WAY DOWN YONDER IN THE PAWPAW PATCH

People are always asking me: Hey, Jon Spruce, do you wanna hang out?

Sometimes I take the bait. 

Contrary to popular belief, sometimes I do enjoy the sights and sounds of polite society.  It’s fun, sometimes, to take a break from the solitary sport of tree-hunting, to spend some precious moments, inside, deep in conversation and company.

Sometimes even the lone wolf comes in from the cold.

But not today.

No time, my friends.

Hold the calls and get out of my way, it’s that time of year again.

According to the scuttle bucket, the ballots are counted, the results are in and, sure enough, there it was, waiting for me when I got home.

The annual best-of issue of Tree Hunting Magazine.

No.  Not again.

What kind of cruel joke is this?

Our 2013 champion?  None other than my old nemesis, Giovanni Arboles, also known as Joey Trees, the self-proclaimed Master of Disguise…

…but, sometimes behind his back, we call him King of the Selfies.

It just ain’t fair.

He already won last year, for that time he caught both a champion ponderosa pine…

…and a bristlecone pine, what’s known as the oldest living thing on the planet.

All in the same hunt.

Yeah right.

Boy, this magazine is really going south. 

It used to really be about something.  It used to really be about tree-hunting.

Now it’s all about selling more issues.  It’s all about who you know.  It’s all right place, right time.

Joey Trees?  Two years in a row? 

Say it ain’t so.

According to this issue, he won the 2013 title because he caught, all the way back in February, the biggest blizzard to hit southern Arizona in the last ten years…

…one full inch of snow.

Lucky skunk.

And another thing, when was the last time an urban tree-hunter was named the champion?  I can’t even remember, it’s been so long.   

Every year, the title ends up going to some bumpkin in a Jeep.

It’s the same old story: the country mouse versus the city rat.

It’s not a fair fight.

Country yokels like Joey Trees already have the advantage. 

It’s a simple matter of geography.

They get all that open space and all that open road.  They get to go hunting in all that dramatic nature. 

Every tree out there is at home and native, nothing planted by some City Planning Bureau or through some nameless Street Department, no trees selected by committee.

Nothing but country.

Look at that.  No one-way streets.  No parking tickets.  No infrastructure.  No traffic.  No loud music or angry crowds scaring away all the good trees.

Well shiver me timbers, Joe, there sure are a lot of big trees out there in the country.

 

Whatever.  Don’t stop the presses.

Man, I was fired up.

Normally, I’m calm and collective, cool as a cucumber, but at that moment, I was engulfed in fit and fury, that old mule kicking in my stall.

I had just about enough of all the Joey Trees out there, living it up on easy street, basking away in the wide open country life.

Bunch of peacocks.

It’s not hard to catch a good tree in the country.  Takes about as much skill as catching a suntan.

Bunch of tenderfoots.

Only one thing left to do.

Get. Me. My. List.

Like most tree-hunters, I keep a list of trees handy…

…a wish list, really, of all the trees that I’d like to catch one day.

Let’s see what I haven’t crossed off yet.

There’s the hemlock and the holly, two evergreens that I’ve always pushed off till winter.  Still got time for those.   

There’s something called the bladdernut but I’ve never been able to track that one down. 

There’s the black locust, but darn it, that’s always been a spring tree for me. 

Palm trees?  But are there any palm trees in Philadelphia?

Hold your horses…right there on the bottom of my list.

The pawpaw.

The largest edible fruit native to Turtle Island.

The only tropical fruit that grows this far north.

It goes by many names: the poor man’s banana, the prairie banana and, in some deep corners of the continent, it’s known as the banango…a favorite dessert of George Washington, a manna in the wilderness for Lewis & Clark, as they wrote in their journal: subsisting on poppaws.

The pawpaw is no stranger to these parts.

Supposedly there’s a pawpaw patch right here in Philadelphia, in the Northeast, right along the shores of the Pennypack Creek.

This is it…a tree-hunt that would rival any adventure out there in the country…fire up the engine and eat my dust…

…Jon Spruce is on the move, fame and fortune and all that jazz just one autumn afternoon away…to the largest, most storied stretch of woods in the entire city, to the Northeast, to the Pennypack Creek…

…like the old folk song says, way down yonder in the pawpaw patch!

STANDING STILL IN SPRING

First flowers open.
A person looks,
The blossoms look back...

I approached the Japanese maple, walked right up to its dangling crown and ducked past its low-hanging, star-studded canopy.

Inside its dark amphitheater, the maple trunks were dark, simple, serious shapes twisting into the cloud-swept sky.

I chose a particular branch, any branch. 

This was how I could watch the wind.

I was also on the look-out for shadows.

With the sun in the right spot, with the trees just barely leafing out, this is the time of year to catch the silhouettes.

That’s actually the pawpaw…

…and those are the pawpaw flowers, hanging like little bells, green and purple and papery, caught at last.

This is a game that I can only play in the spring.

Fun with trees or catching silhouettes, whatever you want to call it.  Identifying a tree by its shadow is a good little mindbender, makes your head feel like it’s working inside out…

…that’s a horse-chestnut.

I wonder if this is how some birds identify trees, if they play this game.  

It's a fun way to test the identification skills, a different way of seeing the ordinary, like trying to solve a Zen koan or a riddle:

            green buddhas on the fruit stand,

            we eat the smile and spit out the teeth.

Watermelons.

This is also the kind of game that needs a big lawn…

…unless you’re able to find a tree massive enough to hold its own shadow.

That’s the way I could watch the sun.

MOST THIS AMAZING DAY

This was a day made for nature-lovers: cold, crisp, clear and sunny.

The wind was outstanding.  It came in waves.  I could hear the next wave approaching in the trees further away.

And the light?  The light was tripping me fantastic.

I’m not one for hyperbole but this was the most beautiful, most splendid day of the year.

And because there would never, ever be another day as beautiful or as splendid as this day, I had the insatiable urge to stand still.

THE PHILADEPHIA UNDERSTORY

Happy anniversary, Philly Trees.

September marks the sixth month anniversary of the Philly Trees blog and, in honor of that anniversary, I agreed to sit down for a one-on-one interview with Philadelphia’s favorite meteorologist, Cecily Tynan.

Cecily Tynan has been studying, and reporting on, the movement of the Medicine Wheel here in Philadelphia since 1995…no one understands the Philly seasons and their totems better than Ms. Tynan.

She’s seen it all…the highs, the lows, the scattered thunderstorms, the hot and humid summers, Hurricane Floyd in 1999, and the big daddy of them…Snowpocalypse 2010.  Nothing on the never-ending Wheel escapes the notice of Ms. Tynan.

Our interview brought back a lot of memories, especially from the beginning of the blog…and, to think, here we are at the beginning of Brother Grizzly’s first moon of autumn…the Ducks Fly Moon…six months down the line from Wabun the Golden Eagle and his Budding Trees Moon fever.  Six months and two seasons, from flowers to leaves to fruits and now back to leaves, from blossoms to acorns, there’s always something happening, always something worth watching when it comes to the Philadelphia understory…talk about your action news.

The broadcast date of the interview has yet to be announced…so we’ll celebrate the big six months right here on the blog…a candid, sentimental, sappy look back at all of my triumphs and all of my failures, my missed opportunities, my bold declarations, even my blunders and bloopers...the outtakes and the deleted scenes…a rare and privileged look behind the screen of Philly Trees.

THE HARVEST MOON: PUTTING ON THE POUNDS

It’s been about three weeks since my last post.

What have I been doing?

I guess it’s time to come clean.

It always happens at this time of year and yet, even though it happens at the same time every year, it always seems to come as a surprise.

One day, you wake up, same as usual…you have the standard breakfast of coffee and a breath mint…you find your cleanest dirty shirt, you check the farmers’ almanac, you hit the day and then you look down and…well, there it is. 

Citybillies, I done got fat.

It wasn’t my fault.  It was Coyote.  Coyote did it…him and his last moon, this Harvest Moon. 

THE EMPRESS TREE, THE PRAIRIE BANANA AND THE HARDY ORANGE

The best part about spring is its inconsistency. 

Summer is one long battery of heat, sun, sweat and glare.  The best part of summer is walking into air-conditioning and peaches. 

Winter? I actually enjoy winter, but I admit that it’s just one long onslaught of cold, moon, ice and snow.  The best part of winter is apple cider and wearing long johns.

When it comes to weather though, I’ll take the eager spring and its seasonal shadow, autumn, any time. This is my kind of life, this weather.  It’s inconsistent, contrary, capricious and spontaneous. 

Winter?  You know it’s cold.  Summer?  You know it’s hot.  Spring and autumn?  You better just follow the advice of Bob Dylan, America’s greatest weatherman: You want to know the weather?  Open up the window and stick your head outside.

One day, it’s hot and sunny.  The next day, it’s cold and drizzly.  That’s nice.  I like it when it takes two attempts to walk out the door for the day.  I never get the right clothes on the first time around.

Here in the Lenapehanna Delaware River Watershed, we’re only two or three day away from the next spring moon…it all depends on the frogs.  It’s been a good moon, full of flowers and adventure, but I wanted to get one more good tree-hunt done before the next rising.

Something special.  Something rare.  Something out of the ordinary.  This is going to get a little nerdy.