Imagining Manhattan as a Farmland

I am overhearing the TV documentary about New York City's bedrock. They have told us that where the Empire State Building is planted was once a farmland. Like our farmland here in South Jersey, no doubt, or the fields surrounding my childhood home in the Philadelphia suburbs. Well, and before the European farmers got to it, the tribes whose names pop up as place names now harvested the natural riches from the soil. Nyack comes to mind. Lenape, Delaware, Rockaway, Montauk-- there must be hundreds of references to tribes that knew the land intimately.

Did they have dandelions? Did they harvest them? They certainly did not mow and manicure Kentucky Blue Grass and water it with green hoses. Was there some woman with a good set of quadriceps squatting near a patch of berries watering them with a gourd? She knew that side dressing them with moist forest loam would keep them from drying out. How did she keep the birds from stripping the bushes before she harvested the berries? Maybe she trapped the birds and ate them?

My vultures are having a great time surfing the thermals this morning. The cat watches the giants soar around in circles much as we watch the airplanes that pass overhead. We saw a canard style plane go over a few days ago.
These things are amazing looking "backwards" planes. They have been around, well, since ducks, actually, which is where they got their names. But the man-made ones are still fairly rare in our skies. Just at the beginning of their evolution, I guess. Like that squaw guarding her berry patch: knowing a lot, (probably a lot more than I do about a lot of things) , but with a lot to learn in the years ahead.

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