A BIRD IN HAND

Bird Feeders at 65 Fairbanks Circle

 

When blogging becomes slogging because of a pain in the knee (that fragile connection between brain and leg!), daily activity slows down to bird watching from the sofa here in our Sewanee, TN retreat. It’s a meditative exercise, not unpleasant, but not very productive due to a strange malady known as a “torn meniscus” of the knee. This malady is usually caused by energetic, athletic activity, which is laughable in an on-the-brink of 86 year old, namely me. Only cortisone and the sight of birds calmed this blogger.

A full bird feeder is a yard attraction we acquired last year. So far, we’ve sighted cardinals, house finches, tufted titmice, flickers, chickadees, robins, nuthatches, goldfinches, towhees, and other feathered friends that have helped soothe an ailing knee with their acrobatic dives into the air beyond our big picture window in the living room. 

I am reminded of my essay in Their Adventurous Will about Caroline Dormon, a renowned Louisiana botanist whose love of birds inspired her lifelong bird watching near Briarwood, Louisiana. She often spoke of early bird watching in which she and her brother crawled out on limbs to peer in birds’ nests near her childhood home in Arcadia, Louisiana. After moving to Briarwood, she set up many feeding stations that she filled with chops for finches and cornbread for insect eaters! She also stuffed cornbread into flat rock crevices and made pencil snapshots of wrens, titmice, and nuthatches when they assumed different feeding attitudes. 

Miss Carrie’s chats in the Shreveport Times magazine led to her edition of Bird Talk, a favorite volume read by Louisiana naturalists during the 20th century. Many evenings at dusk for 50 years or more, Miss Carrie fed birds, hundreds of varieties that she said were as keen-minded as humans. She kept a display of birds’ nests on the back porch of her Briarwood cabin, and in tales of Apocrypha concerning her behavior, she recorded stories about birds plucking hair from her head to build birds’ nests. She also wore a large hat with nuts around the brim from which birds feasted.

“I wouldn’t think of living in a house so tightly closed that birds couldn’t fly in and out and squirrels frolic freely from outside to inside. That simply would not be living,” Miss Carrie related to her Louisiana author friend Lyle Saxon. 

I envision her sitting on my front porch (which faces the back yard) in the evenings, “keeping company with skunks and scorpions,” and “the kingdom come,” as a friend once said about this beloved botanist.

Photograph by Dr. Victoria I. Sullivan, a fellow Louisiana botanist

 

 

TREE HUNTING AGAIN

Redbud at Chicot State Park (photo by Victoria I. Sullivan)

Some tree huggers I know are still hiking on wooded trails at age 82, but I have to admit that I struggle to make treks through forests at my age. I’m sure that Louisiana’s famous botanist, Caroline Dormon, who “carved trails through the woods, scooped out a reflection pond and planted hundreds of wildflowers, trees, and shrubs”* was a brisk walker until she reached at least 80, but I was sorely tested on a two-mile-trek looking for a crabapple in bloom yesterday in the Louisiana State Arboretum near Ville Platte, Louisiana. I discovered a blooming redbud for which I’d been searching, but the crabapple blossoms were too high to photograph, and we turned back on the PawPaw Loop Trail before I attempted to climb any steeper hills.

The Louisiana State Arboretum is a 600-acre preservation area of 5 1/2 miles of hiking opportunities for real hikers and covers a bottomland hardwood forest and a Beech-Magnolia Forest, and we enjoyed the hour in this nature preserve, despite my bum knee. I’m writing a book of poetry that Dr. Victoria I. Sullivan is photographing for me. She has spent the last forty years identifying trees and plants for me and always attempts to provide opportunities for me to engage in outdoor exercise. I was disappointed that I couldn’t get a photo of the crabapple and saw only a few white flower petals beneath one of the tallest crabapple I’ve glimpsed in my 82 years.

In the introduction to Let the Trees Answer (the book of poetry and photos about trees) I pay tribute to my mother who loved the woods. I relate that one of her paintings showing a gnome standing beneath a tree, holding a paintbrush and palette, hung in her bedroom until the 1980’s, and that piece of art symbolized her love of woods and the mystical connection to creativity my mother certainly felt. I also pay tribute to my father who would announce a cease fire for arguments at the meal table when I was growing up by saying “Look at the trees,” pointing to the three tall pines in the backyard of our home in Franklinton, Louisiana.

I wrote a lot about trees in the essay on Caroline Dormon in Their Adventurous Will, a book about memorable Louisiana women. Dormon lived on a 120-acre tract of piney woods called Briarwood near Saline, Louisiana and, according to its owner, harbored a “dark place” in its deepest parts where the devil’s snuff box grew and which Dormon would dramatically tap for naturalist visitors so that the fungus expelled a cloud of spores and impressed them with the mysteries of plant life.

In the heart of the Arboretum at Chicot State Park, I could almost hear Dormon talking about hybridizing plants so they would be immortal (she believed this) and scouring the backwoods for seeds and cuttings to put in her own woods. An adventurous soul, she probably would've devised some way of climbing one of the larger trees near the crabapple I discovered so she could take a photo of the blossoms. I was happy to see that the Arboretum featured a Caroline Dormon Lodge on the Walker Branch Trail in a Beech-Magnolia Forest that contained a covered bench where visitors could sit and listen to the trees talking.

*Southern Living Magazine, July, 1992

THE MIND OF TREES

Early morning here in Teche country is cloudy, one of those somber gray mornings that signals the exodus of fall and the advent of winter (minus the cold temps). If we aren’t careful, we could feel oppressed by the tin color of the sky at 7 a.m. I’m sitting here, looking out at falling oak and pecan leaves and thinking of the winter of my childhood when doomsday talk and arguments at mealtimes were silenced by what I considered to be an inane bit of redirection my father made in the midst of cloudy atmospheres: “Hush now, look at the trees…” We were always puzzled by this cease fire phrase.

The trees in that scenario were tall, cheerful pines right outside the screen porch where we shared meals, and I remember how I looked out at the resinous trees and smelled the sharp, clean scent of pine needles. We’d put down our forks and knives (figuratively speaking), and silence would save the day. Today, I’m in New Iberia, Louisiana where I live near a coulee overhung by water oaks, live oaks, and swamp dogwood and remember my father’s little saying: “Look at the trees.” In retrospect, I figure my father meant for us to observe their wisdom in being silent observers of disagreeable scenes, or, rather, I choose to assign that meaning to his phrase this morning. We’ve had such a long siege of disagreeable political scenes, and psychiatrists have been busy handling victims of stress brought on by the country’s divisiveness for well over a year.

During a session of a self-help course I once took, we were advised to be careful about being a "guy in a diner," a person who often offers opinions just to hear himself talk, and we certainly have had our fill of guys in a diner this past year. However, my father’s words, “look at the trees,” now resound in a room where the television is turned off, and I view the wind ruffling the leaves on my cherished, silent oak and think: It's difficult to be uncivil when you're silent.

Trees peopled my writing when at the age of seven, I wrote my first story that featured a girl who disappeared into a large hole in an oak tree and took up residence. Inside was a room that held furniture similar to the furnishings within the homes of Beatrix Potter’s animals where a table was set for tea. People like Potter and our imminent Louisiana tree hugger, Caroline Dormon (Miss Carrie, now deceased) attributed human and creaturely qualities to trees, but they recognized that their dominant quality was one of being profoundly, wisely silent. The tree in that early story was, for me, a safe place to be. Later, I mutilated a page in my mother's Elbert Hubbard's Scrapbook, scissoring out the phrase: "Silence is a true thing and never betrays" and putting it in a notebook of quotations I liked. 

In A Slow Moving Stream, my most recent book of poetry, I penned a poem about trees inspired by my journey, traveling by car, the length of the Bayou Teche from Port Barre to Morgan City, Louisiana last year. It’s called “The Mind of Trees,” and last week I chose to read it at a poetry reading in Baton Rouge, Louisiana:

“The Mind of Trees”

They were drawn to trees

lining the banks of the Teche,

hanging over the brown water,

wide arms stretched out in welcome.

The live oaks, an enclosure

against a world that had exiled them,

palmetto and Spanish dagger growing close by,

cypress in the swamp becoming their homes.

They liked the sturdiness of lordly oaks

and the water meandering past,

sat under encompassing branches,

eating and drinking.

If the trees could talk, they said,

and made up stories

about what the oaks had heard.

The trees outlasted their language.

No matter who came

the language disappeared into English –

French, Spanish, German, Chitimacha.

English filled the horizon,

the patois of each clan,

buried under oaks, words waiting.

The trees absorbed all of it

and when hurricanes felled them

they were cut into logs,

loggers finding stories in their language

imbedded in the rings,

began to preserve what had been lost.

Word by word, they created

an articulation of arriving,

the sound of memory offering itself

from a distant longing. They heard

what they had been told not to hear—

testimonies for their being there.

And they praised the trees

for finding a way without them.

Photograph by Victoria I. Sullivan appearing in A Slow Moving Stream

TIME-OUT WITH TREES

Although my evening time on the porch gives me a view of a lovely woods that include white oaks, maple, dogwood, and tulip poplar trees, I miss the tall pines that edge my front yard in New Iberia, Louisiana. I grew up in the piney woods of southeast Louisiana and have always enjoyed the sharp scent of pine needles and the cheerful appearance of those straight-backed conifers.

Yesterday evening while I sat looking out at two fat white oaks, I thought about the Louisiana botanist, Caroline Dormon, whose picture of her hugging a large pine tree appears in my book, THEIR ADVENTUROUS WILL: PROFILES OF MEMORABLE LOUISIANA WOMEN.*  Dormon probably would have agreed with Chinese practitioners of medical massage who believe in the healing abilities of trees—they tout that trees absorb the earth's energy and the universal force from the heavens and help humans channel and cultivate calm. The practitioners advocate that pine trees radiate Chi, nourish blood, strengthen nervous systems, foster long lives, and are the "immortal trees."

Caroline Dormon would have added that they also nurture the human spirit. She lived on a 120-acre tract of piney woods called "Briarwood" near Saline, Louisiana, received a presidential citation for her work in conservation of trees and was the first woman in the U.S. to be elected an associate member of the Society of American Foresters. In 1921, she also became the first woman to be hired by the Louisiana Forestry Service.

As a child, Dormon spent her summers exploring longleaf pines on her grandfather's property near Arcadia, Louisiana, and pines became a lifelong interest that led to the establishment of Louisiana's only national forest, Kisatchie. During the early 1900's when the harvest of timber had peaked, Dormon, then a schoolteacher, began to lobby for the preservation of a tract of longleaf pine in the Kisatchie Hills area. Those hills and surrounding area were later recognized as a national forest. She describes her enchantment with the area that developed into the national forest:

"The great pines came right to the water's edge on these lovely clear creeks, with only an occasional magnolia and dainty wild azalea and ferns. There the idea was born—this unspoiled beauty must be preserved for future generations to enjoy..." And for over a decade she urged congressmen, senators, judges, and the U.S. Forest Service to purchase and preserve the pinelands of north Louisiana. On June 10, 1930, the National Forest Preservation Committee purchased 75,589 acres in three districts of Kisatchie, Catahoula, and Vernon, and Dormon called it "Kisatchie," which became its official name. The forest now contains approximately 600,000 acres of "green gold."

Like the Chinese practitioners mentioned above, Dormon regarded trees as anthropomorphic, writing of them to a close friend: "Those pesky lumbermen were here again today trying to convince me that 'grandpappy' (a 300-year old longleaf pine tree) wouldn't outlive me...oh my, the tales he could tell of his rugged survival through the storms of life." Then she sat down and wrote Forest Trees of Louisiana (1943).

Dormon's home place, Briarwood, was recognized by the American Horticultural Society as a sanctuary for the flora of the South and remains a large natural laboratory sustained by the Caroline Dormon Foundation. During the last years of her life, the ailing naturalist lay abed beneath a bright quilt in the bedroom of her log cabin, looking out the back window and communing with her beloved trees. Dormon felt that trees were immortal and she also had an abiding interest in plant life, believing that if herbaceous plants were hybridized, they, too, would never die!

A note for porch sitters and tree lovers: Chinese practitioners believe that a human can interact with trees by sitting and communing with them silently, and the silent, subtle energy leads a person into the wonders of the tree's inner life. But tree climbers are discouraged from doing any careless climbing, and tree lovers advocate open and respectful behavior, rather than pressing the trees to serve selfish purposes (does this include building tree houses?).

And so much for backyard meditation, developing a relationship with trees, and collecting energy from the so-called most spiritually advanced plants on earth.

*Photograph of Caroline Dormon hugging a tree was reprinted in THEIR ADVENTUROUS WILL: PROFILES OF MEMORABLE LOUISIANA WOMEN by permission of photographer Curtis Guillet of Natchitoches, Louisiana

A MELROSE PLANTATION "WRITER IN RESIDENCE"

This morning I received an email from my good friend, Dr. Mary Ann Wilson, English professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Mary Ann told me that she's presently teaching a class in Louisiana History in which students are studying Children of Strangers by the Louisiana author Lyle Saxon. I was prompted to rummage in a cardboard box that contains the books I've published, searching for the volume entitled Their Adventurous Will, Profiles of Memorable Louisiana Women. This volume contains an essay featuring Miss Cammie Henry, former owner of Melrose Plantation in Natchitoches, Louisiana, that tells of her friendship with Lyle Saxon. After re-reading the essay, I was inspired to write a few lines about Saxon, based on excerpts from Their Adventurous Will.

Lyle Saxon was a "writer in residence" at Melrose Plantation for many years in the first half of the 20th century when Miss Cammie Henry invited writers and artists to live on the premises of her plantation, issuing one requirement for permanent residence: they must produce works of art. In appreciation for Miss Cammie's patronage, which lasted many years, Saxon donated his personal library, manuscripts, and papers to her. This treasure trove comprised one tenth of the library at Melrose!

Miss Cammie had confessed to Saxon during his first visit to Melrose that she "always had her nose in a book," handing him book after book for his inspection. "So few people are interested in these old things," she said. "Why man alive, they are the most interesting things in the world to me. I love them all!" In the ensuing years following that first visit from Saxon, the books that he wrote gained a place on the Melrose Plantation bookshelves among volumes by Roark Bradford, Rachel Field, Kate Chopin, Caroline Dormon, and many others. Actually, historians believe that books by Lyle Saxon and Kate Chopin were pilfered from Miss Cammie's extensive personal library.

Miss Cammie invited Saxon to live at Melrose Plantation in 1927, and he readily gave up his New Orleans apartment to establish residence at Yucca House on the grounds of Melrose. Yucca House was one of several structures built by Augustin Metoyer, descendant of Marie Therese Coin-Coin, an African slave woman who gained her freedom because of her connection with the Frenchman Thomas Pierre Metoyer. Metoyer and Marie Therese Coin-Coin had 14 children, and several of her sons received land grants after they and their mother were freed. In 1796, Marie Therese's son Louis obtained a large grant for the property that is now Melrose Plantation, and later Augustin built three houses of simple African design, constructed of bousillage (mud and deer hair) placed between massive timbers, on the property then called Yucca Plantation. After Miss Cammie's husband, John Henry, acquired Yucca Plantation he renamed it Melrose after Melrose Abbey in Scotland, home of Sr. Walter Scott, his favorite author.

When Miss Cammie restored the distinctive buildings and showed them to Lyle Saxon, he became fascinated with Yucca House. He had once told Miss Cammie at a New Orleans dinner party, "I think I could write a book in that house." In "that house," Saxon wrote Father Mississippi, Lafitte the Pirate, Fabulous New Orleans, Friends of Joe Gilmore, Old Louisiana, and Children of Strangers. Children of Strangers, his only full-length novel, was set at Melrose, and Saxon featured people who lived on and around the plantation as models for the characters. He actually used many of the books and scrapbooks containing Louisiana articles that Miss Cammie had collected to fuel his writings and acknowledged her in dedications for Old Louisiana and Fabulous New Orleans.

Miss Caroline Dormon, famous Louisiana naturalist and botanist, was a frequent visitor to Melrose Plantation and appears in another essay of Their Adventurous Will. She believed that Lyle Saxon had a gift greater than William Faulkner and described the Nobel Prize winner as "pompous with bags and bags of tricks." She told Saxon that he (Saxon) was restrained and should turn loose in his writing, which would release "tremendous, mysterious power." In a letter to Saxon she exclaimed "one of these days, I will read a novel by Lyle Saxon which will fairly quiver with power and which will curl up the thin sheets of bright metal (probably tin) that glitter on Faulkner, Anderson, Lewis, and these other poseurs..."

Lyle Saxon paid the ultimate tribute to Miss Cammie in a letter extolling the plantation life of Louisiana—particularly Melrose: "When I die and go to Heaven (pause here for the jeering to die down)... and I go to that place where one is allowed to spend eternity in doing the things he enjoyed most on this earth, I shall pass by the halos, the harps, the wings and all the rest of the celestial grandeur—and I shall ask for just one thing. Just let me spend the rest of my time in visiting the places on earth that pleased me when I was alive...and if I get this wish of mine, one of the first places to which my ghost will return will be Melrose, the home of the Henry family, some twenty miles out of Natchitoches..."

The above excerpts from this essay in Their Adventurous Will were based on research I did in the Cammie Henry Room of the Eugene P. Watson Memorial Library, Northwestern State University of Louisiana in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Archivists there graciously opened to me library collections of letters, photographs, periodical articles and memorabilia concerning Cammie Henry, Lyle Saxon, and many artists and writers who resided at Melrose Plantation during the 20th century.

Brava, Dr. Mary Ann Wilson, for recognizing one of Louisiana's "undersung" authors who once enchanted the naturalist Caroline Dormon and whose book, Children of Strangers, "quiver[ed] with mysterious power."