Jungle Book

Deep in the heart of every human being beats a primordial memory of the jungle everlasting; an ancient link to our tree-living past. Ever since I can remember, I have loved trees: drawing them, painting them, photographing them, even using an image of a tree through four seasons to decorate the top of one of my earliest resumes.

As we descended from our arboreal homes in search of food and water, the distance between the ocean and the trees of the savanna that we called home grew and grew, as did our brains fueled by the richness of the sea and the creatures we eat. We responded to the growing grasslands by stretching our legs to cover the distance, but memories of our forest home continue to pervade our collective human consciousness.

Escapist fantasies about leaving the world behind suddenly become more acute in times of great stress, like during presidential elections with transitional governments, forcing us to confront our need to flee. For me, the forest represents something more than a relaxing place to unwind from busy careers and ringing cell phones. It is the place I feel most at home, and with the beat of the boreal so dear to my heart, it's no wonder that I want to be where the wild things are. You can't chain down what's meant to be free.

It is in this hope that I look forward to a more understanding future that recognizes the human condition as it pre-dates modern borders, with boundaries drawn by outside interests not native to the land we call "home". Let us be who we are. Let's go home. And let us be dual citizens of the world as it is written in so much bureaucratic paperwork, if that's what it takes for us to move about as we're meant to. I promise you I won't be a bother. You won't be able to find me in the forest primeval without a professional guide, anyway.

Gotta Have Park

When I wrote that I competed with adults at the hardest school in the world—with the lowest admissions rate in the world—I meant it. I was vying for my class spot with people who had already lived a few lives and careers before me, which is about as daunting as it gets, not that anyone came to our defenses. We were their fodder; everyone's: the teachers, the administrations, the other students, and that included any/all adults working around us. People who try to excel by becoming talented fakes with great mimicry skills are very nervous people indeed, because they need much better, smarter people—to feed off of to survive—and that included the teenagers and very young adults we were back then, which was sort of like sending a young Jimi Hendrix into war involuntarily, to die for a country that denied him the right to drink at certain water fountains, let alone buy himself a real stiff drink before being shipped out to active wartime duty at 19-years old.

As much as we tried reconciling their presence at our school, it didn't seem fair to us, and we knew it, because we started making some noise, and then some much louder noise, until the "profs" who thought they could game us by sabotaging our expensive education got a real taste of working class life and the transfer student mindset. It sent them tail-spinning downward while taking potshots at kids like me, working three jobs at once while taking only studio classes, because I had essentially completed an entire Liberal Arts curriculum in just three short years, though that degree was unjustly held from me, too (in lieu of my transfer status), just like I was forced to complete my senior year of high school, even though I had completed the curriculum by junior year with college credits and a Regents diploma, but if the gifted left, who would be there to pay for all of your salaries? Right?

In retaliation for circulating a petition around campus asking for desktop publishing classes to be placed on our curriculum, equipped with the kinds of computers we actually use in the workplace, I was "blacklisted" by the very professors who were there to supposedly educate me. It didn't matter—just like it hadn't mattered in my educational past—because my mentor let me pursue my work in his classes as independent studies, which is, once again, like becoming a grad student as an undergrad, but, again, that doesn't pay for your two apartments in Providence and Brooklyn, does it, "Prof"? No! We did! We paid for that for you, so you could take open potshots at children, basically. It made for some very weird classes indeed. 

Take, for example, Ellie. She decided to play the "ethnic minority" game by wrongly trumpeting her prized European status to an openly disparaged minority like me, which made for the most awkward kiddie-adult conversations you could imagine, as she openly campaigned for me to get kicked out of "her" school that she attended as an undergrad at 34. Huh...that's so...odd. And it was. She would talk about her past as a forest ranger (why didn't she learn to draw while living all alone in a forest for months on end?), as we pondered how the fuck she could go from living on Mount St. Helen during its epic volcanic blast to sitting in on our kiddie crits, because I sure as fuck never had the time to work on a portfolio before attending college, let alone blow off one career for our kiddie art classes, in comparison.

It was highly suspect and dubious in the extreme, but just like every other situation I've faced in my life. I had to make it, like a Marine dropped behind enemy lines with no lines of communication or ammo left, nursing a serious bullet wound or two while evading capture and/or the enemy. If I didn't attain a degree from this school, there was no job waiting for me in the outside world, and I didn't want to die from homelessness or starvation, which is just like today. 

I write to you from a public library that's becoming increasingly hostile to me, because the director here has already called the police on me for standing up to one of their Special Needs crafts "teachers" for harassing me by lurking behind me as I typed, and then aggressively staring at me, mouthing words at me as I typed to you all, which, just like then, resulted in me attaining a police contact on the force by an officer who flat out told me not to even bother to talk to anyone at this location again. "Just call us instead." That's how bad it gets. 

Like every moment that's precious in this life we live, so is our land. We live off the land that grows the food we need to live. No healthy land, no food for the animals to eat, and that includes us. If we do not protect our precious resources—like our land and water—then we do not survive. Sometimes—like my work, education, and life story—it is that simple. It becomes that basic, our survival. No food=no us. No bees=no pollinators. It all comes back to our defense and self-defense skills, and so, even though adults with more money, more experience, and a heck of a lot more time than me still tried to kill me off, here I still am, fighting for my survival while I fight for all of us. 

So, Ellie, even though, in your misguided hatred and aggression of an artistic life that was never yours to live by destiny, I dedicate today's fight to you anyway, for a t-shirt you wore back in the day that read "Gotta Have Park", and even though you wore it to protect your own government job as a forest ranger, I still believe in its message. What cannot die has never really lived, as far as I'm concerned. Live.

http://www.earthshareny.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdevelopment 
http://www.environmentnewyork.org/ 

Wild Things

My original "Friends of Animals" poster from the 70s.

A few years back, I went on a guided trip to Yellowstone called "Wolves, Bears, and Wild Things". Our intention as a group was to spot animals in the wild, but I didn't have quite the same touristy type of attitude. I don't see wildlife existing purely for my photographic pleasure, even though one of my greatest influences is nature. Surprisingly, I don't treat the world as if it exists to show itself for me only, and so I knew that our summer trip would not yield any wolf sightings because wolves do not hunt during the high heat of a summer's day, and only an idiot who knows nothing about animal behavior would expect that.

But I did see many beautiful things, and I came away with the lasting (and true) impression that the entire area can blow up at any time, because the park itself is one hugely active volcanic site: http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2010/07/yellowstone-national-park.html. As such, it really isn't fit for humans to live there, but there are many animals that exist free from the confinement of zoo life and our exclusive use. Bison roam freely like the moose do, and bears stick mostly to hills except during the park's busiest times, when people leave their trash everywhere. Oh, it doesn't matter that there are signs and trash can covers throughout the park: one bad person can temporarily collapse an entire ecosystem. 

Luckily for me, I'm a former Scout and the best hiker in my clan. I always pack in only what I can carry out myself, and that's something you can take to the bank. You'd certainly want me in the back country with you on any given day, because I can visually memorize any trail, especially the ones around Bear Mountain I grew up hiking, like the times when Dad was supposed to be carrying the maps, but forgot to do so. Trust me when I saw that me and my bros are happy he has the "Midas Touch" with money, which is much more of a sure thing.

The New York area has recently seen a great resurgence in the return of its' native wildlife, a place that includes rural settings, suburban green-ways, and urban jungles alike. It was noted with much amusement this spring, to the delight of every newscaster looking for a family-friendly story during the dinner hour. Who doesn't like bear cubs? Not me! But in every story lies a serious message; as soon as our animals return is as quickly they can disappear, if we don't make them welcome. That means you, happy camper! Garbage cans must have secure lids so that raccoons and little bears don't get into them, because not only is our food very bad for them to eat, little ones cannot climb out, and they will die in there without our help: http://www.dec.ny.gov/press/89917.html.

http://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/2015/05/20/bear-sightings-new-york-westchester-rockaway-yonkers-mountainkeeper/27682767/

Same thing goes for feral animals that have escaped from human homes. Cats must be caught, taken to rescue services and fixed against breeding, because domesticated animals do not breed well without our intervention. This past weekend, I caught up with our local Animal Control officer (Hi, Rich!), a great guy who voluntarily works part time for the county when he isn't working for us at Con Ed. We have laws on the books about dogs that get loose but not cats, which has led to their rampant, unchecked inbreeding. It's the cause of many unsuccessful litters that bear dead kittens. I found one on the lawn last year, and it totally freaked me out. R.I.P. beautiful orange and white kitty :( I named the spot "Kitty Korner" in memory of the kitten, and I place my recycle bins there every week in his (or her) honor.

I remember seeing a small calico kitten with her dark grey mate roaming around the neighborhood last year, too. They weren't fully grown last year when they bred for the first time, and this spring they are still breeding badly. One morning last week, I walked out onto the porch to find my neighbor holding a small dark grey kitten with one eye sealed completely shut, or perhaps she was born blind. The Calico mom I saw last year crept out from the bushes, when the kitten was put on the grass for her to grab, but she does not birth healthy litters. Cats are tame because we made them that way, and so it is our responsibility to care for them. Now that I know this pair breeds under a certain big old yellow house in the Hudson Valley, I'm totally on it, and you should be, too. 

We must take care of our animals. It's up to you to keep this biosphere healthy and functioning, because this is G-d's inheritance to us, as the gift of life for all time. You are actively living in this "Garden of Eden". Treat the life here with love and care.  

For New York City residents:

http://www.nycferalcat.org/

http://www.neighborhoodcats.org/

http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/environmental/animals-tnr.shtml

http://feralcatfocus.org/

http://www.nycacc.org/CommFeralCats.htm, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/nyregion/a-no-kill-approach-to-feral-cat-control.html?_r=0


For Rockland County residents:

http://www.alleycat.org/page.aspx?pid=712&gclid=COa37MLw5MUCFcITHwodDB8Ahg

http://www.everycatcounts.info/?gclid=COmM7dfw5MUCFdgPgQodnh8AjA 

http://www.hvhumane.org/pets-for-adoption/ 

http://www.hitor.org/ 

http://valleycottageanimalhospital.com/links-2/animal-shelters/ 

http://www.guardianangelcatrescue.com/feral_cats.php 

http://hudsonvalleynewsnetwork.com/2015/01/30/free-spayneuter-feral-cats-february-dcspca/ 

Foogy Day

Seasons change, time moves on, and large fog banks descend upon us for a few days like a bad horror movie in which those poorly hidden (and scantily clad) teenagers will die for having sex. It's kind of atmospheric. 

I caught a flock of seagulls (I know! I know!) resting in the park yesterday, and it was awesome. Maritime birds typically move inland during storms, but this flock seems to have taken year-round to our clime. Yes! The animals are back, and today is a good day.  
Have a great weekend.

I get to write this caption today: it's "A Flock of Seagulls"!

Whoa! Those clouds have come way down off the hills since midday.

Is that...is that fog coming closer to me?! Cool!

Getting thicker by the minute...

...and now it's covering up buildings and building up speed like it's alive. Good thing I took out that horror movie from the library! Oh....

Meltdown!

As the countdown to warmer weather continues (thus reenacting an ancient seasonal arc throughout human history), we begin to see the snow and ice finally recede, until one bright sunny day when the last bit of it is finally gone. "MELT, MELT, MELT!" Bye-bye snow and ice. See you next year.

Canadian Geese and Large Tree.

The annual snow-melt has officially begun: it's over 40 degrees!

Deer in the Park! A Good Sign....

A beautiful day for a walk. Wait, what is that?!

On a recent walk, I cut through a local park with an apple orchard (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/08/gardens-dr-henry-v-borst-park.html), and as I grew closer, I saw something move. Wait a second, what is that?! Oh, snap! Deer! And not just one, but two young strong healthy males growing out a nice set of antlers, happily munching wild, native apples fallen to the ground.

Deer! Two of them, too! And they're eating apples!

It's such a great sign. Our area used to be filled with wildlife, but just like global warming, we altered the landscape to such an insane degree, animals were driven out. Not cool. We need our fellow Earth inhabitants to keep our precious ecosystem intact.

Healthy, beautiful young males growing antlers. Oh, good!

If you mess with one element too much, you drive the entire system out of whack. Seeing healthy deer feel comfortable enough to eat apples unmolested is a very good sign indeed. It means better days are ahead, ones that will bring us back into balance with nature, which is necessary for every living thing's survival on this beautiful blue planet. A healthy, thriving ecosystem. That's where it's at. That's what's up. Peace.

Nature: Bronzed and Glowing

Where are the leprechauns?!

I had an interesting week (as usual), which included walking among a profusion of huge mushrooms in a local park, grown overlarge thanks to springs' watery bounty, picking up a few beautiful objects for my personal perusal (now part of my natural collection), and having an animal encounter of the closest kind. Let's begin, shall we?

Hmm...maybe behind these toadstools?

First up: a absolutely shining, beautiful collection of perfectly bronzed mushrooms, flourishing in the springtime sun and remaining rather unmolested by human disturbance. It looked like a leprechaun's fairy tale home, or maybe the tiny abodes of some quick and unseen sprites, hiding behind a stand of trees and looking at me from afar.

Whoa! The is one HUGE mushroom!

A few specimens were of the largest kind that I can't remember seeing before, and which I'm attributing to our rather profuse rainfall. I dabbled in mycology last year (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/10/mushrooms.html), but concluded (after closely examining a few specimens on my mom's kitchen table), that foraging for cooking would be best done under the watchful eyes of an experienced, licensed guide. I don't want a bad trip, the worst trip being my untimely death, but I did really want to keep a few.

Hey! Who took a bite?

The other plants grew with equal veracity, as this fairy circle attests to. I mean, honestly, those fairies need to be less obvious when creating their homes with secret entrances growing in the ground.

A rather obvious fairy circle. Can you see it?

For scale, I got a picture of a fly resting on the trunk of one such monstrous 'shroom. Good Lord! Look at it! The next day, sadly, it was gone, harvested by a braver soul than me, surely. I hope it tasted good, or at least provided some fun and harmless recreational amusement.

For scale: fly on "Mushroom Monster".

Another beauty is this perfect robin's eggshell, so unique in it's representation of a color that we still refer to it as "Eggshell Blue", or "Robin's Eggshell Blue", as the shelves at your local paint store will surely attest to: a classic, timeless color.

A robin's eggshell at my fingertips.

While at the park, I took a rest after practicing some tai chi, when I noticed some motion below. Aha! An inchworm! Why, hello there "Inchie". It's the season for them to come out, releasing strands into the air, looking for something (or someone) to attach itself to.

Hard to capture on camera!

I played with it for awhile, picking it up on a stick, trying to capture an image for you to see. The funniest part was a trick of light that produced a halo effect around my new, tiny friend, not unlike those cute lil alien critters from that YA special The Host, by you-know-who (think Twilight series....shudder).

Glowy inchworm. Friend or alien foe?!

Another bronzed beauty in my path was the perfect leaf, shined by nature to a luster and sheen that a human would be hard pressed to capture on their own. So inspiring! As always, such beauty awaits us in the world, for all of us to see, for free.

Bronzed beauty.

Last, but not least, is the beautiful and also obvious to spot wild onion, which grows alongside a bevy of other edible beauties, like wild garlic, other types of onions and shoots, wild grapes, small sour crabapples, you name it. There's so much to harvest around here, that I'm glad I still remember my country ramblings as a kid; the familiar alongside the extraordinary, a type of every day magic that I realize is so rare, I'm still awed by it as an adult.

Wild onion.

I hope your week is as fruitful as mine, even if it's "just" the humble country walk. You never what (or who) you may find out there in the world. Happy Trails to you!

Me? I gotta have park.

The First Day of Spring

Springtime in Stuyvesant Square Park.

Stuyvesant Square Park.

Flowers in bloom, Stuyvesant Square Park.

Clusters of buds like barnacles.

Hello! Welcome to the new season. In celebration, I've put up a series of photos I took in 2013, when I lived (for a brief time) in Stuyvesant Town, a neighborhood in lower Manhattan. It was the first time I'd ever lived in the borough that is officially New York, New York, and as a native New Yorker, I had other surprising (and rare) "firsts", too: I discovered parks, foliage, trees, flowers, plants, and people I hadn't encountered before, as the glorious, gorgeous Spring of last year unfolded before my eyes. Here's to the newness, and yet timelessness, that marks the first signs of Spring. Enjoy!

Small Town America: Town Center

Town center.

Do you live a town with big square or park in the center? Then you're living in a town that's designed right! It's the heart of a healthy community. Enjoy the warm days and cool nights of autumn.  
Winter is coming....

I love New York, and so do you.
 http://www.pinterest.com/mariedoucette/new-york//

Potting Sheds, Tiny Studios, and Other Delights

Little blue house next to the "Mommy" house.

Check out this adorable little house that sits next to the bigger "parent" house, a local fine dining restaurant that's been around since I had friends in high school who waitressed. Yeah, that long. So cute!

Painting studio

This will appeal to any artist, crafter, or carpenter with two hands (or maybe just one that works well, but you're still creating): the space to do it. I've tried to incorporate studio space within every home I have, and it is very hard to do. You need tons of natural light, time alone, and space to work. The fact that they turned this tiny back house into an actual business cheers me.

Wee gardening shed? Done!

This baby garden shed is every little girls' dream. Think of the tea parties with Teddy Bears you could have. So adorable, I'm done.

Neighborhood gem.

I often walk past this beauty, and the way it peeks out of the shrubbery at different angles just kills me. It's a small house with big personality; can't beat that.

Cabin in the park.

The local hidden park (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/08/gardens-dr-henry-v-borst-park.html) has this rustic log cabin that reminds me of Scout hikes on the Adirondack trail, with  campfires and marshmallows roasting on sticks. I have no idea why the good doctor built it, but it's funny that's it's still here in his old grounds.

Got any good cottages in your area? If not, take heart. I've got a beauty collection of them right here: http://www.pinterest.com/mariedoucette/cottages/.

Gardens: Dr. Henry V. Borst Park

I found this tiny park walking to and from the library. It's the perfect bucolic spot for my tai chi chuan practice, nicely hidden by a small stand of beautiful little sour apple trees, but I was curious about it. Something about it seemed random and at the same time, very well designed. Turns out, it is. A local told me she remembered the dentist who lived there when she was a little girl. The kids were so scared of him, she never took apples from his trees. 

Didn't you have a crazy old person on your street who lived in a scary old house, too? Alice told me Dr. Borst deeded the land to the town out of spite, so as to cheat his only living heir, a niece, from inheriting it all. I have no idea if that's real or colorful folklore, but somehow it makes me love this tucked away spot more. Where do you go to get away from it all?

  

A Walk in the Park: Kennedy Dells

Mushroom Tree

One of the nicer aspects of any homecoming is revisiting those areas we have fond memories of. 

I discovered Kennedy Dells Park years after I moved away out of sheer necessity. My very large and energetic Malamute anxiously needed lots of space for his urgent morning walk, and like any harried parent, I rushed to the computer for an online search of just such nearby places in Rockland County.

Out of the woods

Growing up in New City, I mostly hiked the Harriman State Park system because of its' close proximity and enormous intersection of trails; infamous, historic ones at that, like The Appalachian Trail and The Long Path, overlooking nearer spots, or maybe this park just wasn't around at the time. Whatever the case, I come back to this place time and again throughout the seasons, and I'm always struck by the beauty of New York's wooded paths, with its' variety of nature so close at hand.

Field of green

Path through the thicket

I honestly had my heart set on hiking High Tor State Park yesterday, but it was closed. More on that trip later in the summer. In the meantime, here's some of the wild lush beauty I saw on Memorial Day, so alive and teeming with growth, that the very vines seemed to grow before me, like magical apparitions out of a child's fable.

Nothing but blue sky and fields to roam

The happy hiker

It was the perfect Spring day: warm and sunny but not hot, cool in the shade without a chill, and a bright, crisp, cloudless blue sky overhead. Add in the burger and fries I had, followed by a hot fudge Sunday, and you've got one healthy slice of the American pie. That’s the kind of day it was.

Treeline and sky

Olmsted

New Yorkers know Frederick Law Olmsted* through the creation of our famously beautiful public parks, like Central Park in Manhattan, and Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

Like many early Americans, his history is far more interesting than simply being the father of landscape architecture and design. Did you know it wasn't even his profession by training?

Check out this cool PBS special about him and his incredible life.

Watch Olmsted and America's Urban Parks on PBS. See more from THIRTEEN Series.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Law_Olmsted

Around the Way

Signs of Spring, Prospect Park

Prospect Park West

New buds

A bit o' green

Brooklyn townhouses

City tree ornament