts, soups and with meat. Each fall you’ll see many people in the City gathering this ample harvest.

Will I really have to choose among these trees? I’m already asking myself – and I’ve only seen one so far! But let’s continue.

We prowl along to little Perry Avenue in the Bronx and discover a gargantuan willow oak.

What on earth is it doing in this quiet backwater?

Among other things, towering over the houses with health-giving shade, creating a beautiful fall carpet of leaves, and offering shelter for squirrels with a major nest. Oh yes, and uncomplainingly eating carbon and pouring out oxygen for us slackers to breathe.

We find another nominee on a peaceful little street, Thierot Avenue.

A silver maple. Now, these trees get a bad rap among urban foresters. They’re brittle, they rain down branches, yada yada. But look at this beauty. “It is the LARGEST TREE in the community,” reads the comment on the spreadsheet. “Could be a hundred years old.”

Huge (of course), three stems, fantastic shaggy bark, spreading her roots all over the place as is her right. And a perfect place for posing schoolkids. Who shout “Save the Trees!” over their shoulders as they scamper away.

We venture to Corona Park, home to several potential Great Trees, all of them amazing. First, a majestic American elm at the corner entrance.

A photo really cannot do her justice. You have to mosey underneath those sprawling branches, touch the bark. Gaze overhead at the sky through her crown.

Perhaps the most beautiful tree I’ve ever seen. (And I’ve seen a few, so maybe just the most beautiful of the day. So far.) Then, we go elsewhere in the same park in quest of two hefty ashes that grow across a path from each other, seemingly competing for the Venus of New York prize. One is a marvel, yes. “This majestic Green Ash with a trunk size of 54″ is a gem and sits in the center of the pathway along passive lawn areas and rolling hills.”

To locate the tree I ask some folks hanging out with their kids in the nearby playground. They do not speak English, so their seven year old translates as they gesture down the way: “Big tree down there, take a turn to the right and you can’t miss it!” An understatement.

Even more impressive, the ash nearby. “Thickest tree in the Bronx, probably NYC too.”

Don’t you mind the fruiting bodies at the base, this one is clearly a survivor.

Wandering out of the park at as the dusk grows all around us I notice a planting that will ensure the health of this urban forest for the future, a baby beech.

Since we’re making these adventures at the end of the workday, we’re lucky enough to visit all these sites at the magic hour, just as the sun is getting ready to set. So we arrive at a spot we’ve heard about but never spent a lot of time, Pelham Bay Park.

We take our nightfall hike on a trail around Hunter Island, 166 acres of wilderness in the heart of the Bronx, right on the Long Island Sound. The person who nominated a post oak here wrote a lengthy treatise on the specimen’s history, saying, in part: “This grove of post oaks dates back to the 1760s. Post Oak is native but rare in NYC. This beautiful specimen is growing right out of bedrock that includes gneiss with stunning seams of quartz, and is right on the Sound. This tree projects the grit and resilience for which the city is renowned.”

Of course, that more than whets my appetite to find this spectacular tree. But it’s not easy. Entering the park, we find massive white oaks and scarlet oaks. This is a mast year, and all around the ground is carpeted with acorns that crunch underfoot.

A trail takes us through groves of sweet birch.

We see almost no one.

I wade ankle deep across a mossy inlet, into the darkening woods under a rising full moon.

It gets dimmer, dimmer.

Wither the post oak? It’s a member of the white oak family, and all the trees in these woods have interbred for so long that I think any of them could be the oak in question. Though I cannot find the exact leaf, with its lobes that remind some of a Maltese cross, there are plenty of similar leaves.

We’ll have to come back again, perhaps by the light of day.

On another afternoon, back in the city proper, we locate a venerable black tupelo.

“At the edge of the forested land on Mosholu Parkway North, facing the apartment buildings.” Sounds mysterious, and I’m afraid we will not find it, especially as the gloaming comes on. We cadge a parking space and I walk directly to the tree as by a homing device.

I think of a couple of lines by poet Jane Hirshfield: “I would like not minding, whatever travels my heart. To follow it all the way into leaf-form, bark-furl, root-touch, and then keep walking, unimaginably further.”

We discover a cottonwood just off Van Cortland Park South in an old schoolyard. It towers over the neighborhood. Once, apparently, during the Revolutionary War, this tree was used for hanging traitors.”

I check the spreadsheet. “Cottonwood trees typically grow in riparian areas, which at first seems odd, given its current location, but makes sense once you realize that the Tibbets Brook runs underneath.” I’ve heard that Tibbetts Brook is soon to be daylighted, and I wonder what will happen to the cottonwood when that happens. Will they retain it and will it continue to provide shade and beauty of local residents?

Moshulu Parkway and Gun Hill Road are sites for some other old-old trees that also date back to the Revolution. We visit “the oldest sassafras tree in the Bronx, an amazing holdover from when the land was converted from farm to parkland.”

It is said to be larger than the state champion in Green-Wood Cemetery. And that’s saying something. “However, its true age will never be known because it is mostly hollow.”

No matter, it is magnificent. Nearby, a white oak stands tall above a wall on Gun Hill Road.

Beneath the tree’s enormous canopy runs the Old Aqueduct Trail, another landmark, an engineering marvel from from the time when clean water was piped in from the Croton Reservoir in northern Westchester County. “Assuming was planted along Gun Hill as historical marker.” Makes total sense.

All Gil can say for hours afterward is: That white oak. That white oak was amazing. The wonders of this city’s urban forest are manifold. I’m starting to dream about Bronx trees. We’ve been going out to find them every day.

Now we venture to Ewen Park. I’ve never heard of the place, but I know there is a nominated cherry tree here “south of the dog run.” Tramping all over and unable to find it, we see some of the substantial rock formations that never got blasted away when much of New York City was originally leveled for development.

We ask a dog walker to direct us.

Poseidon, a proud Cane Corso, would not be caught dead in a dog run. But Poseidon’s helpful person directs us down the hill and up the “unmarked trail” to the spot. She has me at “unmarked trail,” my favorite kind of path. We locate the huge old cherry.

“This is one of the biggest, oldest trees in the park,” reads the nomination. “It provides habitat and food for our migratory and resident birds.” Its once-delicate lenticels have gone crusty with age.

It nestles a young’un in its crook.

On the way out of the park, I find a microforest of sweetgums. What’s not to love about a sweetgum?

Their prickly seedballs are a marvel of the season.

Two conjoined trunks seemed to be pouring their hearts out.

I admire a small maple, sporting the usual colorful frou frou of the season. Watch me turn colors! I’m a maple! Sure, m’am, but you clearly haven’t met the other contenders, the sassafras or the black tupelo.

Everywhere I go I stumble upon fantastic trees that were not nominated as Great Trees. Yes, the pin oak in Crotona is spectacular. The zelkovas on Webster, definitely worth noting officially. But what about this particular sweetgum?

Ewen Park, which I’d never before heard of, dates back to when Frederick Van Cortland owned the land. It has a long stone staircase that serves as a conduit between the neighborhoods of Kingsbridge and Riverdale. At the base of the steps I find a marker that establishes the place’s bona fides. It states the number of stairs. In Latin.

History is everywhere. You can read the past in the trunks and branches, leaves and fruits of the trees in the Bronx. Some of them Great Trees. But also, trees that might not necessarily be identified as such. Not necessarily winners, but trees that are nonetheless special.

And that is pretty great.

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Tagged as Bronx, Cherry, Great Trees NYC, New York City, Post oak, Sassafras, Trees, Van Cortlandt Park, white oak

October 12, 2023 · 8:07 am

“Purple and gold season”

is how Cornell Botanic Gardens’s docent Dana describes the end of summer and the first days of fall.

She professes herself to find it a bit boring. I look out the window when we’re driving in the car and that’s all I see, purple and gold, purple and gold.

Dana shows us the native aster blooming in a border of the Cultivated Plant Collection. The goldenrod.

Her exuberant, erudite and irreverent approach to the botanical world and her enthusiasm in sharing it with people are all on display first day of autumn in the Finger Lakes.

A Buddhist might call it the Eternal Now — this burnished morning, already warm yet crisscrossed with cool breezes. We walk together through the specialty gardens, the perennial beds, the tropical plants and grasses and herbs. These flowers, these trees are all that exist.

Dana raises horses, has about the longest braid I’ve ever seen down her back, and is one of the most quick-witted garden guides I’ve ever come across.

She shares some wisdom on making a mistake: You never say you’re wrong. Just, “actually”… to which a gentleman in the crowd adds enthusiastically, Truth challenged!

Now that we’ve got that straightened out.

We see a display of gourds, part of the Garden’s Seeds of Survival and Celebration installation. She explains their significance, You know that thing in the celestial heavens that we call the Big Dipper? In North Africa it’s called the Drinking Gourd. So the message to enslaved people in America was, “follow the drinking gourd.“

She shows us millet.

On a pathway she shows us pots that were originally planted out for the opening of the Nevin Welcome Center in 2010 and now need to be moved inside every cold season and outdoors again in the spring. Be careful what you do because if you do it exceptionally well they’re going to ask you to do it over and over.

The tropical Princess flower, she tells us, is her favorite. She’s very soft, and has silver glitter on the leaves and flower.

Then, a relative of the tomato.

But it’s seriously saying, Don’t bite me. No grazing, please. Also, It has a fruit that can be brewed into a very potent alcohol.

Dana does a special symbiosis tour once a month in which she talks about the relationship between plants. She calls it secrets of the garden.

Lest you think this tour is all about flowers and fruits, it is not. There is art.

And plenty of trees. She shows us the tulip poplar.

It is neither tulip nor poplar. But it is the tallest tree native to this region. Liriodendron tulipifera, she tells us, has musical instrument-shaped leaves and tulip-shaped flowers. This particular specimen is equipped with lightning rods that don’t happen to be attached to its ground rod.

It’s probably eighty to one hundred years old.

Dana explains the difference between and annual and a perennial plant. It’s pretty basic, she says. She explains the meaning of the word cultivar.

She shows us an aluminum tag.

Students come In and randomize these tags. It’s not funny!

These just keep spreading.

I’m touching everything. I can’t help it. I want to learn about everything here. I’m reminded of the lines from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass:

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,

It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,

I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,

I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

We see a mammoth zelkova.

Dana shows us an Eastern white pine.

It’s the tallest conifer native to this region, she tells the group. It was tremendously important to the Indigenous people here. The Five Tribes were warring, and they met beneath a white pine. And a leader said they’d be more successful if they worked together than if they fought. That was Hiawatha. We lifted their agreement for our constitution. We stole it. The Five Nations came together as the Haudenosaunee. Their symbol shows a white pine with all the weapons buried at the base and at the top an eagle overseeing the whole thing.

She shows us the needles that grow in fascicles.

There are five needles in each fascicle of an Eastern white pine. That’s how you can always identify the species.

Also, Dana says, you can brew the needles to make a tea that has more vitamin C than a lemon by squishing them and boiling them. It’s pale gold and slightly sweet, a treat you can make for your friends.

We stop by a Cornelian cherry dogwood.

Cornus mas, she says, giving us the scientific name. Mas means male in Greek. The Greeks used the wood to build their weapons of war. Since it was the wood used to make the boy stuff it was termed mas – male.

This tree probably predated the adjoining building. Oh, just a boring begonia.

Dana brings us to the herb garden. An herb simply means the plant’s not woody, she explains. In the herb garden you’ll find things that are significant to humanity that are not food-based. She tells us that in the garden we’ll find a bed of herbs related to literature: You can find rue, shake its little hand.

We enter. Bruise a few leaves, inhale the scent of sage.

She says, I want you to scratch and sniff. First, touch this plant.

Then, run fast over to this other flower and inhale.

Peppermint patty! And she is absolutely correct, as always. The first plant is mint, the second has the distinctive aroma of chocolate.

She relates the origin of the term nosegay. I didn’t know I’d ever wondered about that, but now I find myself getting curiouser and curiouser, as Lewis Carroll’s Alice would have it.

A nosegay was a bunch of herbs you’d carry against the stench of the world back in the Victorian era, it turns out. And you’d need a tussie mussie to hold it. Horse-drawn carriages actually have mounts to put these tussie mussies in.

Conveniently, Dana has a tussie mussie on hand to show us.

I peel off from the group, meet an energetic hound named Texie who seems to be inordinately stimulated by the herb garden’s scents.

I spy a Thai super-hot pepper.

Grain amaranth.

Cockscomb.

Lean in. Perfection in pink. I feel hypnotized by its fuschia.

I see the rue, shake its little hand.

Little purple flower. So boring!

Just when I think life could not get any better, I come to a tree.

I hear a kid say, It’s still living and they cut right through it! Within its massive trunk hangs a gong. The kid says to his mother, brother and grandmother, Let me show you the best thing!

We all observe the fish he points to in a small nearby pool.

They look happy there, says grandma. The kid’s brother rings the gong. Now we can have a mindful moment, says the kid. Such a super sound! says the mom.

I offer to take their picture. They offer to take mine, and I pose looking even more supercilious than usual, and quite a bit content.

I tear myself away from the happy family to see the Bird’s Eye Pepper, which has grown in Africa for centuries. One last picture before my phone runs out of juice!

No, one more! Hibiscus.

Inside the Welcome Center, I inspect a display of tree rings. Even my toe is lucky.

A lucky day all around. Fortune smiles on those of us who happen to be on Dana’s tour of Cornell Gardens this perfect first day of Fall.

Poking around where I am not supposed to be

is a favorite pastime of mine.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream, said Edgar Allan Poe. Thinking about some writers who have opined on the dark side of life as I spend some time in in a dream within a dream – the abandoned Contagious Disease Hospital at Ellis, taking around a group of photographers for a day of shooting poetic spaces.

On this stormy morning in the tristate, almost everything is so beautifully dark.

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night, wrote Poe. We visit hushed stairwells.

The simplest things have a surprising potency.

Heat.

Even a doorknob seems to have a story to tell.

Textures are always amazing here at the Hospital.

But today especially, in low light, they seem to whisper. Loudly.

A view.

I see some of the things I’ve seen many times before, old favorites. Simple things.

The bird’s nest in a light fixture.

A legend.

Always loved how that sentiment might apply to everyday emotional challenges.

This unlikely chair.

Cracked windows open to wild courtyards. I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real, wrote Oscar Wilde in Dorian Gray.

The trees are both hideous and beautiful.

Mary Shelley wrote in Frankenstein, The world was to me a secret which I desired to devine.

There is golden light.

We’re open to the cold, storm-tossed waters of the Bay.

Everything more beautiful in the wet.

And I make some new discoveries. A bottle, miraculously untouched after a century.

Glass littering a floor

I feel both a little frightened and exhilarated. Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful. Again, Shelley. She should know; she had the courage to write a novel that would revolutionize literature when she was just nineteen years old. (Her mother was famous women’s rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft.)

So fortunate to be able to spend time in this iconic, moody place.

I see mysteries.

A ladder to nowhere.

More mysteries.

Some were healed here. Blue paint was thought to be calming, hence its use in the open bay psychiatric wards.

Things were clean, sanitary back in the day.

Some suffered. We know that people heaved themselves out the windows on the upper floors, hence the heavy-duty metal grates. Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. Shelley.

Nurses bunked near the psych wards. Each of their dorm rooms has a screen door against the mosquitos that would have been hell in pre-air-conditioning, pre-Deet New York Harbor.

I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched, wrote Edgar Allan Poe.

There is a lot to touch your heart here.

If you only let it in.

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Tagged as Contagious Disease Hospital, ellis island, nurses, Poe, Shelley, Trees, Writing

September 24, 2023 · 3:00 pm

I get to the farm early.

Natch. I get everywhere early. In this case to a field trip for a conference I’m attending in the Finger Lakes region of New York. It’s to learn all about plants and trees and sustainability – you know, eco-concerns.

Yet for me it feels like so much more than the science. So many things I see and smell and feel are delicious.

And this visit reminds me of all the things I like about life. Well not all, of course, that would entail an encyclopedia. But some.

First, I have a private tailgate picnic in the parking lot with my favorite organic cheese (of course), crackers and a plastic knife. Wait for my fellow visitors to arrive.

Listen to the wind rustling the leaves.

Sit me down on a rusted old trailer hitch. Commune with bees in the goldenrod.

Admire the gourds ripening in a small field nearby.

They’re here for a practical reason, as source material for artists at Gourdlandia. At least to the extent of which art is practical.

I think about gourds. They have magical significance – in Africa the celestial phenomenon we know as the Big Dipper is called the Drinking Gourd, and escaped enslaved people in America were advised to follow the drinking Gourd to their freedom.

Still waiting, munching crackers, mentally ticking off the things I like.

I like taking notes on my phone.

Taking phone pics of things I like.

Small things. A multitude of small delights constitute happiness. Baudelaire said that.

Quotes. I like them, too.

Asters.

Crickets buzzing all around in latest summer.

I see flowers everywhere on this trip. A dahlia with personality to spare.

Hallucinatory in its vibrant beauty. Thoreau wrote, Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air. Drink the drink. Taste the fruit. And resign yourself to the influence of the earth.

I visit a sustainable farm. Nasturtiums sprout in the compost.

There are cattails.

Mysterious plant markers.

I stay in a cabin near a waterfall, overlooking Cayuga Lake. Just outside my door, soaring conjoined white oaks, planted there a hundred years ago. How did they know I was coming?

The waterfall, a local friend reminds me, is just water running over a rock, but still fabulous. After all, Taughannock is the highest waterfall east of the Rockies.

All around, a grove of shagbark hickory, which I’ve always loved because the name so exactly captures the way it looks.

The view of water through the trees.

I like initials carved anyplace, like the ones that have been sternly painted over on the front pillars of my cabin. I like the idea of people wanting to leave their mark, plant their flag.

If you do that at this state campground you’ll be fined five hundred dollars.

Something else I like, being warm in a sleeping bag when the air is cold. I think this must be the thing most universally loved.

And the dreams you have before you fall asleep at night.

Wearing my father’s thick flannel shirt.

Textures. The crunchy cotton of an old quilt newly thrown across my bed for the change in season.

Also, reading late into the night. Especially reading something so good you wish you wrote it. As with my current obsession, a novel called The Vaster Wilds, by Lauren Groff, about a girl brave enough to escape 1600s Jamestown, who runs off through the scary forests of the time.

Hurkle-durkling – lounging in bed when you’ve got stuff you really should be doing – though that happens rarely in my life. I’m usually up and at ‘em. I get a chance to hurkle-durkle in my cabin.

The first gulp of coffee in the morning. Especially camping.

Peeing outside. It’s a must when you’re camping. But I like to do it whenever possible just to prove that though I’m female it’s nothing to go en plein air.

I visit a site that’s all about combining art and science, called Marshy Gardens. They have a urination station outside.

And a diagram in an art space delineating the pertinent science.

I’ve always resonated to the lyrics of the great Lucinda Williams in her song Sweet Old World, written for a friend who ended his own life, citing those experiences a person misses if they leave us too soon. Among them, the breath from your own lips/the touch of fingertips and the pounding of your heart’s drum/together with another one. Simple things, but oh so important.

Some inspiration tacked on the wall.

In the native wildflower beds, a suspended spider web.

I like everything about spiders. These particular intricate efforts, I learn, are created either by the black-tailed red sheetweaver or the bowl and doily spider. Of course.

All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world. So said E. B. White, author of Charlotte’s Web, the book that probably taught me most of what I know about life.

More flowers. This one with a yellow-collared scape mothy perched on top. Perhaps it is sleeping. wonder what it’s dreaming of?

I really like flowers.

I know, so does everyone. It’s the easiest ask in the world: Will you please love flowers? Will you please love milkweed?

Joy Harjo writes:

Remember the plants, trees, animal life all have their

tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,

listen to them. They are alive poems.

At Marshy Gardens, an area of test plots. I swipe a cherry tomato, pop it in my mouth.

Perhaps the best cherry tomato I’ve ever had, and I have harvested tons of them at home this summer.. Kale prospers in a border, and I like kale. I know, everybody likes kale.

I’ve never been so hungry. The BLT I gobble down from a locally sourced co-op is the finest BLT I’ve ever had.

I visit a place called an eco-village, and among the other interesting sights find a bench kindly placed in an unexpected location, another of my favorite things.

There is a boat trip on the lake, pretty science-y. This is about as in depth as I go with the biology of this lake, though I’m sure it’s fascinating.

I’m more into dozing in the afternoon sun, daydreaming and idly observing the passing scenery.

Four bald eagles fly overhead, three juvenile, all massive. The energetic educator who loans me her binoculars reminds me that they fly flat as a board, unlike the teeter tottering of turkey vultures. Reminds me of my current favorite bird, the shy blue heron I’m trying to befriend at Ellis Island.

In synchronicity, I find his depiction in a garden here today.

Also on the boat, a perfect exhibit of skulls on fur, which I am liking to think is beaver.

Something else I like is making mistakes, because that’s how I learn. A docent at Cornell Botanic Garden says, You never need say you’re wrong, just “actually.” To which a smart aleck adds, Truth challenged.

We pass cormorants as we go.

They seem beautiful and exotic to me, even though I learn that their excrement is damaging the trees they roost on. Useful knowledge. The inside of the boat’s hull has been painted.

Exquisitely.

Also exquisite, the aluminum can held by a new friend, an environmental geek like everyone here.

It’s just carbonated water, but everything about this person is somewhat dazzling, down to his toes.

Disembarking, I spot a mammoth Eastern cottonwood.

Have I mentioned that there are flowers?

And that I think flowers are okay?

Well then. Take it from me. Freshly blooming, or spent.

They are.

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Filed under Jean Zimmerman

Tagged as eco-village, farms, Finger Lakes, flowers, sustainability, waterfalls

September 1, 2023 · 5:22 pm

Late summer privacy.

I see no one on my walk to Lyndhurst, not a soul. My only company, late-season thistles along the path.

A weathered sign by the open-air entrance to the old estate tells the story of my day in a word. Private.

The Old Croton Aqueduct trail runs right through the grounds. Apparently the first owner of the property was proud, ecstatic to have the water run underground here when the water pipe was first installed, carrying water miraculously down from upstate to New York City.

You can stay on the trail. Or follow mysterious mysterious arrows. I choose not to follow.

The lawns and old, old trees beckon. Robert Graves wrote, Tranquility is of no poetic use. I beg to disagree. This morning is sheer poetry. The calming late-summer scents of grass and trees, the hum of insects, the perfect glaze of sky.

I have wondered recently, Why is the sky blue? Such a silly question. The science has long been in. But still – blue? Perfect azure? Really? Could the universe really be this kind? I visit a grove of tulip trees.

They stand poker-straight and are probably two hundred years old. Come close and touch the grooves.

Geese feed themselves on grass. Quietly, unhurried, unworried.

I feed myself too. I am hungry, having not eaten yet today. Now I feed my soul. I go to my favorite linden, the huge specimen with multiple stems and an enclosed space like a private drawing room.

There are many lindens here, some still holding onto their magical lemony bracts.

Octavio Paz wrote:

Perhaps to love is to learn

to walk through this world.

To learn to be silent

like the oak and the linden of the fable.

To learn to see.

Your glance scattered seeds.

It planted a tree.

I talk

because you shake its leaves.

Seeking even greater privacy, greater tranquility, I visit one of the gargantuan, ancient weeping beeches on the grounds,

I push aside the branches and enter, finding myself inside a place so silvery dark and still and mysterious that no photo can really do it justice.

Others have been here before. Hello Bob, who did you love?

The branches twist together, sinuous. So quiet, yet so alive.

I run my hand along a smooth, muscular bough.

I stand there. I do nothing. It takes a lot of time to be a genius, wrote Gertrude Stein. You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing. I’m no genius, but I know that doing nothing can be an art as great as any other.

The rose garden at Lyndhurst is also antique, designed by ladies a hundred years ago in concentric circles. Just outside its perimeter, late-season sage.

Hydrangea and its perfect clusters. I clearly need to find another word for perfect.

Only me here and the bees and the butterflies. No other human soul. I brush the sage with my hand and the scent wafts up. Here are September roses, flowers like no other.

Everything is perfectly still, lush, quiet. Perfectly private.

Spent rosebushes climbing a trellis have a beauty almost as exquisite as the blooms all around.

Rose hips hide themselves among the greenery.

Bees prowl the blossoms.

Hide inside, sip nectar.

Catbirds come calling. Lovely fragrances lift themselves, waft under my nose.

I wipe sweat from my brow and smell the sage I touched before. Lock the gate and leave. Just outside, some ancient spruces, one with the conjoined stems I love.

Cones litter the ground, brown on brown.

Wander, wander some more. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley told us, The beginning is always today. Under my feet, clover. I know that if I were to hunt hard enough, go down on my knees for long enough, I’d find one with four leaves. I feel that fortunate.

Then a lucky mushroom, the only one, a lucky one.

The tiny fuzz of a magnolia after it has had its spectacular blooms. A secret you need to really look to see.

A weeping cherry.

So mature its trunk is gnarled and crusty.

Near it a young’un with clearly demarcated lenticels, the stitch-like pores that form a cherry’s instantly recognizable embroidery.

And another ancient specimen, a red pine, all burls and character.

But still offering its miniature baby seedcases.

A horse chestnut with a gaping critter hole at its base. Anybody home?

Childhood memories of collecting chestnuts on my way to school.

The Lyndhurst faux castle looms ahead.

More compelling, the little children’s elf cottage nearby.

I check the door, locked. Peer into a window.

It’s as if the room is holding its breath, waiting for a child to come in and love it.

Outside, the emerald glow of a red maple canopy.

More lindens. A hush of lindens. All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name. So said Andre Breton. He had my number, that’s for sure.

Departing, I step across the old cobble gutter from one hundred years ago, when the estate was new. I’m sure that at its beginning the place was marvelous.

Now, in its dotage, all its trees mature, rough, tried by time and weather. A sweet birch with time-scaled bark.

Today, personal, completely private. Old, yet new.

All the more precious.

If you go to NYBG in late summer prepare to get happy.

It is almost impossible to feel down when you visit. The New York Botanical Garden always has something new to see. Or something not new but ever-fresh. A bee on a blossom.

Yes, the flowers are flowering. The dahlias.

The hydrangeas, some more exotic than others.

The lilies.

Especially nice when you bring someone who loves plants.

She likes the trees, some of which remind her of when she once lived in Japan.

They are incredible.

From a distance, or close up.

Some she had not met before, like the dawn redwood.

The recorded spiel on the tram tells us that it is ancient, was forgotten then rediscovered, magically.

Or swamp white oak.

Anyone would marvel at some of the behemoths here.

Yes, we go on the tram. I like to do so every time I’m at NYBG, even though I’ve heard the same NYBG lore many times before. I want to crystallize it all in my memory, to mentally map which garden is the dwarf conifer, which the azalea, which the “old growth” forest.