"...the ornithologists still had serious doubts. Sutton finally put it directly: 'Mr. Spencer, you're sure the bird you're telling us about isn't the big pileated woodpecker?'

"Spencer exploded. 'Man alive! These birds I'm tellin' you all about is kints!' he shouted in their faces. 'Why, the pileated woodpecker's just a little bird about as big as that.' He held his fingers a few inches apart. 'A kint's as big as that!' he said, holding his arms wide... 'Why, man, I've known kints all my life. My pappy showed 'em to me when I was just a kid. I see 'em every fall when I go deer huntin' down aroun' my place on the Tinsaw. They're big birds, I tell you, big and black and white; and they fly through the woods like pintail ducks!'

"After Spencer's outburst, the members of the team were all believers -- not just because of his vehemence, but because his description was so accurate. Ivory-bills do not have the typical bounding flight of the pileated woodpecker. They generally fly away high and straight, with stiff flight feathers, looking very much like a pintail, and their call is a distinctive nasal kent, kent, kent -- very similar to the local name Spencer used, kint. Sutton and the others couldn't wait to get to the bayou and start searching.

"As it turned out, that was not an easy proposition..." --Gallagher, Tim. The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, pp. 10-11: "Of People and Peckerwoods."

Sunday, December 7, 2014

For Treebeard, Leaflock, the Ancient of Days, and Hollow Man

Dwight Norris posted the following article on "The Ivory-billed Woodpecker -- Rediscovered" group on Facebook:

Visions of Glories Past; Manhandled Mobile River Basin Sadly Diminished; in Hidden Places, Hints at Wonders of Long Ago
(Address:  www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2014/12/visions_of_glories_past_manhan.html#incart_river )

I was moved to write the following response:

"I've stood beside several giant cypresses such as the one in the photo -- relicts -- in the Pascagoula River basin.  All were spared the axe and saw because they are hollow.  Passenger pigeons and Carolina parakeets likely roosted in their crowns; they likely were touched by the hands of Native American hunters, and saw the movements of Native tribes, for hundreds of years.  I put my own hand on their trunks, and wonder what a forest full of such giants must have looked like... and imagination fails me.  I am moved from awe to sadness, and feel the need to offer some kind of apology for the colossal stupidity of my species.  But it would be akin to a former Nazi offering an apology to someone who lost their entire family in the Holocaust.  It is a wrong that can never be erased, until the victim survives and thrives, and the wrongdoer vanishes completely from the face of the earth."

Will we as a species ever regain our perspective, and see beyond our own immediate want?

Brian Carlisle and Treebeard, a relict cypress in the Leaf Wilderness and a living, breathing link to an older world.

5 comments:

  1. Very nice commentary on the majesty and mysteriousness of oldgrowth and Drunemeton trees. John, fellow IBWO and IMWO researcher.

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  2. What is lost can only be regained by rebirth.

    Very touching story brother. Your words are very true and clear. I do wish for a day that the human race will see beyond their own immediate wants.

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  3. There was a bit more to my comment--

    http://motionhealth.blogspot.com/

    If you have time on a rainy night, and want to read about the history and inference for ceremonial trees (since you spend time in them), you might like the writing on this blog titled "Which The Bulk Of People (Galen). It's about halfway down the page on the right. John

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    1. Thank you, John, for that marvelous essay. I went ahead and read most of it, and will have to return to it again and again, for the subject has long interested me, but have not until now explored it in any detail (with the exception of John Michael Greer, but I have only read his introduction to modern Druidry, which of necessity glosses over much that your essay examines in depth). I had to explore the word "Drunemeton" after your first comment, such was the mystery and beauty of the word. Really fascinating stuff.

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  4. Chris, do you want a copy of the entire book? It's 55,000 words and was my dissertation.

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