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.

THE SEASON OF THE HOME

People are always asking me: Hey, Jon Spruce, when you gonna settle down?

Yo, baby, it’s not your fault.  It’s not from lack of trying. 

But I got to do it my way…settling down without settling at all.

To be honest, I’m not even sure what settling down even means.

I guess I was absent the day they handed out the long list of society’s benchmarks.

Does it mean just coming home to a list of errands?  Does it mean spinning the chore wheel?

Does it mean just staying at home and saving the money and saving the gas and fidgeting with the thermostat while, out there beyond the front door, the snow is melting or the acorns are falling or the rivers are rising or the magnolia is budding?

I mean, you don’t want to give up a good parking spot, do you?

A few weeks ago, I got a good taste of settling down and I ended up stuck in a snuggie, addicted to bad TV, moss growing under my rump, asleep at the wheel.

But now I was on the outside, looking in.  You can’t say I didn’t try.

A lot of times, I think settling down means staying put.  It means people can make a good guess where you are, at any given moment, and usually be right. 

On the grid.  At the desk.  On hold.  Inside.

It means being home…which means choosing a house...buying roots, building equity and nurturing moss.

Buying a house?  It can’t be as hard as I think and it can’t be as monumental as they want me to believe.

I’m smart.  I can do things.  I can make an appointment with some paper-pushing banker.  I can fill out the forms, let some lending company go through my personal purchasing history, sign on the dotted line and then spend the next thirty years paying for my own front door.

That’s a walk in the park.

It’s knowing what I want, forevermore.  It’s settling.  That’s the killer.

Why?

Because, just like the trees, new ideas and new flowers blossom with every season…there’s always new branching to be done…there’s always new fruit to taste and there’s always old fruit dropping by the curbside…the colors are always changing.

What if…what if I buy that old ramshackle of a house?  What then?   I move my stuff in.  I change my address.  I fix her up.  I learn about water heaters and garbage disposals and septic tanks, if applicable.

I lay me some roots.

I hang up my hat.

But what if…what if I change my mind?  What if my mood swings?  What if my weather changes?

It’s bound to happen.

I mean, you can always leave.  You can always give up the interior occupation, sell the house and then go back to the reckless, heedless lifestyle of a tree-hunter. 

But not really.

You can always come back…sure…but you can’t come back all the way.

Trust me.  I know me better than myself.

There will come a night…an inevitable evening…when I am warm and settled in the confines of my own house…gently drowsing to the rhythms of some old adventure novel…and I will rise from my Lay-Z-Boy, startled by the sound of someone tapping, of someone gently rapping, at my city door.

I will swing the door open wide and there he’ll be…my old younger self…hat in hand…asking if Jon Spruce can come out and play.

THE SEASON OF THE MOSS

Walking up and down the rows of Gina's farm, I saw baby turnips left to winter in the fields.

 

I saw broken carrots turning themselves out through the mud…

 

…mustard greens, paused in full flourish, and garlic shoots bending in the bitter breeze.

 

In the woods, under the thick layer of rusty leaves, I found cracked hickory nuts and empty black walnut shells.

 

I found acorns caps and peeling river birch bark.

 

Walking down the trail, the greeny underbrush was gone…just gone…and my eyes kept catching the quartz, glowing through the thick gloom, splitting through the damp dirt…

 

…its snow-colored facets bright as a moonscape.

These are the totems of winter.

Season of the home, season of the hearth?  That’s what I was running away from.

It almost done me in…the interior of my urban cabin felt more and more like a trap.

I was lucky to escape.  A shutter no more, I was out the house, out the gate, out in the January wilds.

I’d left the house just after sunrise and drove north through the misty dawn…

…watching the spruce trees tower over the scattered homes, breaching through the hanging fog.

I parked my car next to the fence-row of hawthorns.

These woods and this trail were very familiar to me but I’d never seen them like this before.

Where was I?

THE SEASON OF THE SHUTTER

The wintertime is coming, the windows are filled with frost…Bob Dylan

Batten the hatches, citybillies, and hunker down.  It’s time for winter and, here in winter, it’s all about conserving energy and staying alive.  The Wheel has spoken and now the Wheel is silent.  Set in motion with the spring flowers, the Wheel is slowing to a crawl.

And that’s all right.

It’s the season of dormancy, the season of hibernation.

The Earth Renewal Moon, then the Rest and Cleansing Moon, followed by the Big Winds Moon…it’s the season of Waboose the White Buffalo, the Spirit Keeper of the dark, the guardian of the freeze, the defender of the thaw.

His position on the Medicine Wheel?  If it was a clock of standardized time, then he would take his throne at true north…the midnight.

And his native habitat?  The open field, the long prairie, the great plains…where you measure distance in days, not miles.  Children born under this moon are patient and prudent, slaves to their seasonal totems.

Like the birch…the tree whose roots are used to make drinks, whose sap is used to make medicine, whose bark is used to make paper…the children of Waboose are giving, productive and imaginative.  Like the quartz, they have an inner clock.  Like the snow goose, they are a bit of a nitpicker.

And this is their season and this is their place.  Season of the home, season of the hearth.

It’s also the season of the flu and, so far, it’s a doozy. 

Currently, a certain strain of flu is taking on fierce and aggressive characteristics.  This happens, sometimes, with living things.

Health officials have identified this species of influenza as the H3N2 strain, the very same strain that devastated the world over 40 years ago, when it was known as the Hong Kong Flu.

And it’s back in full force now.  The H3N2 flu is currently sweeping across Turtle Island.  As of this writing, this species of flu has spread to 80% of the country.  Over 2,000 people have been hospitalized.  Twenty confirmed deaths.

Time to stay away from people.  Time for selective society.  Time to nest.

Time to enjoy the comforts of home.  Time to catch the colors and fruits of the interior world, my own urban igloo.

One minor problem.

During the busy tree-hunting season, well, I’ve kind of let the cabin go to seed.

SPRUCE!

New year…new coat of paint.

About two weeks ago, just before the 2013 New Year’s weekend, on day six of the Earth Renewal Moon, Philadelphia got snow.

A lovely, bright, roaring burst of driving snow, just the perfect way to begin the new calendar and to mark the season of the Earth Renewal Moon.

The Medicine Wheel totems for this moon?  You got the quartz, the birch and the snow goose…three totems with one thing in common…the color white.

And, right on schedule, snow.  Just before the New Year’s parade?  It’s a sign.

2012?

Yesterday’s news.

Snow is nature’s fresh start…the open page…the blank canvas…turning every landscape into a playground…

…in the words of Thoreau, the great revealer…no escape…all tracks in plain sight…the palimpsest of the previous seasons finally, ultimately, complete for the year…the last chapter writ…

…and, I ask, is there any other scene that better evokes the wild wonder of youth than a snowy morning through a frosted window?

Thanks to snow, the old becomes new…the old becomes young again.

THE TANNENBAUM

Every working day, on my commute to and from the time-punching machine, I pass the following sign perched atop a warehouse that towers over the sound barrier of Highway 76.

Kindy’s Christmas Factory Outlet.

I’ve been looking for a place like this.

Every tree-blogger worth their salt has to tackle the Christmas tree…but how?  Where to go?

I needed an angle.

Maybe it’s this Kindy’s.  Maybe this sign really is a sign.

I checked the Kindy’s website and it looked encouraging…fine photos of bright homes decked out in colorful patterns of blinking lights…a boy perched on his father’s shoulders planting the ornamental star on the top branch…a handsome, slim family nestled around the illuminated conifer…plus promises of real live trees, photographed in a snowy lot, each tree shining green under a light dusting of downy frost.

Kindy’s has been around since 1980…the retail outlet for the Brite Star Manufacturing Company located in South Philly…and, according to its website, it is the premier stop for all things Christmas…the Kindy’s shopping experience [is] a fun-filled family holiday tradition.

This could be the place.

Look, I’m one hardened, sarcastic scalawag of a citybilly.  I’m a rogue and I’m a rounder and, yet, around this time every year, I just say hark that. 

I yearn to be swept away by the holidays.

T’is the season and I want to feel it…the spirit, the glee, the mirth.  I want to wash away my cynicism with good, old-fashioned holiday cheer.  I know my weather and I know my Wheel so I know not to expect a white Christmas, though that would be lovely…but I want all the rest.

I want to feel part of something...to feel connected...hard to do while living in this urban grid...hard to do, at this time of year, while fighting traffic, fighting crowds, fighting lines to the registers.  

I want that warm glow in the bottom of my belly…I want to turn into a happy stooge…heedless of the wind and weather…I want peace and joy on Turtle Island…I want to deck the halls…I want to sing along. 

I want to be jolly.

And so…with a seasonal sense of optimism, under a typical sky of the Long Snow Moon…scudding trails of storm-clouds twisting inside-out, revealing their dark and rainy hearts…I traveled through the mean streets to the Kindy’s Christmas Factory Outlet.

Ho, ho, ho.

ARMY VS. NAVY

This weekend, here in Philadelphia, we partake in an old tradition…the annual Army versus Navy football game.

Here we go again.   

Since 1890, these two branches of the American military have duked it out over possession of the pigskin, fighting for yardage and first downs, charging to the red zones, punching past the goal lines, kicking it through the uprights…clashing like titans on the combat zones of a neutral football field.

The majority of these epic battles have taken place right here in Philadelphia.  In the early twentieth century, these games were hosted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Franklin Field…then it was moved to the old JFK Stadium…and now?  The Lincoln Financial Field all the way down Broad Street in South Philly.

The U.S. Military Academy of West Point versus the U.S. Naval Academy of Annapolis…the Army Black Knights versus the Navy Midshipmen…after 112 meetings on the football gridiron, the record stands in Navy’s favor…56 wins, 49 losses and 7 ties.

But who’s got the better trees?

In the competitive, collegiate spirit of this yearly contest, Jon Spruce goes a-hunting…Army vs. Navy, tree-style…which branch of the military here in Philadelphia has the greatest trees and the wildest wilds…huddle up and blow the whistle...line up and kick off…knock ‘em down but keep it clean…hike, hike...who will win this contest of the wilds…because if winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?

Let the games begin…are you ready for some trees?