THE PHILADELPHIA PALIMPSEST

Of all the many things that Henry David Thoreau once said aloud or wrote down, there is one particular quote that has tormented and spooked the generations of nature-writers and tree-hunters to come.

In Wildness is the preservation of the world.

He wrote that down about halfway through his lecture, Walking.

A few paragraphs later, he wrote: I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows…Give me a Wildness whose glance no civilization can endure.

Just the other day, I was driving towards Center City and I passed by the same idea, shouting to be heard.

It’s an opinion that is and always will be a little outlawed.

Many people are quick to note that Thoreau uses the word wildness and not the common term of the day, wilderness.  He did it deliberately.  He was being stubborn.  He was stubborn, and deliberate, for a lot of his life.

To Thoreau, wilderness was something invented by the Law, governed by a Mayor, a piece of land under ownership of the State.  The modern day wilderness is paved and permitted, gated up for seasons, open only from dawn to dusk, guarded by a Police.

The boundaries of a wilderness are always in dispute.  Its title is something that can be repealed, rescinded or revoked.  Its map is something that can be taken away, written over.

But wildness?

No chance, no dice.

You cannot stop the wilds.

Even here in Philly?

Yes, even here in the big city.

To prove it though, I’ll need to discover and explore Philadelphia for the palimpsest that it really is.

What’s a palimpsest?  It’s a manuscript or a document that has been scraped clean and erased, then replaced with something more modern but that still bears the traces of the earlier work. 

Sometimes in order to read the earlier work, historians and archaeologists need to flash the palimpsest through ultra-violet light, the only way to see what was written before.

I don’t need that kind of technology.

I just need the right kind of map.

I’ll use this map.

It was made by the City Planning Commission in 1934.  Using historical texts and field guides, colonial journals and living memories, it’s meant to depict this city as first seen by the White Men...

…when Philadelphia was known as Coaquannock, the Grove of Tall Pines.

“OF ALL THE MANY PLACES I’VE SEEN OF THE WORLD…”

According to the map, Coaquannock was one of four circular villages of the Turtle Clan, all located within the watershed between the Schuylkill and the Delaware River.

There’s no record, no description of the pine grove that it was named for. 

But, by the coming of the white men, the Lenni-Lenape had already been living here for thousands of years.  It’s quite possible that they named the town in memorial of the pines, a dedication to the grove that was standing in some distant bygone era, same as we do now.

What was it like? 

THE AMERICAN ILEX

It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down trees…Joni Mitchell

Don’t you wish every morning could be like Christmas morning?

T’is the season…waking up in the cozy warmth of a comfy bed, the birds singing in the bare branches outside the urban cabin window, the weather brisk and frosty…the beginning of the season of the evergreens, the Long Snow Moon still hovering in the cold, cloud-bare sky.

Nothing like jumping out of bed on Christmas morning.

I know many people use this morning to linger around the house, clad in pajamas and wool socks, big mugs of hot coffee in their hands, lounging on the couches, but like most procrastinators, I had a busy morning ahead of me.

I couldn’t put it off any longer so I headed down to Center City, to Love Park’s annual Christmas Village, for a little last minute holiday shopping.

Oh no.

What happened?

The place was deserted, all locked up, not a single soul in sight…

…not even the faintest sound of cheer or music.

Where was I going to get all my trinkets and knick-knacks? 

Where was I supposed to buy my giant chocolate Santa? 

How was I supposed to decorate the interior landscape of my urban cabin if all the shops are closed?

Where did Christmas go?

Mom, this time it’s not my fault.

Perhaps I could salvage some part of the holiday.  Around the corner, on the west side of the park, there were still Christmas trees lined up along the walkway…

…ye olde favorites like the noble fir and the Alberta spruce but nobody was scheduled this morning to sell me a tree.

I guess they overslept, just my luck.

On the ground at the end of the row, I saw evidence of the feeding frenzy that I must’ve missed…

…scatterings of fir branches frosted to the mud.

Unlike the spruce, the fir grows its green needles in a flat spray along the branches, much like a comb, bluish-white stripes on the underside…

…sold here, four dollars a bundle, if anyone was here, that is, to take my money and save my holiday.

Oh well.  The season is long, the winter has just begun and it’s like Thoreau once said: there’s always next year.

He must’ve said that once in his life.

THE SEASON OF THE EVERGREENS

Around this time every year, I am reminded that I missed my true calling in life.

It’s my one big regret.

If I could do it all over again, I would’ve pursued a different, more lucrative career.

I’d be an agent.

My dream client?  That’s easy.

That’d be the evergreens.

THE STRONG SUN MOON

It’s a jungle out there.

The city is stewing.  The streets are roasting.  The roof is on fire. 

Baby, it’s hot outside, during these final days of the Strong Sun Moon.

Citybillies, take cover wherever you can.

This is not my weather of choice, this is not my season.  After all, I am an Elk of the Thunderbird Clan, born under the Long Snow Moon of mid-Decembertime, but I refuse to stay inside.

Can’t let this brutal heat wave keep me off these scorching streets and away from those steamy woods, still lots to catch and hunt.

Nice try, Coyote.

Windows down and sunglasses on, I’m going out, through the swelter and into the sizzle, head-first into the fever.

Gotta love the burn.

This might make me sound like a glutton for punishment but I’m going straight for it.  I’m going hunting for the highest, hottest totem of this season.

Set the controls for the heart of the sun.

TREES ON THE ROAD

There I was, enjoying the daylights out of these long, long days of June, reading the local paper in the backyard of my urban cabin, when a headline caught my eye:

Wildman Throws Spear at Passing Vehicle in California.

It’s been a while but here we have our first sighting of the Wildman for 2013, timed perfectly to the first super-moon of summer.

Ain’t that just like Coyote?

The Wildman has been lurking on the outskirts of our civilization since the very beginning of tamed society, usually appearing as figments and fancies of the imagination: centaurs, minotaurs, mermaids and werewolves, shamans turning into eagles, hunters becoming the hunted, husbands waking up as buffalo, bear or antelope…

…doomed souls who answer too frequently the call of the wild: Merlin and the Green Knight, Tarzan and Mogwai, Santa Claus, the shipwrecked kids from The Lord of the Flies and, my favorite, the half-man half-plant superhero called Swamp Thing.

But it’s wrong to pigeonhole the Wildman as pure fiction.  Sometimes, he is as real as you and me, right there in black and white.

That’s Joseph Knowles, one of the most famous Wildmen in American history.  That’s a publicity shot, when he made his triumphant return to Mother, and civilization, after spending two months, living like a primitive, in the Maine Woods near Bear Lake.

He turned wild in August 1913. 

Surrounded by the New England mass media of the day, he stripped down to his jockstrap, took a few drags of a cigarette, said a hearty “See you later, boys!” and jumped, head-first and barefoot, into the wilds.

According to his memoirs, he constructed a little lean-to shelter in the pine woods, learned how to forage and hunt and fish, how to build fire, carve weapons and make clothing.

Before leaving the rat-race, he was an illustrator and cartoonist, so he also spent the free days observing the College of Nature, as he liked to call it, drawing the placid, pastoral scenes on the backsides of birch bark.

It was a story that captivated the nation back in 1913.

Have you ever noticed that stories of the Wildman, no matter what’s happening in the bigger world, always make it through the scuttlebutt, always seem to get some sort of headline?

According to the press, Wildman has legs.

Now, let’s see what he’s doing over there in California.

A 56-year old man with long wild hair and beard tossed a spear at a passing vehicle in Sacramento, California.

A caller told police that a man standing on the road had hurled the spear at the vehicle.  The spear then became stuck in the vehicle’s front fender.

It was not clear why the wild man threw the spear.

Ha!  Not clear why?  Open your eyes, Reuters!  The answer is very clear.

It’s called traffic, man.

And sometimes it’s a doozy. 

Cars and more cars everywhere you turn, major roadways closed, construction around every corner, watching out for bicyclists and pedestrians and jaywalkers, bumper to bumper all along the highways, nothing but volume up and down the Roosevelt Boulevard all the way from Academy to the Blue Route…

…it ain’t easy being cooped up in a sweltering car, inching forward to the next detour or the next red light.

If you got any bit of Wildman in you, it’s horrible…just a bunch of expensive cages sitting still on the hot asphalt, pumping exhaust and burning fuel, going nowhere.

And as far as trees go, there’s not much to see along most highways…

…frigging ailanthus.

It’s enough to make anyone batty.

That’s why I keep a few road-side trees on my mental map, just a few notable and rare trees always on my radar, sturdy and dependable landmarks right along the roads and highways that make the slog through traffic just a little more bearable.

IN JUST-SPRING

It was just too nice a day to spend it cooped up in the office so I rigged up a quick little workplace, outside, in the shade of my favorite birch tree.

It was turning out to be a great day of work, with the sunshine lighting up my desk and the breeze dancing over my keyboard, lovely birdsong playing all morning long from the high, swinging treetops.

And, best of all, I was just about to close on one sweet-ass deal, putting the final touches on the big proposal that I’d been brokering for my boss all winter long.

I just love the feeling of a good deal going down.

I love everything about it.  I love riding the ebb and flow of a tight negotiation.  I like catching inside information.  I like wrangling over the details.  I like that pregnant pause in the action, waiting for the final approval, and I love getting things in writing. 

I love it when they start watering down their demands.

That’s how I know when to strike.

And I just love saying the word deal-breaker.

I took a break around ten o’clock, promising myself this would be my last cup of coffee for the day, and tried to catch some spring from the office window.

Wabun the Golden Eagle, Spirit Keeper of the East, was really here…wings spread wide, aloft in full flight.

I could see the callery pears already starting to burst with flowers.

There was also the ginkgo, just about to leaf out, two days after the rise of spring’s first new moon, just as I’d predicted.

Not that I’m the kind of guy who says I told you so.

And I really should catch up with the cherries.

All in good time, I told myself.  Once this deal goes down, I’ll have all the time in the world for tree-hunting.  I was jumping out of my skin…just one final approval away from the Big Bonanza.

The forecast? 

Nothing but blue skies ahead, one hundred percent chance of raining money…the longest, hottest summer ever…Jon Spruce finally living it up in Fat City, nothing but champagne and caviar, cruising around the city in my Cadillac, lighting my cigars with hundred dollar bills.

 

I got back behind the desk, back on the horn…and that’s when things starting going downhill.

 

I’m not really sure what happened.  Surprise demands, unforeseen commission rates, someone hit reply all and then some schlub in their Accounting Department turned out to have the ace in the hole.

After one short break, the whole deal went lopsided.

Meanwhile, I had my boss on the other line demanding the latest update, wondering what was taking so long.

 

I tried to get everybody back in the pool but they all had cold feet.  Just like that, they were unavailable or they were on another call.

And just like that…no deal, back to square one, back to counting pennies.

From riches, back to rags.

I don’t have the heart to summarize all the nitty-gritty details.  Rest assured, citybillies, it’s the same old story.

Heads, they win.  Tails, I lose.

STREET SMARTS

Shiver me timbers, it’s cold out there.

Cold and gray, wet and cloudy.

I was out walking through Center City, weaving my way through the rat race.

The temperature?  Just barely above freezing.  Even the sunshine seemed frozen.

And the trees?  Still dormant.  Maybe, if you looked hard enough, you could see the faint hue of spring budding on the tips of their branches but mostly they're just lifeless, gray hunks of wood stuck in the ground.

The brisk cold burned my ears, dried my eyes and stiffened my knees.  I braced myself around every corner.  It was stark, grim and plain.  The wind pushed me against the skyscraper walls and my footsteps made hollow chimes as if the whole world was made of glass.

Sometimes, I think it is.

To keep my mind from numbing, I tried to remember and recite my tree poetry but even that provided no refuge. 

All I could remember was the famous line from Shakespeare’s sonnet, the one that describes the bird-less trees as bare ruined choirs, or the Edgar Allan Poe epic that begins: The skies they were ashen and sober, the leaves they were crisped and sere…it was down in the dank tarn of Auber, in the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

That wasn’t going to work.

I could’ve handled the bad weather, maybe, if I wasn’t sharing it with so many other people.  They weren’t making it any easier.

The rat race was in full swing that afternoon…people racing from one side of the street to the other, pushing their way out of the buildings, shoving and hollering, weaving in between the jammed up cars…talking about sitcoms and surgeries and lotteries…poking me with their umbrellas, arguing on the cell phone, spilling coffee, begging for money, sneezing in my face and littering.

You ever want to feel lonely?

Then plant yourself in a crowded city street.

Maybe it was the weather, these last days of winter gloom, but it seemed like all those people…the whole wretched hive…were just buzzing around for one reason and one reason only: to get in my way.

Don’t worry.  I pushed right back.

That’s called the nature of the beast, baby.

When I finally couldn’t take it anymore, I looked for the nearest exit.

I needed a small escape, just needed to break loose from the rat race, just for a little while, so I ducked into the first warm door.

Lucky for me, it was the door to the Academy of Natural Sciences.

THE JON SPRUCE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE

People are always asking me: Dear Jon Spruce, what makes a good gift for a tree-hunting citybilly?

This happens every year.

Maybe you have a newborn in the family…and you want to make sure they’ll grow up with an inquisitive mind, observant eyes and hungry hands…no time to waste. 

Maybe you got a little nephew or a cousin…someone who always comes in for the Sunday dinner with dirty nails and scabby knees.

Hey, ladies, maybe you want to catch the attention of that dashing, scrappy urban rambler that keeps bumping into you around the neighborhood…or maybe, this year, your Secret Santa is that weird dude in the other cubicle who’s always cracking black walnuts in the break room.

What do they want?

What material possession could possibly thaw their cynical, frosty spirits?  What one thing has the potential to pierce and brighten their somber, restless souls?  What one gift could make a dent in their deep, bottomless hearts?

This is not an easy question and there are no easy answers.

By anybody’s standards, we are not the easiest to shop for.

By nature, we live simple, uncluttered lives and we don’t make room for knickknacks, or ornaments, or the modern bauble of devices, appliances, gizmos and doodads.

Electric toothbrushes.

The last thing you want to give a citybilly is some mass-produced trinket…something that just takes up space.

Celebrity bobble-heads.

Not that we don’t have any treasured material possessions.  A lot of times, that’s all we have. 

But these are things that weren’t bought…and can’t be given…and certainly cannot be owned…or returned.  We cherish things that are native, true and seasonal…things full of marrow, things that cut close to the heart.  We want our things to be durable, tough, sentimental and built to last.

Like the poet Gary Snyder once wrote: you don’t want nothing that can’t be left out in the rain.

Sorry but we’re picky…and we like to pick battles with inanimate objects.   

Material possessions?  We’re not supposed to pine for those things.

In fact, those are the very things that we’re trying to shed.  No adornments.  No miscellany.  We need drinks when we’re thirsty, eats when we’re hungry, a few extra potatoes for a little bit of fun and, every once in a while, an elegant, unclouded, perfect epiphany…now how you gonna fit that into a box?

But before ye lose faith during this holiday season, let me tell you that there is hope.  There are gifts out there that any citybilly worth their salt would love to receive…and so I humbly present the Jon Spruce Holiday Gift Guide…chock full of the oldest trends and the ancient fads…completely out of fashion and cluelessly out of vogue…if we didn’t have bad style, we’d have no style at all…the do’s and the don’ts of shopping for citybillies.

Researching this subject was not an easy task.  It took tremendous willpower, herculean self-sacrifice, lots of cider and hours upon hours of transcendental meditation…but I did it.

For the blog, and for you, I did it.

I went to the frigging mall.

PHILADELPHIA STREETS

What’s the most common odonym in the United States?  Second Street.

What’s the ninth most common odonym in the United States?  Oak.

What’s an odonym?  Look it up.

Like most crowded, noisy cities, Philadelphia has a street named after the Quercus.  Philadelphia's Oak Lane is located along the northwest border of the city, and there are two neighborhoods named after the road itself: East Oak Lane and West Oak Lane.  East Oak Lane has the notable distinction of being one of Friend William Penn’s first neighborhoods, one of the many arboreous sanctums that he mapped out to surround his “green countrie towne” of Philadelphia.

East Oak Lane?  West Oak Lane?  I’ve been to these neighborhoods but I don’t know them very well.  I hope to get out there more. I can see lots of good tree-hunting grounds in these neighborhoods. 

There’s Awbury Arboretum, fifty-five acres of historic grounds right in the middle of its sprawl, and there are two great cemeteries: Northwood and Chelten Hills.  Like most tree-hunters, I am drawn to cemeteries and graveyards.  Plus, being so close to the northwest border of Philadelphia, these neighborhoods are a suburban abut to the great Catfish-Creek Woods of the Lenape Indians, commonly known as the Wissahickon. 

I’ll get to these places.  I just have to remember to bring a good map.  Like most citybillies, I have an uncanny sense of direction but there’s something about the East Oak Lane and West Oak Lane neighborhoods that really sets me adrift.  It usually happens in some weird place where 7th Street meets 66th Avenue.  What’s going on over there when it comes to street names?  Philadelphia is famous for its easy navigation when it comes to street names and numbered avenues.  But out there in the Oak Lane neighborhoods?  The benevolent grid seems to fold and bend and eat itself like a hungry oroboros. 

What’s an oroboros?  Look it up.