Whose woods these are…

Being out of town and much occupied with family matters, I missed last Friday’s inauguration of my friend Marielle Anzelone’s City Room series on autumn in a Manhattan forest. The second part of this weekly project, which runs until the first day of winter, comes out today this Friday. You must check it out, and then come back every week for the next installment. It is learned and lovely.Of the 23 comments I read on the first article, not one of them was the typical smartass/dumbass/asshole you so often find via the internet’s license-to-be-a-schmuck. (This blog, blessedly, is of such finely-grained obscurity that no troll can be bothered with it.) Hath the music of nature charms to soothe the savage beast?The other day I joined Marielle for a sojourn in her mossy, mushroomy patch of woods. Her intern-wallah was out of commission, and since the urban woods can be, well, iffy — in an utterly human way — it’s best to go with a buddy. To Be On The Safe Side, for Inwood Hill is surprisingly isolated, and unfortunately notorious for the crimes committed there (ah, the Inner Borough). We wandered around examining the ground and the canopy, calling out our finds, photographing the same things: delicate coral-like fungus, fungus growing on fungus, many more mushroom species than I’ve ever seen in the same location. At least four kinds of galls. Generations of broken glass. The screeching of blue jays, the patrolling of squirrels. Chestnut oak. Witch hazel. Low-bush blueberry. Woodland aster. Beech. Dime bags. A meadow pulsing with bee-mimicking flies. Abandoned bird nests. The wonderful, tonic smell of spicebush (where has this sweet, peppery odor been all my life?). A great crested flycatcher, with its grey, rufus, and lemony yellow. The largest carpet of moss I’ve encountered in the city. A face in the gall.

Down the hill from here, the massive boles of tuliptrees, our forest giants, and the cathedral heights of mighty oaks. It was a cloudy morning, with spotlights of sun breaking through. The green is most intense on days like this, soft and glowing, but already the serviceberries are yellowing. It was the last hurrah before the Fall.