A Game of Catch

Blog Post #3

A brief recap of the last Blog Post:

Toward the end of last winter, I went for a walk in Prospect Park and stumbled upon a most peculiar personage lying up against an old tree trunk. The personage was green in color and looked very much like a tree himself. I left it to the reader to guess what he was up to. Here are some of the guesses I got:

 Amy, I’m thinking this guy was playing a “war game’ of sorts and hiding from his enemies. Sort of like a themed hide and seek. Maybe involving paintball too? Tsk, tsk, that wouldn’t be nice in the park now would it?

Amy, the only thing I can guess is this person just wanted to have fun and see how many curious people like you, would find him.

 Could he have been part of one of those live-action role-playing games? You know, one of those Larper people who get all dressed up and fight each other with Nerf swords?

Maybe he was a hired birthday-party entertainer of some kind and he was hiding from the kids?

Amy, he was probably a fugitive Shakespearean actor who ran off from doing the Birnam woods scene in Macbeth.

 Excellent guesses all, but here’s what happened next:

I sat some distance away and waited and kept an eye on the situation. The Green Man lay there, pressed up against his tree trunk, occasionally wiggling a foot or adjusting one of his piney-looking branches or looking up behind himself toward the top of the bread-loaf shaped hill.  It wasn’t long before I heard someone give a sharp whistle. I thought maybe it was somebody calling their dog, but no dog appeared. I glanced at the Green Man and he was now perfectly still.  Then, there was another sharp whistle and, in the next few seconds, one or two at a time, young people began to appear from the other side of the hill. They weren’t exactly children, but they weren’t exactly whatever it is that comes next. There were about a dozen of them. They gathered together with an air of rising excitement, pushing each other and laughing, but not too noisily.

Then a grown-up woman wearing sneakers and jeans and an oversized green hoodie appeared from the back and the crowd stopped messing around and parted silently. The woman was small, but there was something about her calm self-possession that made her look taller than she was. She moved between them lightly, but without haste and when she got to the front, she gazed down the hill and then slowly around at the rolling meadow. In one hand she carried a clip board. Over her shoulder was a cloth bag. When she turned back to the young people and was certain that she had every eye upon herself she pointed first at one tree, then at another.

An afterschool nature class! I thought. I love nature classes. This must be the teacher or the guide, or whatever. I’m not sure if she even spoke, but whatever it was she said or didn’t say, they seemed to watch her with an odd mix of restlessness and expectation. Slowly, she reached into her bag and pulled something out, something closed in her fist. She waited for a moment, making sure they had their eyes on her. They did. It was actually sort of hard to take one’s eyes off of her.

“Catch!” she yelled and pulled her arm back and flung whatever it was, into the air. From where I sat, it looked like a handful of pebbles.

The kids didn’t hesitate. They leaped and scrambled in cutthroat delight, pushing at each other, trying to grab as many as they could and when there were no more to be caught or collected off the ground, they gathered around her again, displaying what they had in their hands, yelling, “Acorns! Acorns!”

Her face remained calm and still unreadable. When they fell quiet, she started pointing at the trees once more.

Now, it seemed to me that if she was asking them which of these trees might have produced acorns, it was not a fair question. Over to my left was the tangle-branched old forest. There were some small pre-bud nubs showing here and there, but everything was still bare of leaves. In front of me rolled the meadow whose great wide trees stood mostly alone, at distances from each other. They, too, were bare.  When they had leaves, you might be able to identify a lot of them fairly easily if you knew about such things. But right now, it seemed a nearly impossible task.

However, to my surprise, it was only a short time before one of the boys threw up a hand with a cry of “Ooohh! Ooooh!” The kind of cry that indicates a kid is about to die on the spot if not called upon to speak.

When the teacher—or whatever she was--pointed to him, he didn’t hesitate, but yelled, “Over there!” and, without waiting for permission, he began to run toward a big, solitary tree which stood not far away. Everyone followed and when he reached the tree and bent down over the scrabbly winter grass, everybody stopped and watched. The boy lifted up an old branch which had probably been knocked to the ground during the winter and he waved it triumphantly in the air. A couple of brown withered leaves still clung to it. He ran his finger around the neatly divided lobes of one leaf and touched the sharp points.

Several hands went up at once and several voices cried out, “I know! I know!” The teacher pointed to one of them.

“Oak!” the kid shouted out in triumph.

“Oak! Oak! Oak!” everybody else chanted in excitement, again, watching the teacher closely. She lifted a hand. In it, she had one last acorn which was pinched between thumb and forefinger. She held it up against the outline of the tree. They grew quiet, but if they were waiting for her to speak, she didn’t. She just stood there for a long moment and let them think whatever thoughts a person was likely to think when gazing at a little dirt-brown nut and a five-story oak tree. Then she dropped the acorn into her hoodie pocket.

Nobody moved. They still waited expectantly. For something in particular, I wondered?

She put her hand into her magic cloth bag again. She pulled out a new object and lifted it up high. It was pointy at the top, round and fat at the bottom.

“Catch!” she commanded.

She had a really good arm. The dark shape flew high into the sunny chill air and then it came tumbling down. One of the girls leaped from the ground and caught it. “Pine cone!” the girl cried out triumphantly.

Makes perfect sense for a tree study, I thought.

However, there was now a problem. The teacher turned slowly, her face serene, pointing first at one tree, then another. The students followed her gestures closely.

But nobody raised a hand or said a word because there wasn’t a single evergreen to be seen.

In the summer, of course, these trees would be green and broad-leafed—oaks, sycamores, maples. And when she pointed to the dense old woods across the way, it was the same. In there, was a late succession forest. You rarely got pines in a forest like that.

Then suddenly, without bothering to raise a hand, somebody let out a cry. “Look! At the bottom of the hill! There it is!” Or maybe the person said, “There he is!” I couldn’t quite catch the words.

Everybody began to run.

For a few seconds I was mystified and then I remembered. How could I have forgotten?

My Green Man. There he was--still lying quietly like a fallen Christmas tree.

The kids stampeded toward him, shouting and cheering, almost as if this was the moment they’d all been waiting for. Did the teacher bring this tree with her wherever she went?

She whistled that sharp ear-splitting whistle again. It could have awakened any dog for half a mile around, but there weren’t any dogs. However, the Green Man sat up and, spotting the young people storming in his direction, he got onto his feet. Because of all the tangled pine branches he was wearing, it was clumsily done, but in the next few moments he was on the path, running awkwardly, but going as fast as he could.

“Catch him! Catch him!” the teacher commanded.

He had a head start, of course, but the kids were moving faster than he was and the distance was closing.

In a moment, when he reached the place where the path forked and one arm curved off toward the woods, he chose the woods. He was soon out of my line of sight.  The young people ran past me, laughing and shouting and soon disappeared, too.

Clearly, once they caught up with him, the tree lesson was going to continue in one form or another.

Clearly, this was a game they all knew. A game that had nothing to do with that old story. Do you know it? The one about the Guardian of the World Tree who must be murdered and torn to pieces at the end of every winter so that Spring may begin again.

The teacher came along at the tail end of the pack. She wasn’t running, but she moved with a surprising quickness of foot. She actually looked like she was enjoying herself. She had the smallest beginning of a smile. It was only an early spring blossom of a smile, but it entirely changed her face.

I didn’t follow them, of course. I would have been embarrassed to be caught spying like that.

So. There’s no help for it. Once more, we’ll have to leave whatever came next to our imaginations.

Snip, Snap, Snout, this tale is told out.

A Perfectly True Story and a Puzzle

Blog Post #2

A note before I begin:  While I was writing The Tiltersmith I did a lot of research about the many woodland spirits and deities who have been showing up in folklore everywhere for thousands of years. I was particularly interested in the figure of the Green Man who is usually associated with rebirth and spring. He can be fierce and bloodthirsty or mild and gentle. Sometimes he shows up as the Guardian of the World Tree who must be murdered and ripped to pieces at the end of every winter. Sometimes he shows up as a great antlered stag. Other times he is a demi-god, half stone, half alive with leaves growing out of his nose and mouth. The one who shows up in The Tiltersmith managed to fashion himself into his own Brooklyn version. 

Now, this is a perfectly true story, although—really---is there such thing as a perfectly true story?

Anyway, it happens that I took some photos, so you’ll be able to see I’m not making this up.

It happened a couple of months ago in February, not long before The Tiltersmith came out. I had been restless all day, having trouble figuring out what I wanted to work on next. It was so bittersweet, knowing the book was finished. No more wandering around in my imaginary woods with my wild dog or my own beloved Brooklyn Green Man. How I missed them. It is hard to let go of an act of imagination once you pull it out of the magic hat. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Once you conjure it up, it doesn’t like to let go of you. I decided it might be best to give my mind a rest, to just go out for an ordinary, everyday walk, to clear my mind.

 Now Prospect Park has eleven official entrances and each one is completely different from the others. Whichever one you choose, you only need to walk a dozen steps inside and the city falls away behind you. All the sounds of the green taxis honking and the buses braking and people talking into their phones, fade off. You could choose the gateway that brings you to the head of the rolling meadow that is nearly a mile long. Or you could choose the gateway that will take you into the Midwood which is a small leftover forest that is now more than 8,000 years old. It was one of the first forests that sprang up here after the glaciers began to retreat. When, the designers, Olmsted and Vaux, first landscaped Prospect Park, they decided not to take these woods out, but to leave them as they were. When you walk in them now, you will often find, maybe with a certain amount of uneasiness, that you have the whole place to yourself.

Then there’s the entrance at Third Street, which is guarded over by two bronze panthers. The panthers stand among the trees, high up on two narrow stone pillars. On first glance you will think they are identical, but when you examine them closely, you will see they are not. They look very serious about their jobs and probably dangerous. You would not wish to meet them on one of those nights when they decide to get down for a walk.

But that’s a story for another time because on this particular afternoon I wasn’t looking for mysteries or adventures. I was just walking to settle something restless inside myself. So, I chose the entrance that leads to the playing fields, an easy-going, no surprises entrance.

Here there are seven baseball diamonds laid out around a long oval of lawn. On that day, the lawn was just beginning to turn green, but the diamonds had not yet been refreshed with that delicious looking caramel-colored dirt that gets laid down in the spring. There were no ball players yet. Scattered at distances from each other were people playing with their dogs and parents pushing strollers and persons simply strolling along not looking for trouble, just like myself. As I walked north, the ballfields were on my left and the woods were on my right. It was almost possible to hear the trees waking up, rustling softly, pushing out the tiny nubs that would turn into buds that would unfold into leaves. Up ahead everything was open and full of sunlight.

After the ballfields the lawn begins to rise and fall into soft hills. These hills obscure the view a bit when you’re passing through them. Sometimes I think these hills look forbidding, like the old “barrow” mounds where ancient people used to bury their dead and where the ghost “wights,” the undead, were said to take up residence. Other days I think these hills look gentle and inviting—like the backs of stretching kittens, or loaves of bread. That was the way they appeared to me on that day. Perfectly innocent. The sky was a bright blue, rising up and up, one of those afternoons with extra room in it. I was warm enough, moving along briskly and to keep myself steady, I looked for signs of spring. I was pleased to see flocks of robins everywhere, trippety tip-toeing in short dashes over the grass, searching for late-in-the-day worms.

When I was nearly past the ballfields I caught, in the corner of my eye, a quick glimpse of something moving through the trees. For just a moment my heart jumped, as I thought of my old beloved “ghost dog”  (read my previous blog). But then, of course, I remembered it couldn’t be him, since he had been rescued and adopted not that long ago.

In any case, whatever it was, was gone.

I continued along on my ordinary, everyday little walk and was beginning to think what a good idea this was and that I was getting myself nicely sorted out. I passed the little dog beach at the edge of the pond, but there were no dogs paddling around with tennis balls in their mouths. Too early in the season.

There’s a curve in the path there and when I came around it, I saw, just up ahead, lying in the grass, a big sawn-off piece of fallen tree trunk. Right next to the tree trunk, was something that sort of looked like a discarded and withered Christmas tree. At first, I didn’t give this much attention since people sometimes hold onto their holiday trees forever around here and then drag them into the park and dump them. But, walking forward, I had the feeling there was something not quite right about this scene. I was wondering what it was, when the tree made an unnatural jerking movement with one of its upper branches. I stopped, puzzled. The branch settled back down. Surely, this must have just been the wind, although there wasn’t any wind.

I waited uneasily. But when nothing else happened, I got my phone out and took a picture and then I walked closer.

As I approached it, I saw that the tree was much shaggier and withered looking than I had thought at first. To my alarm, it moved again. This time it appeared to be wiggling something at its bottom end that looked much like a foot. Why would a Christmas tree have a foot? As I drew near, I saw that, indeed, the tree had two feet with big shoes on them.

Wait. What? Was this meant for me? Was it a tree or was it, after all, some sort of a Green Man just lying right there in the middle of the park?

Forgive me. Of course, it wasn’t meant for me. It was just a weird sort of coincidence. This is a problem with coincidences, don’t you think, that it’s hard not to take them personally? They often feel like messages or warnings or a joke that the universe is playing on you.

 I looked around sharply to see if there was anyone else nearby, but there wasn’t anyone in hailing distance. Which seemed unusual in itself and did nothing to calm my uneasiness. I also noticed, all of a sudden, that there were no robins around. Why I thought robins could be of help to me in such a situation, I have no idea.

I was torn between a silent internal voice of caution warning me to get out of there fast, and another, louder, piece of me which wanted to know just what the hell was going on. I waited, watching. Maybe the tree was waiting, too.

After what seemed a long time, but probably wasn’t, the tree very slightly lifted its head, apparently to get a better look at me.

Yes. Its head.

We stared at each other.

I just couldn’t help myself and took another picture.

Right away, as if I had frightened it or hurt its feelings, it lowered the head back down.

Really, I needed to know what was going on here.

“Are you all right?” I asked the tree. Was I addressing a dying nature spirit or some sort of madman in a tree suit?

Silence.

“Can I help you?” I tried again.

The tree lifted two branches displaying two hands which I had also missed until that moment. What it meant by that gesture, I have no idea.

Then it seemed to twist its head as if it were trying to look behind itself. It turned back to me and it spoke.

“Can you see them?”  It had a low Brooklyn sort of voice.

It took me a moment to remember to breathe. Then I scanned the area nervously again. “I don’t see anybody. Who are you looking for? What’s going on here?”

The tree lifted one of its arm branches and pointed to the little loaf-shaped hill behind itself. “They’ll be coming from up there,” it explained.

I looked at the hill with a shudder. I told myself that there were no undead barrow wights about to come pouring down from there. It was, after all, the middle of a bright Brooklyn afternoon in February.

“No,” I told him, firmly. “Nobody’s coming. Would you mind telling me what’s going on here?”

“Listen,” the tree person replied. “I can’t explain right now. Please. You gotta walk away and don’t look back. You’re drawing attention to me.”

And with that, the tree tucked its hands and feet back inside its withered branches and lowered its head.

I waited. But now, clearly it wasn’t going to move. What could I do?

I walked away.

I walked away and, using every ounce of self-control, I didn’t look back.

Now, I could tell you that I have no idea what happened next or that I never did find out what was going on. But that wouldn’t be true because when I reached the top of the next rise, I found a bench.

There I sat down and I waited and I watched.

Although I don’t think I would have guessed what was happening until I saw it coming over the hill, it wasn’t all that unreasonable, I suppose.

What do you think I saw?

There’s your puzzle.

If anybody wants to hazard a guess, would you message me on my contact page? I would be so pleased to hear your thoughts—reasonable, wild, dreadful or otherworldly.

And if you come up with the right explanation or some other striking alternative, I’d love to post it on my website. And, in any case, I’ll tell you next time what it was that I saw.

I should just close this by saying, as a general rule, I’m very suspicious of coincidences. And, to be honest, I don’t really believe that there’s such a thing as an ordinary, everyday walk.

What started The Tiltersmith in my head

Blog Post #1

One spring when I was out walking my dog, Autumn, in Prospect Park, she and I kept running into a big, solitary mastiff dog who would watch us very seriously and sadly from the trees. This dog never seemed to have an owner close by and when we tried to approach him, he would disappear into the undergrowth. 

When I asked around, I discovered there were others who had seen this fellow and that he was known as “the Ghost Dog” and was something of a legend.  I looked for him every morning, but every time I spotted him, he ran off.

It was easy to think of him as a wood spirit of some kind and from there I started a story in my head about an ancient guardian of the woods who has been ensnared by a powerful trickster figure.

When I began to actually write the book, this enchanted guardian at first took the shape of a dog. In later drafts, however, the dog morphed into the more legendary shape of the Green Man. This was somewhat against my wishes, but stories often have very strong ideas of their own about the way to go. I miss the dog’s presence in the story, but I am always grateful for how he got the story started.

I should note that the real ‘Ghost Dog’ was eventually rescued by our local animal rescue organization and gently introduced to civilization and put up for adoption.