I left the Big Blue Marble Bookstore Saturday afternoon seeking a little time alone (it is my habit) and a walk through a day that was slowly gaining shimmer. If you get the chance, go down into the Wissahickon near the Kitchen's Lane entrance, a friend had written. It's quite lovely, if you've never been.
I wasn't at all sure where I was, but I did begin to walk and soon was up on Ellet Street, across Sherman, and into Carpenter's Woods. It was quiet there; the blue tips of brown butterflies were rising and falling like leaves in a wind. I had a big bag with me and the wrong shoes. I was wearing a white-as-winter jacket. Nevertheless, I walked across the stony paths and the still-deciding trees until I came upon a woman with a hat, a serious walking stick, and an appropriate dark coat. Which way to the stream or the springs? I asked, and soon she was telling me all about these woods—their woodpeckers, warblers, thrushes, owls; the fat toads that sing; the migratory habits of its birds. She had, in fact, some literature with her—a map, a brochure with pictures she had taken—and she took her time explaining. Come back in a month, she invited, and you will hear this place sing.
I may just do that. For it is peaceful there, in this tip of Fairmount Park, this century-old bird sanctuary. And besides, as I later read in the literature, Carpenter's Woods is rich with legacy. In the early 19th century, for example, the land belonged to the gentleman-collector George Carpenter, who built his own natural history museum, not to mention greenhouses, among the springs and trees. A century later, in the wake of grotesque plume hunters and, at last, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the land was fiercely loved by a certain school principal named Caroline Moffett. The Carpenter's Woods brochure tells us this:
Every spring from 1921 to 1936, as part of her mission to educate the public in the protection of bird-life, Moffett and the teachers and students of Henry School staged Percy Mackaye's Sanctuary: A Bird Masque, a grand pageant in Carpenter's Woods with many children in bird costume. In the pantomime the children and birds are saddened when a cardinal is shot by plume hunters, but the Spirit of Education persuades the hunters to throw down their weapons.Gerald Stern, the genius poet, has written a poem, "In Carpenter's Woods." I share its final lines with you here, in honor of this month of poetry and of the Woods themselves:
... I tell you that world is as large as the one you sigh and tremble over;
that it is also invulnerable and intricate and pleasurable;
that it has a serious history;
that it was always there, from the beginning.
1 Comments on Bird Song, Carpenter's Woods, and a Moment with Gerald Stern, last added: 4/11/2011
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I love the perspective in this photo. I can just picture Caroline and her students--thank you.