HEEERE…AND THERE’S JOHNNY!

The Travel and Leisure section of the Council-of-Concerned-Conservationist newsletter

A dispatch by The Rootless Metropolitan, filed from the 100-Acre Wood Near the Prison Complex, Post-Kneecap Incident

Filed under: Recovery, Rediscovery, and Re-Edenization

(Covid Era, May 2020)

“Nature has spread for us a rich and delightful banquet. Shall we turn from it? We are still in Eden; the wall that shuts us out of the garden is our own ignorance and folly.”

—Thomas Cole

Cole was right—we are still in Eden. It’s just been rezoned, and could yet become an amazon warehouse,. What remains is a sliver of swamp, a 100-acre wood tucked between a warehouse district, a tract housing development, and a child molester “Developmental Center.” Call it Eden: Rezoned.

And yet… the wildlife abounds. Rabbits dart from the tall grass. Ankle-high frogs stare you down like street philosophers. An Osprey circles. Everything’s where it ought to be—except maybe us.

Hardly anyone ventures out now. Blame the air, or the fear of it. Those who do leave behind latex gloves, candy wrappers, empty water bottles—each a kind of sacrificial offering. A discarded apple core would’ve been more honest.

Out on the trail, two fellow pilgrims stopped dead in their tracks as we approached. They just stared. What? Maybe it was the beard—grown wild since the lockdown. Maybe it was the limp—the souvenir of a February slip on a ladder. They didn’t speak at first, just stared like I was an escapee from the nearby correctional institution. I’m not. But I am planning to escape nonetheless.

Eventually, they asked which direction I was heading, even though we were already going in opposite directions. A moment later we passed a Haitian man in the marsh, walking the logs with a selfie stick, broadcasting his sermon to unseen followers. We gave him a wide berth, as one ought.

Then came the park bench in the middle of the woods on the edge of the marsh. A tribute to poor engineering and divine comedy. One leg too far in, it seesawed with the weight of the wounded. We embraced it. A bit of fun. Just then, two young women appeared. The prettier one took off her face mask—an act of trust or tiredness. The camera around my neck reassured them I was a hobbyist, not a stalker. We compared settings. Every trail photographer confesses the same thing: they don’t really know how to use their camera.

That’s the joy of it. Play first, study later. OJT—on-the-job training. You take the blurry shots. The overexposed. The accidental masterpieces. That’s Eden, too: we learn by wandering.

The camera has become our lens onto the sacred. It reveals what the eyes can’t. We spot a bird, find it in the viewfinder, and later realize it was watching us the whole time—with suspicion. In a world of masked men and closed barbershops, every stranger is stranger. Even to the birds.

Later, we met a young couple with two ivory Labs. The male was steady, the female moody—an inversion of usual canine norms. I made an offhand observation about female dogs being calmer than female humans. She glared. He chuckled nervously. I have a knack for turning scenic walks into social missteps.

The dogs were beautiful—alive to the world, noses flaring with each breeze. They longed to bolt. But they kept circling back, neurotic with love. Domestication does that. It builds loyalty. It also breaks something wild.

And that’s when it struck me: maybe the girlfriend would’ve been happier as Henry Phillips dog-type girl.

Refrain: (Mrs ChatGPT riffing on Henry Phillips, “Dog-Type Girl”, unsolicited. We called her on it. She claimed it was a mistake.)

🎶Maybe back in Eden, she’d have barked, not bit,

Rolled in the grass, not played the coquette.

There were no side-eyes in that first design—

Just two pups and a tree, and a world still fine.

But then came the fruit, and the knowing look,

And the leash got made from the fig leaves she took.

Now she heels, but she dreams of the chase—

And growls when you laugh at her resting face.🎶

They deserve Eden too, these dogs. So do we—if we can ever remember how to sniff our way back.

—The Rootless Metropolitan

Kneecap healing. Beard and hair uncut. Heart slightly mended.