I got this title from fellow Substack writer, James Roberts. He writes a newsletter called Into the Deep Woods and when I saw it it was like, heck yeah, I want to write about that too. So I started right up.
He’s posting from the Cambrian Mountains of Wales with its lovely dells and streams and oak forests, I’m posting from the outskirts of downtown San Antonio in what used to be a forest but is now a city.
It used to be quite a nice forest, actually, extending for miles on either side of the river. That’s what the Spanish explorers reported. They had a propensity to exaggerate, of course, but still.
There the entire panoply of critters resided and the full spectrum of nature’s creative expression resounded. Bird calls and croaking frogs, howling wolves and bellowing alligators - groovy nooks with living things, enchanted and enchanting, filled the river course and the accompanying woods all along the way.
The Payaya, what the Spanish called those people, were frequent visitors too with their own peculiar sounds but even they were not the first humans to know this place, not by a long shot. In fact it was a short shot for those bow wielding humans hunting with their high tech wood and stone hunting instruments for this was a place where Mother Nature’s beneficence was fully apparent and the hunting was good.
When the Spanish first arrived in 1691 they saw it differently. This was no beneficence of Mother Nature, these were no gracious gifts to her children, these were resources to build an outpost with for their far flung empire. The trees and the water and even the rocks themselves were requisitioned and utilized for building a fort and a farm and a church and a way station on the way to even more Spanish outposts even farther away along the King’s Road. Infact the conditions were so propitious that they established 5 missions here. Plenty of natural resources and plenty of friendly pagan Indians to convert and enslave.
The rivers, now known as the San Pedro and the San Antonio, were both spring fed and gentle, rising up from the earth and wandering in their water course towards an eventual confluence some miles down stream. At the present site of downtown San Antonio they ran only a quarter mile apart and gave birth to a rich alluvial valley and there the grooviness of Mother Nature was fully evident. I say ‘ran’ because they no longer run, atleast not without help from the city’s water treatment plants.
Now the rivers are artificial and the springs are dry and the deep woods are an urban landscape populated with large buildings reaching into the sky, far higher than even the largest trees of yesteryear ever did. I ride my bike through here frequently looking for the lost wildness, Yanawana as those people called it, ‘the place of peaceful waters’.
Out of the hills and down the valley of San Antono I go. It used to be a valley, now it’s Broadway Avenue, State Highway 368, lined with buildings and flowing with cars. It still sounds like a river, kind of, a river of cars.
The path I follow on my bike has been followed for millennia. People trekking from the spring water fountains where Mother Nature herself resided to the confluence of the rivers where a rich alluvial valley gave birth to a cornucopia of plants and animals.
The buildings are all built for business. I pass a bright green Office Source Limited store with large display windows, inside all the furniture you need for your office. Nola: a brunch and beignets place in a red brick building with a patio and coffee to go incase you’re late. Woof Gang Pet Grooming and Bakery, hmm, a curious combination, get your dog combed and trimmed while you enjoy a delicious snack I guess.
Apartments and condos also line the street. The Flats at River North. The Compound at the Park. The Rivera. Brick and stone buildings three and four stories high. This is the outskirts of downtown. Bookstores, banks and restaurants. Buildings have replaced the trees, cars have replaced the critters but I still recognize the path.
Passing under the expressway looping above me in the sky I soon enter the deep forest, the canyons of Houston Street and Commerce Street. I ride past the alleyways where the dumpsters reside and the street people hide. There are parks where nature is still celebrated: Veteran’s Memorial Plaza and Travis Park but Main Plaza, the old town square of the old colonial town is all stone and steel with a few token trees planted around the edge. And of course the Riverwalk, that long linear park etched beneath the surface of the busy city, it follows the river for miles - from near the Springs on the north side to the furthest mission 10 miles south of downtown.
A light rain begins to fall and everything becomes luminous, shining. The light is muted, no glare.
I ride down Houston and stop at the Royal Blue. A definite groovy nook.
Inside the Eagles sing softly over the speakers. One of these nights, one of these crazy old nights we're gonna find out, pretty mama what turns on your lights. Mmm, no doubt.
The woman behind the counter says, Hi, welcome. What would you like?
Hi. Thanks. I’ll have a cachamoochie please, I mean a whichacallitchino, chopanoochi, maccanacacapachino. That’s it. With oat milk.
Ha ha, ok. Anything else?
Yes. There are many things I would like - for everyone to get along, no more greed and selfishness. Just cooperation, you know?
Yes, I do know, she smiles. I’ve hit her warm spot.
This could be heaven, this could be hell. That’s an Eagle’s song. I say and sit down by the window waiting for my capachooti, looking out at the street.
Windows reflect and transmit images. Two visions. I can see the people walking by outside and the superimposed image of the the entire grocery store/cafe behind me, all in the same picture. Chairs are like people without people it occurs to me. I wonder, how much do I really see and how much goes unnoticed, subliminal and sublime? I ask myself this question often.
Cappucinno with oat milk, sings out the barista. I pick up the cardboard cup with the sacred liquid inside. Thank you, I say. She offers a nod.
Returning to my station I resume gazing out the window. People of all sorts are passing by. Street people wearing distinctly out of fashion clothes, mis-matched colors, pajamas and over coat, anything goes. One tall black man with a pink sheet or some kind of twisted material wrapped around his chest, a robe thing around his waist and another like a skirt hanging to his knees. Hard to describe but obviously he took some time to arrange it before he set off down the street. Tourists and locals: they are easily identified, the tourists by their curiosity and the locals by their casualness. Business men with button down shirts carrying a brief case, shiny shoes.
Cars drive by with their lights on, eyes wide open and I understand why I’m here, that I’ve arrived. That this is the place. The ancient sacred site between the two rivers.
Here people come and go, worshipping at the bar where the light shines and the sacred items lie - chips, chocolate, tacos, whatever you want, thirty feet of refrigerated beverages. The card is handed over or inserted and the computer beeps happily. The rite is consummated. Off walks the patron, enhanced, satisfied, a little fulfilled.
Outside there’s no sign of the ancient people or their forest. Or wait a minute, maybe this is the sign. The ancient people and their ancient forest transformed by time and ingenuity into . . . this?
I look closer. Yep. There it is. The ancient forest and the ancient people. I wonder again, how much do I really see and how much goes unnoticed, subliminal and sublime? Maybe the answer is to stop asking and witness.
‘Into the Mystic’ sings Van Morrison from somewhere overhead. I wanna rock your gypsy soul just like way back in the days of old and together we will float into the mystic.
Music for the podcast: Offthewally from the album Pollination 00 - 2:22. Thank you.
In the deep woods cross pollination happens between all the like minded plants and animals, sharing the DNA from the top of the trees to the underground labyrinths of the voles and the gophers and the glorious worms. Earthworms eat the nematodes and organic matter that nobody else would bother with and the birds eat the earthworms. Food chain.
Cross-pollination happens easily in the city like it does in the jungle. Pollen floating around everywhere, ideas and money and sideways glances. Yes.
In a city cross-pollination happens as a result of the networks of human endeavor placed in a latticework against the bright sky. Scraping the sky with it’s buildings.
In the average forest, density is around a hundred trees per acre. That’s 200 feet by 200 feet. In the downtown urban forest the ‘trees’ are stacked so close together that they touch, share a wall, a common boundary, thick as the Amazon jungle where the borders blur and merge, plant life and insect life, bird life and animals interact intimately and often.
In the city intimacy is imposed on people by the sheer immensity of the concrete canyons. The occasional greenways create a semi-authentic natural space and a view of the sky. Oh yes there is still earth and sky, oh humans. Don’t give up hope, the gods of earth and sky reside somehow still. Beyond it all.
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