THE JON SPRUCE MAILBAG

People are always asking me…well, they’re always asking me everything.

It’s true.

Every week, my mailbox spills over with letters from the fans of Philly Trees, messages from old friends, invitations for speaking engagements, requests for magazine articles, pre-approved applications for money laundering schemes and correspondences from citybillies all over Turtle Island.

So, on a particularly overcast and drizzly day, I spent the early evening sifting through the mountain of mail, answering all the burning questions sent to me from the small tribe of tree-hunters trying to make sense of this bountiful, generous, cryptic mother we call Nature.

Here’s a letter…from a Troy A. Hamilton of Marlton, New Jersey, just on the other side of the Delaware River.

Judging from the handwriting, Troy is a young buck of a student, probably one of the many fearless, scrappy Jersey devils just trying to find his footing in the humdrum rat-race of monotonous suburbia. 

Troy, I know how it feels.

I just love receiving this kind of fan mail. 

When I was a kid, I was guilty, too, of writing letters to the celebrities that really touched my spirit and fueled my inspirations, local heroes like Jim Gardner and Charles Barkley and national icons like John Glenn and George Lucas. 

And look at me now, on the other end of the fan mail cycle.

What’s that quote from Charles Fort?

You measure a circle beginning anywhere.

Looking a little closer at the handwriting, little Troy seems to be struggling with the subjects of English and Composition…but let’s see what urgent mystery young Troy is asking old Jon Spruce to solve.

Hey, Jon Spruce, my teacher made us read your blog for class.  It sucks!  Who cares what a leaf looks like.  Not me.  But I have to right a report for class about a kind of tree.  I dont care which one you pick. 

PS Nice hat dork!

Let’s pick another letter in this pile.

This one is anonymous, that’s strange.

Dear Jon Spruce, is this blog making you any money?

Real funny, Dad.

Is there a serious question here or what?

Okay, here’s one...from a local Fishtown fan.

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.

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.

PHILLY MOUNTAIN SPRING LOOKOUT JOURNAL

I woke up this morning after another one of those fitful nights.

Tossing and turning, I just could not settle into a steady state of sleep, I don’t know why.

Going to sleep was never that easy but getting up never used to be this hard.

Walking outside, I stopped dead in my tracks.

It’s freezing and I’m not surprised but I’m tired of it. 

Where is spring?  Where’s the show?

Where have all the flowers gone?

This isn’t the spring that’s advertised, not the spring I was expecting.  This is not the spring that’s promised.

I don’t know about you but I’m not taking it lying down anymore.  I’m tired of waiting around for spring, waiting around for flowers.  They’re out there.  I’m sure of it.

Forget the errands and ditch the plans…I’m going hunting for spring flowers.

I went back inside the cabin and laced up my boots.  This winter might be hanging on longer than expected but it’s got to be spring somewhere in this fair and filthy city.  I grabbed my field guides and I grabbed my hat.  Then, I punched some buttons on my iPhone and I downloaded some apps.

I got a Thermometer App and I got an Altimeter App.

That’s right.  I’m going to start this hunt at the highest heights.  I’m climbing straight to the top of Philly Mountain and I’m not going to stop until I get to the lowest low.

I’m going to scour this city top to bottom.

Somewhere along the line, I’m going to find some spring flowers.

One quick look around my apartment in case I was forgetting anything.

That’s right.  I’ll need my mountain lookout journal and a good pen.  Now just need to fill up the canteen with some cider and I’m set…on my way to the top of the city…up, up and away…

NATURE'S FIRST GREEN

For the last week or so, I’ve been keeping my senses alert for the earliest signs of spring.

In a lot of ways, spring is our most flamboyant season but I just know, somewhere out there, it’s making a subtle entrance.

Despite the cold chill and the last flurries, I know spring is happening, can feel it in my bones.

The race is on.  Spring.  Nature’s first green.

But I didn’t want to catch the kind of spring that makes the news. 

That kind of spring is easy to see, hard to overlook.  It’s a princess.  I wanted to find the kind of spring that doesn’t need to announce itself, the kind of spring that opens the windows for the rest of the season, the trigger that draws back the curtains and calls the rest of the kingdom to rise.

That was my hunt: spring’s modesty.

I wanted to find the meek spring before its gets too gaudy and too flashy.

It’ll take keen eyes, a quiet mind and small hands to notice its arrival but isn’t that always the case when it comes to noticing humility?

There are, of course, the big signs of spring, signs so big that they are beyond my four dimensions, signs that go unnoticed by my own feeble five senses.

Like the length of days.  Beginning on March 17th, the day is now equal parts sunlight and moonlight.  Check the almanac.  Sunrise at 6:52am, sunset at 6:53pm.

The twelve-hour day is back.

We’re seven days ahead of Daylight Savings Time, six days past the new moon, two days beyond the Ides of March and three days away from the vernal equinox.

According to the Medicine Wheel, we’re in the transitional phases between the Big Wind Moon and the Budding Trees Moon.

But look at that calendar.

This March spans five weeks, enough room to squeeze in just a few extra phases.  This is sometimes called the Full Worm Moon, a time when the ground softens and the worms begin turning the soil and crawling back into the sunlight which is, itself, a trigger for the birds to return. 

Up north in New England, they call it the Full Sap Moon because it’s the harvest time for maple syrup.  Go even further north, up there where the new angle of the sun now bounces off the everlasting ice, and they call it the Moon When Eyes Are Sore From Bright Snow.

But all that is just pie-in-the-sky mumbo jumbo.  What really matters?  The world is no longer pointed north.  East has arrived, spring should be here, last moon of winter.

Thank Wabun, last moon of winter.

Now, where you at, spring?

STREETSIDE SPRING

There are five common street trees that are reliably known for early spring flowering: maple, pear, cherry, dogwood, magnolia.

Thanks to all those bright lights and all that heavy traffic, plus all that body heat, the inner city grid is warmer compared to the still wild parts of the city.

So it isn’t hard to see spring’s arrival down here on the mean streets.

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.

CATCHING NOW

Over one hundred and fifty years ago, in a February, Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal: we have such a habit of looking away that we see not what is around us.

It is, naturally, a February thought.

No other month is harder to catch. 

I mean, it’s already half-way over.

I must’ve blinked.

It goes by so fast.

And, like Thoreau noted one February so long ago, it’s a month that’s too easy to miss, so easy to leap over.

And it’s not just because it’s the shortest month or, according to the history of the Gregorian calendar, one of the newest months.

It’s because nothing is really happening now and, yet, that is exactly what we nature writers are trying to find.

That is, after all, the grand subject of nature writing.  It has to be about catching the now, finding the here, living the moment.

Nature writers, tree hunters, birdwatchers, storm trackers, leaf peepers, herb seekers, stargazers, moon lookers…foragers, anglers, scouts, rangers…it’s all about resisting the urge to look away and learning the skill to see the now…turning the act of observation into an exciting adventure…the passive bystander as the most dauntless and intrepid explorer ever in the history of this exact moment.

Now.  Right now.

That’s the prey.

Those fleeting, spontaneous moments happening out of the corner of the eye.  Those rare instances that take place right here in the present time.  The epiphany.  The coincidence.  The haiku.  The now.

That’s the catch.

In my experience, it’s never something you can really go out and actively hunt.  It’s just something that happens while you’re out there looking for something else.

A certain slant of shadow.  A deer on the highway.  A color, a ripple, a snow.  Running into an old friend.  An owl passing over the moon.  Dust mites in a shaft of sunlight.  A snap decision, a rash judgment, a blind leap, a wild laugh.  The plunk of an acorn hitting the roof of a car.  A perfect strawberry.  A red hot Valentine’s Day kiss.

Hey, compared to other nature hunters, I got it pretty easy.  All things considered, tree hunters have a much better chance of catching the now than other observers.

Flowers are mostly predictable, leaves are pretty much out all year round, fruit is just hanging off the branches or rotting by the curbside, and the trees themselves?  They don’t move around that much.

My now is much easier to catch than, say, a birdsong or a tornado or a dinosaur fossil or a meteorite.

But there are certain moments that happen out there in the tree-scape that, I know, I have no chance of catching.

It’s true.  No matter what I do or where I go, no matter how long I stay on the hunt, there are a handful of tree events that I will never see with my own two eyes.

Things I’ll only read about in books.

And no other tree reminds me of this sad fact more than the Hamamelidaceae hamamelis…sometimes called the winterbloom but more commonly known as the witch hazel.

THE WITCH HAZEL

I caught up with the witch hazel last weekend at the Clark Park Farmers’ Market.