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Travel

American Eros

We started out that morning from an 18th-century graveyard adjacent to Wharton State Forest in the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey and made our way northward up the sandy trails that run through the oak and pine forest on the southwest edge of the...

Photo by Ed Murphy It made little difference when the icy water finally reached my crotch; anything of mine living in that vicinity had already yelped in alarm, scrambled up into my torso, and perched itself safely atop my liver, chattering like a castanet. The last time my he-rig had seen that part of my body was when I was a fetus. After hours of wading through frozen swamp water in rubber boots and iced-up trousers that required occasional cracking to allow for movement, all I could feel was my arthritic right knee, the briar cuts on my face, and a growing anxiety about the location of a trail that was supposed to be to our east. But I digress… It was a breezy, clear January day; the temperature was in the low 20s, and the wind chill was about 7 degrees. We started out that morning from an 18th-century graveyard adjacent to Wharton State Forest in the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey and made our way northward up the sandy trails that run through the oak and pine forest on the southwest edge of the Great Swamp (the cartographer's words, not mine). It was a wet, mild winter, so many stretches of trail were flooded. I would try to cross on my toes or seek higher ground, but eventually the ice and freezing water poured down into my boots. My feet were numb for the rest of the day (finding blue toenails on a foot that happens to be your own can be a bit unnerving). My friend Mike, who sells antiques in New York, was wise enough to wear his neoprene waders, so he was pretty comfortable—for a while. Being a heretic, he also brought along a GPS device. I enjoy the challenge of on-the-fly navigation and dead reckoning—which is to say I'm a twit—so I just brought my beat-up USGS topographic map and compass. (In my own defense, I did bring a spare compass. Glows in the dark, too.) After we cleared the Beer Can Zone common to most state forests, very little in the way of human evidence was seen. Not even hunters seemed to venture in that deep, which hinted either at their laziness, our stupidity, or both. Herds of whitetail deer were everywhere in this relatively open area, and several very large bucks crossed our path. We also came across acres of puffy, pale green thorn lichen punctuated by clusters of bright red British soldier lichen and wintergreen berries, which we ate along our way. Tra-la-la. After a couple hours of skirting the swamp's western edge, we decided to head eastward into the Great Swamp by making our way across an open expanse of flooded grassy swale, which was covered in a crust of ice that struck our legs with every step as if we were constantly hitting our shins against a coffee table for an hour. As we slowly negotiated the deeper parts of this wide body of water with varying degrees of success, we saw a bald eagle wheeling in the sky above us. (No, it's not a clumsy metaphor—just a really beautiful bird. Enjoy it—these are the moments, my friend.) We eventually made our way across the wet, grassy expanse toward the tree line and into the dark tangle of the Great Swamp. The outer edge was so choked with saplings, briars, and brush that it was hard to stand up straight. It's important to keep close when going through these areas; even in winter, the vegetation here is so dense that a person only 20 feet away can disappear from view. The undergrowth opened up slightly as we approached the larger trees of the swamp's interior; other than the creaking trees and the distant trickle of a nearby spring, everything was still. Startling shafts of light and shadow, caused by the dense stands of Atlantic white cedars that soared upward and formed a swaying canopy 100 feet overhead, gave the place the air of a cathedral—albeit one with a knee-deep, spongy green floor of star-shaped sphagnum moss. We were there that day to find the most ancient part of this swamp; my botanist and historian friends at Bartram's Garden, the oldest surviving botanical garden in North America, had been told that stands of giant 300-year-old cedar trees still existed in its most remote regions. I neglected to ask them where these rumors came from: I know a useful pretense for an expedition when I see one, and that was enough for me. When scouting a new part of the Great Swamp, there's really no way to predict what kind of progress will be made, as the terrain can vary greatly. Reaching this part of the swamp took us longer than we had anticipated, and by this time we were well into the afternoon and too far in to turn back. This was worrying, since the swamp's dim interior darkens early. Even in winter relatively little sunlight reaches the swamp floor. In order to get back home, we had to traverse the entire breadth of the swamp and reach the Atsion-Batsto trail on the eastern side, which would eventually lead us south to where we started, and from there to Kitchen—that fabled, faraway land of dry clothes, hot food, and coffee. (Ever been to Kitchen? Nice place. Diner isn't bad either, but Diner's just Purgatory for those waiting to get into Kitchen.) Over the winter, I had made several previous treks into other areas of this swamp (I'll tell you about the derelict crane and the crazy blue crayfish some other time), but this eastward trek took us through the most difficult terrain I had yet encountered. Soon, our efforts were no longer centered on seeking out ancient stands of cedar: We were focused on trying to find a quick way out, of which there was none. By the time we realized that we had stumbled into a potentially dangerous area, it was too late. In every direction was blowdown: acres of haphazardly fallen cedars stacked several trunks high in unpredictable states of decay, occasionally disintegrating under our feet as we trod on them. In some areas the cedars formed a kind of tangled canopy suspended several feet over frozen water, deep muck, sharp stumps, thin ice, and dead trees as big as telephone poles that were brittle from the cold and would topple if you leaned or pushed against them. With no solid ground below us and the branches of the fallen trees often preventing us from traveling underneath them, we were forced to clamber over the trees themselves, carefully traversing from one to the next, trying not to fall. This made for excruciatingly slow progress. At one point, we traveled only 100 yards in one hour. For a while, we felt trapped; we were no longer hiking, but spelunking—alternating between climbing and crawling. It's only a slight exaggeration to say that passage in this particular area varied from the merely impassable to the utterly impossible. Because of our harried pace, both of us took plenty of hard spills: At one point I tripped, fell forward, cracked my back, and felt a small shelf of ice on my mustache fly off my face, making a comic "ploop" into the black water below. When I stood back up, my back felt better, and I could breathe easier. It was strangely refreshing. Mike may have found the cold, acidic water seeping through the fresh rips in his neoprene waders equally brisk and refreshing, but being the quiet type, I supposed he was savoring the joy of the moment privately. Getting out of a cold swamp before sundown is serious business; injuries and hypothermia are very real dangers. After sundown, things turn pretty grim: You're in trouble if you keep going (break a leg, die of cold), and you're in trouble if you stay put (try to start a fire in vain, die of cold). Any fire large enough to keep two people alive is a dubious option, since no dry land really exists; even if you manage to get one going, it's of little real use if you're already wet, especially if there's even the slightest breeze. One bad step in the dark, and you can wind up with a broken leg or stuck up to your chest in muck—either unable to get yourself out or immobilized long enough for the cold and wet to sink into you. You might get cell phone service—this is New Jersey, after all—but since hypothermia can kill in minutes, that may only help a rescue party find your body. In trying to traverse the treacherous area, we found ourselves in the dark. Even with a flashlight, moving forward would almost certainly result in an injury. I'm not an expert on such things, but it seems fairly obvious that spending a winter night in such an environment is not likely to have a happy ending. And with that particular night's forecast calling for a low of 17 degrees with 10- to 20-mph winds, I was beginning to have a persistent vision in my mind of Jack Nicholson's frozen rictus at the end of The Shining. At least his corpse didn't have hat hair. Our slow progress soon became cause for real concern: We kept casting worried glances over our shoulders, checking the position of the setting sun. It was becoming clear that the quickest and safest way out before sundown was to get into the waist-deep frozen water and follow the bramble-choked streams, hitting the quarter-inch-thick sheet of ice ahead of us with a stout branch of cedar to clear our way. (This is where my aforementioned upwardly mobile genitals come in.) So at this point you may ask: Was it worth risking our necks just to find an old stand of trees that some dotty Quaker botanist named John Bartram had fondled over two centuries ago? To which the only real answer is: If you have to ask, you wouldn't understand. Love does funny things to a person. After I'd gone out there repeatedly for months without seeing another soul, it became clear that susceptibility to the romance and poetic allure of natural history has become an increasingly rare disorder. You occasionally see other afflicted souls on the shoulders of rural South Jersey county roads in the summer, getting out of their cars with their backpacks, field guides, and wide-brimmed hats, earning incredulous looks from the motorists making their way to the Jersey Shore—but the fact is that their ranks are aging and their numbers are dwindling. According to my friends in the Park Service, the number of Americans who spend any appreciable time outdoors has plummeted over the past two decades. The ultimate worry, of course, is that people who feel no connection with the natural world will be ignorant of what's in it and will fail to understand why it is precious. The Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey is the largest parcel of wild land left in the densely populated coastal Mid-Atlantic region between Washington, DC, and Boston. It's a surviving fragment of a much larger forest that spanned the entire Eastern Seaboard, dating back to the end of the last Ice Age. Despite the fact that this place was riddled with settlements over the past 200 years, it's one of the last places where someone can experience what this part of the world was like when the first naturalists explored it almost three centuries ago. Thanks to conservation efforts in the 70s (there were once plans to turn the region into a huge airport), the rare plants and animals found and documented by these early explorers can still be found there today. Some of my own personal photos of these plants and animals can be seen in the following pages. Like the images in the accompanying photo montage, the Pine Barrens is a fragment; a remnant of something that once inspired awe. In part, that's why we were out there: to find even older fragments within that fragment. Fortunately, we never found it. With luck, we never will. It gives us a reason to return, to be out there. Somebody clever once said that the past is another country, but that's not an entirely sound metaphor: Countries are visited, expectations are dispelled, and then it's time to come home. Not so, the past: It's always receding, beyond reach, so the speculation goes on forever—some of which finds its way into the present. I'm talking about continuity, not nostalgia: Nostalgia drags the present into the past and murders it, but continuity lures the past into the present and forces it to make babies. Fat, weird babies. Babies with iPods and handlebar mustaches. The problem with engaging imaginatively with history is that the strength of its pull is directly related to how much one knows: The more one discovers, the more exciting it becomes, and the more tame and circumscribed our present lives can seem. Through the lens of history, we often look less like citizens and more like livestock. Ever look at a modern map and try to find an escape—a place where you could conceivably disappear or start over? It's a futile, chilling exercise. You'll start to feel a certain heaviness bearing down on you. Then you'll scowl, curse under your breath, and smack that new garlic press from Crate & Barrel off the counter. Then, like a good little drone, you'll pick it up and put it in the sink, won't you? (Yeah, me too—they really do a nice job of breaking up the clove.) As recently as a few generations ago, America was just another country: a backwater republic presiding over a bizarre social patchwork that would probably shock most modern, consensus-minded Americans. Riding from one town to the next was often as jarring as going to another country: The sheer variety of religions, ethnicities, and ways of life must have been disorienting, if not daunting. The tapestry was incredibly dense and rich: utopian communities of wildly dancing religious zealots who shunned private possessions and marriage; exiled brothers of French emperors hunting devils; mixed-race enclaves nestled deep in the forests; inbred blue-skinned families; gutter dandies in loud stovepipe tartan trousers wearing gold-plated eye-gouge spoons over their thumbs; mountainfolk who combined ancient Celtic folkways with that of native Indian tribes; circus impresarios paying dwarves and midgets to live in small towns and charging admission to onlookers; real estate speculators luring wealthy tourists to the sea with giant elephant-shaped mansions; walk-in pinhole cameras on every beach; industrialists who drove moose-drawn buggies and whose workers rode to work on suspended bicycle rail systems. Even among the respectable types, you had self-taught naturalists who wandered the continent and saved several species from extinction, were given great-sounding names by Indian chiefs, grew jungles under glass domes, and named plants after their wives' vaginas. It was heaven, I tell you. Brash. Toxic. Greedy. Aggressive. Canned. Crude. Crass. Loud. Cruel. Prudish. Simplistic. Big. Clumsy. Dumb. America is now saturated with these words. They say civilizations are remembered for their art and their wars, but it seems that America's fate is to be defined by the opportunities it's pissed away. Has there ever before been a time when the gifts and promise of an entire continent have been squandered? All that wasted beauty and strangeness! It was regarded with a blank, uncomprehending gaze while being thoughtlessly trampled by a westward-bound, hobnailed boot. The following images are from my own personal American firmament, the half-baked result of my own rummaging through American history for those qualities I favor: Graceful. Quiet. Modest. Strange. Oblique. Open. Nimble. Playful. Improvised. Gentle. Vital. Elegant. Intimate. Androgynous. Clever. Humane. Innovative. Eclectic. Organic. Groovy. I would like very much to live within the sum of these images; it's something I strive for. I invite you to try this little exercise for yourselves. It's a "hypothetical history" if you will: Gather those images. Imagine the sum of those images. Then make a flag for it. It's your birthright. PS: Did I mention we didn't make it out of the swamp? I dictated this through a medium hired by Vice. My wife's already remarried—not even six months. The nerve, right? Guy even wears my ties now.

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Lucy the Elephant by the Author; Franklinia tree engraving by James Trenchard from a drawing by William Bartram, provided by the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA; James Rose house © Frederick Charles, fcharles.com; William Bartram portrait by Charles Willson Peale; venus flytrap engraving by Sydenham Edwards; pitcher plant, thread-leafed sundew, and pink lady slipper by the author.

An Aesthetic Ecology 1. Hotchkiss Bicycle Railway: On September 13, 1892, eccentric entrepreneur Hezekiah Smith opened his suspended bicycle commuter railway system built between his bicycle factory and nearby Mount Holly, NJ, home to most of his employees. Several resort towns in southern Jersey soon built their own, but to the best of my knowledge, none survive. A sole remaining rail bike can be seen at Smith's factory compound, which is now a museum. (An additional note: Smith went on to become a bigamist, keep a small harem in his walled garden, and train a bull moose to pull his carriage. Just thought that might be of interest.) 2. Lucy the Elephant: Lucy the 60-foot-tall elephant was built in 1881 by a Philadelphia real estate developer who wanted to lure people down to the island fishing village of Margate, NJ. Two more such giant elephants were built: the larger, Elephantine Colossus, on Coney Island and the smaller, Light of Asia, in Cape May, NJ. Of the three, only Lucy remains. Over the past century, she has weathered countless storms and served as a hotel, private residence, summer home, and speakeasy. In 1970, the land Lucy stood on was sold, and the people of Margate scraped enough money together to have Lucy moved two blocks south onto a municipal lot, where she stands today. Two years ago, Lucy's howdah was struck by lightning. Tours are given through the summer months. They have Lucy key chains, too. 3. Franklinia Tree (Franklina alatamaha): An Ice Age plant related to the loblolly bay, once native to the Altamaha River in Georgia. Extinct in the wild since 1803. Brought into cultivation by 18th-century explorer and naturalist William Bartram, about 5,000 individual plants remain worldwide, all of which are thought to be descended from the seeds and saplings collected and cultivated by Bartram. The white and gold blooms appear in late summer, just as the foliage starts to turn a fiery red. It also has a beautiful striped bark. Notoriously hard to grow, as they are very susceptible to root rot. Franklinia can be seen in bloom at Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia to this day. 4. James Rose: Landscape architect James Rose's house blurs the division between inside and outside: It isn't as much a house as it is a garden with nooks to nuzzle into. Like traditional Japanese houses, the relationship with nature is intimate: Plants intrude into the interiors, and rooms open up to the garden beds. Rose's work was known for its improvisation and open-endedness. His houses were constantly transforming and were never truly finished. His famous quote: "Neither landscape nor architecture, but both; neither indoors, nor outdoors, but both." The James Rose Center is in Ridgewood, NJ. 5. William Bartram: Eighteenth-century Quaker explorer and naturalist. He's best known for his expeditions through the southern American colonies and for his vivid accounts of the flora, fauna, and people he found there, which were very influential among the Romantics in Europe. The Seminole chief Ahaya, upon hearing of Bartram's intentions while in his lands, laughed and dubbed him Puc-puggee, "The Flower Hunter." Bartram discovered and introduced into cultivation many rare native plants, most notably the Franklinia tree, which, as I just mentioned, was extinct in the wild by 1803. His home, Bartram's Garden, is now a green, quiet oasis in a sea of asphalt in West Philly. It's the oldest remaining botanical garden in North America. The sprig of flowers in his waistcoat is poet's jasmine. I really like the look on his face in this Peale portrait: a gentle but brave soul. 6. Venus Flytrap (Dionea muscipula): Originally called the tipitiwitchet and Aphrodite's mousetrap, the Venus flytrap (called that for obvious reasons) is native to the coastal bogs of the Carolinas. Each toothed lobe of the leaf contains three small hairs. If two of those three hairs are tripped by an insect within 20 seconds of one another, the cells in the hinge of the trap constrict, closing the trap. 7. Pitcher Plant (Genus sarracenia): Pitcher plants are native to North America, ranging from Canada to Florida. They absorb the nitrogen and nutrients found in the insects that get trapped in the enzyme-rich fluids of their pitchers, which are modified leaves. This is an adaptation to their native bog habitat, which is highly acidic and poor in nutrients. 8. Thread-leafed Sundew (Drosera filiformis): Thread-leafed sundew are native to the bogs of the eastern US. They secrete a sweet but very sticky fluid that traps small insects and eventually breaks them down for the absorption of their nutrients. Like all insectivorous North American plants, their habitats are very fragile and perpetually threatened. 9. Pink Lady Slipper (Cypripedium acuale): The pink lady slipper orchid can be found in old-growth open forests of the eastern US. They are nearly impossible to cultivate because they are dependent on a specific kind of soil fungus that helps them absorb nutrients. They bloom in mid-May.

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Indian pipe by the author; "Lord" Timothy Dexter engraving by James Akin; Metz Bicycle Museum by Gilbert King; Spirit Sphere by Tom Chudleigh; Fletcher Street cowboys from

Fletcher Street

by Martha Camarillo, published by powerHouse Books; Thorncrown Chapel by Whit Slemmons

10. Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora): The ghost plant, or Indian pipe, is not a fungus but a parasitic plant that feeds off of larger forest plants and trees by tapping into their root systems. They are white because they lack green chlorophyll; they no longer need to metabolize sunlight to survive. Seeing these is usually a sign of a healthy forest habitat. 11. "Lord" Timothy Dexter: Eighteenth-century Massachusetts businessman, self-styled "lord," and eccentric. He was uneducated and poor, but shrewd and almost unbelievably lucky in business. After marrying a rich widow near the end of the American Revolution, he then bought large amounts of European currencies that were worthless at the time. When trade between America and Europe resumed, he amassed a fortune. He built two ships and began an export business to the West Indies and Europe. Dexter was considered an idiot by his fellow businessmen, who gave him intentionally bad business advice in order to discredit and ruin him: First, they persuaded him to send a ship full of warming pans to the balmy West Indies. His captain sold them as ladles for the local molasses industry and made a good profit. Dexter then sent down a shipment of woolen mittens, which Asian merchants, who just happened to be passing through the West Indies, bought for export to Siberia. He then sent two ships full of coal to Newcastle, which should have been a disaster, since Newcastle was the largest manufacturer of coal in England. His ships happened to arrive during a coal miner's strike, and he made a killing from selling his shipment to desperate residents. Dexter then exported Bibles to the East Indies and stray cats to the Caribbean—each time making a tidy profit. He also accidentally amassed a huge stockpile of whalebone by mistake but ended up selling it all for corsets. On the grounds around his gaudy mansion, he erected a forest of wooden statues of the great men of his age, making sure to include himself. He then hired a poet laureate, whose sole job was to pen fulsome verse in praise of Dexter. At the age of 50, he decided to write his autobiography, A Pickle for the Knowing Ones; or Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress. The book was devoid of consistent spelling and punctuation. In order to placate his irate pressmen, he ordered them to print a solid page of periods and commas at the end of the book, saying that his readers could "peper and sault it as they please." 12. Metz Bicycle Museum: David Metz has collected and restored antique bicycles and odd mechanical household utensils for over 50 years. Some of the bicycles in his collection are the last of their make and model in the world. His museum, a small cinder-block garage in Freehold, New Jersey, is open on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Mr. Metz, who is in his mid-90s, gives all tours personally. 13. Spirit Spheres: Awful name (sounds like a feminine hygiene product), but their appeal and potential is undeniable. It's as if Skylab went slumming one night and shacked up with a hammock. Can you imagine sleeping in one on a cool, breezy night, being lulled to sleep by the swaying trees? I can see biologists using them as long-term observation posts, in areas where solid ground is a problem (swamps, etc.). I can imagine someone in New York starting a rooftop motel with these. Imagine a cluster of them in different colors; a rock climber's colony hanging underneath a high craggy ledge. Retro-futuristic, but elegant. Nothing keeping some DIY fiber-arts kids from making them on their own, really—a Martin Puryear-inspired rattan one would be amazing. They seem like outposts on a strange planet, which they are. (www.freespiritspheres.com) 14. Fletcher Street Cowboys: For as long as anyone in North and West Philadelphia can remember, generations of men and boys have been keeping horses in vacant buildings converted into makeshift stables. On any given weekend, one can see them racing their horses in Fairmount Park or trotting down the streets. Once there were over 500 cowboys in Philly, but now the number has dwindled to around 100. There's talk that the city might close down more of their stables in the near future. 15. Thorncrown Chapel: Located in Eureka Springs, AK, and designed by the late E. Fay Jones, Thorncrown Chapel was inspired by Wright, Bernard Maybeck, Japanese tradition, and Paris's light-filled Gothic chapel Sainte Chappelle. Jones used native wood to form the chapel so that it might better blend with its Ozark forest setting as it rises into the canopy of surrounding trees. It was important to Jones that no trees should be cut; trusses, assembled on site, were simply lifted into place. Jones espoused an organic architecture that emphasized clarity of structure but used repetition of form to create a pleasing visual rhythm and depth. The next best thing to a Church Not Made With Hands. Now just try to think of a megachurch without retching.

Cercropia and luna moths by the author; Grueby pottery and Fulper Vasekraft lamp courtesy of Rago Arts and Auction Center, Lambertville, NJ; Lunar Module prototype courtesy of NASA; Chaco Canyon by James Gordon (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en); Ne-Sou-A-Quoit portrait plate from

History of the Indian Tribes of North America

by Thomas L. McKenney, based on an original lithograph by Charles Bird King, published by Rice, Rutter & Co., Philadelphia, PA; Carolina parakeets illustration by John James Audubon; basket tree by Donna Storz; Morris Arboretum Fernery by the author.

16. Cecropia Moth: One of the largest Saturniid moths in North America. They emerge from their cocoons in late May, using a small spur at the base of their wing to cut open the cocoon. After spending the afternoon pumping fluid into their wings, they are ready to take flight and find a mate. They do not have mouthparts as adults and live off the fat they stored as caterpillars. They die in about ten days. 17. Luna Moth: Native to North America. My favorite moth since childhood, and a kind of personal emblem of mine. They close in mid-May just before evening. We then grab a bottle of wine, take the cages outside, and let them go. 18. Grueby Pottery: These Arts and Crafts-era pots look more like they were grown than thrown on a wheel. Made by the short-lived Grueby Faience Company in Boston during the early 1900s, they're highly prized for their elegant botanical forms, rich but subdued colors, and soft matte glaze, which cannot be re-created today because of the toxic ingredients required. 19. Fulper Vasekraft Lamp: I just love these things. Made by Fulper Pottery Co. near Trenton between 1911 and 1918, they look strangely retro-futuristic today. I can imagine one sitting on the desk of Dr. Zaius. 20. NASA Lunar Module Prototype: I've always been struck by how modest, delicate, and spidery the NASA Lunar Module was. It's amazing that anyone would agree to go into the harsh void of space in one. This whole episode in our history makes one look back in disbelief and marvel that we were once capable of treading so lightly. 21. Chaco Canyon: Chaco Canyon was a major Anasazi religious site between 900 and 1100 A.D. Like Stonehenge, the canyon's main structures were carefully aligned with the significant astronomical features in the sky, which appeared throughout the course of the year. One particularly interesting feature is the stone spiral calendar. The sun's and moon's light hits the spiral in precise, unique ways throughout the year: During the summer solstice, it is a dagger that bisects the spiral; during the winter solstice, two small daggers of light appear on each side. 22. Charles Bird King's Portraits: Some people might worry that grouping natural-history plates of Seminole, Iowa, Creek, and Cherokee chiefs next to plates of indigenous North American plants and animals might be demeaning, but in fact it does them honor. After all, whose company would you prefer: a beautiful wild bird or Cheney's great-great-great-grandpappy? The blending of native and European dress seen in these early 19th-century plates is fascinating and beautiful. Before your eyes you see the meeting of two worlds at a time when the bits of each world were still distinct from one another. Just goes to show that the current conflation of timid dress with machismo is a recent historical anomaly (thanks, the Puritans). These proud, fierce men weren't afraid to stand out because they had earned every feather and bauble on them. They could back their plumage up. Can you say the same about your hat? Oh, that's right—you're being ironic. 23. Carolina Parakeets (Conuropsis Carolinensis): Like the Charles Bird King plates, this particularly sad, poignant plate by Audubon is emblematic of how much of America's native beauty was lost before anyone even knew just what the hell it was. Found from the Ohio River to Mexico, Carolina parakeets were shot by the hundreds by farmers who considered them a pest, and many later succumbed to a poultry disease. Their gregarious natures made it easy to kill them in large numbers, as they tended to gather around their companions who had been shot. The last wild Carolina parakeet was killed in Florida in 1904. 24. Sequoyah's Alphabet: According to Cherokee lore, Sint Holo was a large, invisible horned serpent who lived in an underwater cave at the bottom of a lake and brought hard rains when he arose. It was said that Sint Holo only revealed himself to young men of uncommon intelligence or wisdom. One of those who were rumored to have seen him was Sequoyah, the inventor of the botanical, vaguely Cyrillic 76-character Cherokee syllabary. His written form of the Cherokee language is still in use today. 25. Axel Erlandson's Basket Tree: Axel Erlandson was an arborsmith, a man who taught himself how to graft living plants together and sculpt them into astounding forms. He opened his "tree circus" in 1947. Some of his trees still survive and can be seen at Gilroy Gardens in Gilroy, CA. The Basket Tree is actually six sycamores grafted together. 26. Morris Arboretum Fernery: Nestled in the hillside like a gem in a navel, the Dorrance H. Hamilton Fernery is the only remaining freestanding Victorian fernery in North America. Do yourself a favor and go there on the coldest day of the year and step down into its warm, moist green lap. There will be tears, but that's OK: Whimsy's here. Shhh…