Recently finished Ordeal by Hunger by George Stewart, the harrowing tale of the fate of the Donner Party. I recently was speaking about it with NPS ranger Emily and another woman from San Francisco. All of us had read the book at some stage in our lives. The woman (excuse me as I do not remember her name, lets call her Ruth), Ruth, was in her late sixties and she said the story was all the rage when she was a kid. Emily is in her mid-twenties and she read it in high school. Having just finished the book, I began asking around, "have you heard of the Donner Party?" Every person I asked said in return, "Jeffery Dahmer?" Which is funny, because he is not it at all, yet Dahmer touches on the tabu at the heart of the story. Anyhow, Ruth says she thinks it's odd that there is a diner at Donner Pass and every year her family would eat there on their way to Idaho. It doesn't escape Ruth or I that our current Interstate 80 occupies much of the same route as the Donner Party trail. Interstate 80 cuts through the Wasatch Mountains, a path the Donner Party cut with brute force and determination. The exact same path that, one year later, Mormon pilgrims would follow to Salt Lake, Utah. Ranger Emily mentions that the artist Mahonri Young had included a depiction of the Donner Party in his most famous work, This Is The Place monument, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Young lived on Weir Farm here in Connecticut because he married Dorothy Weir, daughter of artist J.A. Weir -the namesake of this National Historic Site. Mahonri Young just happened to be the grandson of Brigham Young, the man who lead the Mormon pioneers to Salt Lake and proclaimed that this was the right place for their settlement in summer of 1847, just months after the close of the Donner Party tragedy.
So there the circles closes. One other thought about 1846-47: it was in this exact period of time that Henry David Thoreau was having his nature experience on the opposite coast, an experience of self-proclaimed self-sufficiency while under the spell of the morning star. Now there's a fictional work I'd like to see: Thoreau, aspiring Emersonian writer, journal-keeper, and member of the Donner Party.
Its cloudy today. I have not left the caretaker's cottage in two days. I have only stepped outside to BBQ on Tuesday evening. I am in the slide toward leaving Weir Farm, 10 days until Brooklyn bound. Tuesday I spent all day on the internet, the blog. Yesterday the whole day painting, which is good because I gave up art altogether the night before. I've explored 90 percent of the trails on the preserve. This evening I'll get back outside, walk the farm. Primarily, now, I need to get some work done. I've done more things in this three weeks than I could come near doing in NYC, where the day job is (thank you day job for letting me leave). I hope, after I return, that I have a better understanding of the direction for my work. In every way I believe my time here will help forge that understanding. Praise to ol' J.A.W. for leading the way:
"The temper of youth has been remarkably prolonged in him and he has never been able to settle down to the production of something the success of which was assured by previous practice."
-Kenyon Cox on Weir
"Really, I know not what I am best at and if I lived to 102 I might become an artist."
-Weir himself
The essence of this preservation effort, the historic site, is not that of the American Impressionist painter, but to the spirit of seeking new things, change, and living that life -come what may.
There has been one major park in all of New York City that has managed to go from waste land (or structure) to park land in 10 years, that is the High Line. Recent money donated has given the completion of the new parkway a boost. In fact, as the New York Times pointed out, "This could be the friendliest public/private venture ever attempted in New York City." With a total cost of about $150 million, the High Line has created a stir at under half the cost of the proposed Brooklyn Bridge Park. Of course, no one can complain about the private capital connected to the High Line, as that it is of its essence. While the city owns most of the High Line trestle and NYC Parks appears to have some role to play, it is not a stretch to view this parkway as a privately funded and maintained park with public access.
As a public/private partnership, it makes the most sense that this new parkway has a dual personality -its public and private function. In this sense it is the most viscerally dual-purpose, built landscape that I can think of. On the one hand it is a high fashion, high design plinth for the the viewing of NYC architecture. On the other, it is a lowly, industrial structure, re-visioned as a metaphor for a car-less NYC. One aspect serves the vanity of private institutions and developers' dreams, the other serves the public imagination of a future NYC.
The High Line is an elevated parkway connecting destinations and residential neighborhoods, not unlike Vaux and Olmsted's original NYC parkways designed for horse, carriage, and pedestrian strolling. Unlike Robert Moses' parkway system (connecting parks throughout the region via the gentler travel of non-commercial road traffic, with screen plantings designed to provide a serene, bucolic driving experience), there is only modest screening provided by the planting design. In fact, this new parkway functions as a platform for taking in the sights of lower and midtown Manhattan, auspiciously relying on the local architecture. Imagine it as a stroll through a sculpture garden, but the sculptures are the size of buildings. If you live or work in one of these new buildings, you can take the step back to appreciate how wonderfully your own starchitect designed sculpture resides in the New York landscape. If you do not, you can stroll the High Line, panoramistic foldout in hand, ready to identify any building seen in the growing architectural landscape. This is the essence of the private High Line.
On another level we have the romanticization of the railway ruin. Functioning and defunct railways have been seen as picturesque components of landscapes for decades, and their minimal infrastructure is easily incorporated into park designs. The ruins have hosted many parkways throughout the country, mainly as part of the rails to trails initiative. In Paris, the Promenade Plantee created a formal garden from an elevated railway. Many cities are now looking at conversion of their dilapidated high rail. In our own city, Gantry Plaza State Park had, less than fifteen years ago, incorporated industrial rail into its park design. The incorporation of rail into park design, then, is nothing new as landscape design needed to make sense of the wasted, post-industrial landscapes -often the only new space open for park development in our urban centers. What is new, however, is the attitude of an elevated railway park in NYC.
The primary public aspect of the High Line is its manifestation of the changing attitude towards street vehicles and traffic. It does this by anticipating the elimination of the vehicular traffic below, rather ironically through the preservation of the conduit for a mode of vehicular traffic previously considered too dangerous to keep at street level. It allows us to walk along what most of us recall as the unsafe terrain of train tracks and in doing so, gives us a glimpse of a future where walking on the street is possible and safe. The High Line removes vehicular traffic from the urban experience in an apolitical, non-threatening fashion high above the streets, out of sight and mind of the political body of racing vehicles below. In fact, the elevation of the High Line mimics the sense of civic idealism to which it speaks while, to the speedster below, perhaps it's the floating spectre of a return to biological speed.
There will be those who lament the loss of an urban "wild" space. They may have disdain for the "high design" approach. I sympathize with the sentiment for the tangled, messy spaces and the sense of discovery they contain. Yet I won't harp on it, that debate is over, it is built. I think the planting design looks good and the hardscape is nicely textured. I have noticed, however, the lack of what every overpass in this city has come to acquire -the protective chain link fence. Will it grow one in the future? I think we can all hope not.
This landscape offers the kind of close-quartered plant and hardscape experience that I expect to require high-maintanence. Time will tell how well-suited the plants are to this environment, but I am willing to give the High Line designers the benefit of the doubt. This park experiment has been well-funded, and that usually means better care for plants and hardscape. In fact, managing the horticulture and park operations will be a horticulturalist formerly of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. How well the High Line is maintained and at what cost, in conjunction with how much use or abuse it gets will be instructive for any future, parkway proposals.
As we watch the collapse of the American auto industry, and entertain the idea of a city free of personal automobiles, what new urban landscapes will we dream up? Look out Broadway, your next.
The first section of the High Line has been completed, from Gansevoort Street to 20th Street, and is projected to open in June 2009.
The answer is no. I will not grow snap peas, or probably any peas again in my side garden.
First, growing them was easy. Sprouted no problem, seedling support no problem, transplant no problem, growing in pots no problem.
So what is the problem?
Beyond the minor cover, don't cover when cold nights threatened -its that I just don't get my effort's worth out of the few plants I could grow. I need a row of snap peas, not four planters!
That said, they were tasty. Nutty, sweet, green -definitely better than grocery-bought. The photo above -the latest harvest.
The plants are still producing, but by God -its time they moved on so the tomatoes can go in, the tomatoes for chrisake! What kind a world is it where tomatoes are waiting on peas, peas in a tomato's world!!
I'm on the trail again. This time its Yellow. As I mentioned in another post, I had anticipated that the Weir Preserve contained an Oak-Tulip forest community. I had thought the Acer pennsylvanicum was the Tulip Tree because the similarity of the leaf shapes. I was wrong, yet I wasn't ready to give up...
Check out this guy. Hmm, I spotted it from 66 inches up, it being on the ground -could it be more red in a green world? A few millimeters in size and six legs. If I had my Audubon Society Eastern Forests book I know I could ID this one. Alas, I do not and Mr. Red scuttles on.
The Wintergreen (thanks for the ID, Michelle) is coming up in patches now. Flowers beginning to take shape.
I saw four Eastern Newts on my hike. Plain as day, right on the trail. When you go near them, they do not move -unlike a lizard, which would scurry off. These juvenile Newts, called Efts, secrete a poison from their skin -so glad I didn't touch it. Efts are Newts, Newts are Salamanders. Efts then, are Salamanders, but Salamanders are not necessarily Newts. Got it?
Ah, oh- what's this? Hmm. Piece of the Tulip Tree pie? Couldn't fall too far from the tree.
What's this? Yes, phallically shooting through the canopy of maples and oaks, but no lower branches, no leaves to ID.
The Tulip Tree is the tallest deciduous tree in the eastern forest of North America. Clearly this tree that I found is tall, shooting above the canopy, and I have the flower piece from nearby. Still cannot make out the leaves, I cannot ID the tree, and move on.
Another mile or so down the trail my wife spots this double. Same bark as before. And. And. Yep, we can see the flowers when the sun hits it just right. Bingo.
Below the tree I find my photo-worthy evidence. The goose-footed leaves of Liriodendron tulipifera complete with flower bud! It seems now ridiculous that I confused the goose foot maple leaf with the tulip tree leaf. The tulip leaf is waxy, thicker, lighter underneath, and not serrated. I do not spend enough time in the woods.
On the left is the Tulip Tree bark. On the right, for comparison, the bark of the Chestnut Oak. Tree bark is just plain bark until you start naming trees. The Chestnut Oak has serious bark. What is amazing about the Tulip Tree is how straight it grows. Its eastern competitors for height, the Eastern White Pine and Eastern Hemlock are also straight growers. Something about height, shooting above the canopy, makes for straight trunks.
The tulip-like flower and the goose foot-like leaves of the Liriodendron. It's of the Magnolia family and is native to the eastern N.A. forest. However, not a good yard (an estate...) or street tree, despite its flowers and straight trunk. Its a forest dweller -demanding the moisture and wind protection the forest provides. Go to the woods, enjoy.
I am part of a living environment here at the farm. Its garden, yard, field, woods, wetland, and what else? Within it's boundaries are the gamut of plants, both native to this community and others brought in or moved in over the years. Some of those non-native plants are pretty aggressive, even invasive. Shudder to think of it, and invading species, an invasion! Defend the homeland! DEFEND!
It appeared to me that the reason we, the people, get so worked up about invasive plants, animals, and bugs is that it forces us to look into the mirror. When I look at spreading mounds of berberis, mats of lily of the valley, vining tangles of multiflora, I see myself. I see my people. Gardeners and farmers -the keepers of plants. But not only us, we are not solely to blame. I see the greater us.
Is it so difficult to admit to ourselves that we keep such company? Should we disrespect ourselves by shunning those that are wont to associate with us? Maybe these plants follow us because they know the birds-of-a-feather rule. Maybe they know how invasive we have been, how aggressive we can be. Don't these plants just follow in our footsteps? Is it their fault, after all -we showed them the way.
We tacitly support the double standard. We can do it, but not the lowly plant or insect. Sorry, but spreading rapidly quite successfully is a human endeavor. We'll not have it from the likes of you! Globetrotting is our life, get your own!
To give the biosphere criers their day -they state what we all won't easily admit to ourselves. Our rapid, adaptive spread around the globe has created the stage for a tragedy. If a less diverse world is a worse world, if our spread has created vectors for the creatures that feed off of us, weaken us, then we can see the spreading plants, animals, insects that ravage our forests, fields, and gardens as a red flag of changing times. Doctor, how long do we have?
I'm curious. What native north american plants and animals have ravaged other continents? Surely it works both ways, doesn't it? Or is it the subconscious awareness of our own alien nature, our own non-native, invasive self that bubbles up to the surface when we worry about plant and insect invasion? What would the Tree of Heaven say -I learned it from you mankind, I learned it from you!
So what should we do? If I take out my garlic mustard and my neighbor doesn't, where are we? What are ourgoals when speaking of eradicating non-native plants? Should we keep preserves, areas kept completely clear of non-native species? What of adjoining properties? What of what we cannot see? What of things that reproduce and spread? How can we stop what is by very definition a successful species? How can we draw boundaries? Where are our last stands? What will we do to stop the invasion? Should we fly overhead dumping DDT on suburban neighborhoods like they did in my area in the 1950s to control Gypsy Moth? Should we send out armies of people pulling each and every thorny barberry shrub from the woods? Should we spray herbicides yearly on new non-native growth? Should we accept "collateral damage?"
I grow native plants in my garden for two primary reasons. One is that I like the way they look. The other is that I hate to water, I forget to water, the water is too precious. Water is very important. Weeds, also known as plants that followed us people all the way from somewhere in "Eurasia," grow in my garden too. I also grow plants bred for the garden (I tend toward those that tolerate drought) from parent plants around the world. As I've posted before, what we call weeds seem to affect the garden and field (green or brown) or the cultivated spaces, and what we call invasives seem to affect ecosystems, bio-regions, or "natural" areas. However, they may be the same plants no matter what we call them.
I am trying to come to a position on this that I feel comfortable with. To do so means to consider several components of the problem, twisting my reasoning around and around. I'm not there yet. Thoughts?
Years ago I read the Orchid Thief. I thought of it as I went on my search for the Lady's Slipper. I heard it to be out on the west side of the Blue trail. Had I overshot the round-a-bout location Cassie the ranger detailed for me on the map? Yes, I had gone too far. Now backtracking, looking harder. This is not something easy to spot. Just one flower, could be anywhere on the trail. Could be gone, too. I've never sought out an orchid before and had made no attempt at research.
There are two things I recall from the Orchid Thief. One is the weird photo of the author, Susan Orleans, on the back flap, and the other is that some orchids grow near tree trunks, or even on them. I remember that as I spot these particular leaves, the kind of which I had just noticed another pair just a few feet back. I thought, hmm, a set of leaves with no where to go. A set of leaves that seems to be missing something. And now a pair sitting at the base of an oak tree. This must be the spot, but did I miss the bloom? No way...
There, beneath the canopy of Mountain Laurel, what appears to be growing out of oak leaves littering the rock face, a spot of sunlight on the Lady's Slipper!
Cypripedium acaule, family of Orchidaceae. Lives off highly acid substrates, dry or wet. There was another about ten feet behind this one, and many bare sets of leaves about. I only saw the two blooms however. All these photos are of the same bloom.
My wife's mom was licensed to grow and sell native orchids in the state of Minnesota. She would have liked this one; her soil was sweet and pink slippers were difficult.
Looks less like a slipper to me, more like a floating maiden with arms out.
Does your Convallaria majalis patch look like this? Hmm. Lily of the valley, mountain, and field!
Iris versicolor, or not? Hmm. Native Iris? Hmm. Farm Iris?
This is definitely native blueflag, photo taken in the woods, above a wetland.
'Member this one? Thats the Rubus. Yep, has small thorns.
Go over the foot bridge at the outlet of Weir's Pond (home made!). Below the earthen dam, you'll find amongst the skunk cabbage and fern, that Ragged Robin. Why so ragged, Robin?
One of the things that makes farming tough in New England is the surface bedrock. When you can't move it, farm around it. This rock is in the center of the farm field and is quite a bit larger than the small part I show here. On it grow a variety of mosses and lichen, and some grass. I can not name them (because my moss book is at home), but they look good to a non-farmer.
The radar has been showing no rain for hours, but for hours I've looked out the window and saw mist, sprinkles, and rain. I went out for a walk, to make some more movies, and to get out.
In NYC, one rarely has the feeling they can slow down, move slowly through a space or landscape. (Only people doing that are tending to hand held devices -outa my way!) As I move through the grassy fields I became aware of intention in the form of this "art" farm. Its about the light transitioning to the dark, abruptly sometimes, other times gradual. It appears rather designed, although it may be incidental to the stone wall and field structure. Along the stone walls, trees grow and they create dark spaces then punctuated by the bright, grassy fields beyond, then again broken by the deeper woods. Light and Dark have long been of Art.
And now, for my next number, a suite of bleeding hearts in the rain.
My wife arrives tomorrow, so I'll send this out to her.
Its taken me some time to get my first woods hike here at Weir Farm onto the blog. No doubt, in part due to the trouble identifying woodland plants -which is new to me and less chronicled on the web. But the hiking has been sweet as can be. So many damp forests I've hiked in spring or summer are swamped with mosquitoes, black flies, and deer flies. Nothing can send me packing faster than a swarm of any of these boogers. But to my great pleasure, they've all been on vacation.
The White Trail is a short loop into the mesic forest of southwestern Connecticut. I've also had some difficulty identifying the types of forest on the preserve. This is in part because the trails here traverse what appears a patchwork of forest communities. I'm seeing at least three: Beech-Maple Forest and Chestnut Oak Forest in the uplands with Red Maple-Hardwood Swamp in the low. While any number of species inhabit all these communities, the named species are dominant and they affect the type of understory plants, and possibly some fauna, in addition to the overall look and feel of the woods. Now on to the woods....
The trail...
On the east branch of the White trail, look up and down, and you'll see this tree. From a distance, I thought this was a Tulip Tree, making me think this was an Oak-Tulip Tree community.
Getting closer, looking at the leaves led me to mountain maple, Acer spicatum. But the samara are reddish on the mountain maple, where these are green. A friend of mine calls this a "goosefoot maple." I'm going to call it Acer pennsylvanicum or Acer striatum.
We called the maple fruit "polynoses" when we were kids; I suppose still do and I'm not the only one.
My new favorite tree. I knew what to call it as soon as I saw it and although I've never seen it before, I surely heard or seen the name -Shagbark Hickory or Carya ovata.
INTERMISSION
The White trail connects with the east-west running Yellow trail. After crossing the drainage, you begin a gradual incline, meeting again at the White trail and turning to the north.
As you climb, the drier, rocky soil gives way to a Chestnut Oak forest community. The understory has large tracts of Mountain Laurel. The mountain laurel and oak forest make up most of the western branch of the White trail loop.
I prefer the B&W photo over the color -looks like some kind of Burtonesque army of stick-people on the march.
Since the laurel forest is part of the understory, the shrubs are less leafy and many had little to no flower buds. Those that will flower are setting buds now, and I hope to see the bloom.
Anyone could miss this, but what a nice memorial. "The Anna White Woods, In Loving Memory"
Round things on oaks. Those woodpecker holes are fresh in a live tree.
I found this plant shooting through the floor of oak leaves. What is it?
The Blue trail is a north-south running trail that connects to the Yellow. It runs along the edge of a rocky ridge, winding among the oaks and mountain laurel. It is on this trail that I found the Lady's Slipper.
Its cool and damp today. I like the air and even light. I made two stop motion movies this morning and afternoon. Time flies. I spent too long looking for small LCD video viewers this afternoon, imagining using these to show the stop motion. Hmmm. Well, we'll see.
Here comes the rain, this time for real. Its cool and breezy here at the farm. Yesterday, I did spot the Ladie's Slipper! Post later, after the camera batteries charge.
I've since looked at this one again in the field. It has a trailing ground stem that is woody, reddish-brown, and other flower stems shoot off this stem. It lies tangled in the grass and other plants of the meadow, rather like a strawberry. I've looked at wild-strawberries, cinquefoils, even avens. All which could be flowering now, but none with this distinct slender white flower. Also look at various bramble berries, but the ground hugging, vining, stem seems wrong there. Any ideas?
This morning I go on my trek to find the elusive lady slipper. Yesterday's thunderstorms kept me inside. Hoping my camera batteries, which have been blinking low for two days now, have enough reserve for two or three shots.
Yesterday evening while on my dusk walk, I saw two young humans on mountain bikes doing jumps off the granite staircase into the "sunken garden" that I posted pictures of the other day. Like some kind of Smokey the Bear I emerged from the woods a spectre of authority. One look at me and !! we're outa here. I'd be lucky to have that effect on city kids.
I'm one full week into my stay at Weir Farm. I've not left the site since arriving. I brought my food with me. I've used enough to think am I using too much. You think about food differently when there isn't a store around the corner. And what am I reading while pretending I can't get food from town? Reading Ordeal by Hunger by George R. Stewart. Written in 1936 by a man obviously enthralled with 1846, it is full of all the bigotry of its day. Yet still it rapidly reads like a transcription of a campfire story told by a veteran story-teller. Its a gripping tragedy, gruesome in a way that is unfathomable. I've spent a good amount of time traveling the western states, and its first hundred pages seem all too possible to me. A party of farmers and merchants in a mountain and desert landscape follow a shady salesman's new route to the Sierra Nevada. Lost time saved none, and imagine the feeling of being trapped between a snow bound route over the mountains and the desert before it through all of winter. Food low, animals starving, most possessions dumped. Men, women, and children stuck on a trail with no way of surviving on their own. Meanwhile, the terribly depicted tribes are all around, and there is no communication, no ability to find out how they survive the climate. The party is trapped by their own relationship to the world. As Stewart ominously puts it "the trap has clicked behind them."
Not much painting getting done today. This should be okay, but it never is. Reading about the painter and the farm today. I got a tip from the NPS park ranger Cassie that there are some Lady Slippers blooming in the woods. This evening I search them out. Like the Holy Grail of woodland flowers. I've also noticed that the farm fields are growing quick, I could almost see the growth. Yesterday evening, I was stooped, looking at a spider on a plant, I heard a rumpus in the woods. I look up to see two large deer chasing each other wildly in the woods, circling around and around. Must've been fun. They don't worry about deer ticks like us humans do. I must say its difficult to fully inspect oneself.
One thing I am invested in doing while I have an old farm and woods to myself is learn what is actually there. What am I looking at? It appears that I am finally looking, which is a start to then understanding. My art work tends to take the long view, the big, take a step back view. But I'm now asking, what kind of tree is that-look at its funky bark. How come these plants here look out of place, or are they? I've been taking b&w photographs of the woods. Here, but in NYC too. B&W takes away all that lush green, opens up texture and value, and even though it appears nostalgic, I love the play of light.
This evening I made my first experiment with stop-motion photography or stringing photographs together in order to display them in a linear fashion. With just a few shots left, I saw the spider below. I erased some shots to shoot these things in the old farm field.
Spider's doing the heavy lifting.
Some kind of buttercup, anemone, ranunculeae -closed.
Some kind of buttercup, anemone, ranunculeae -open.
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