As it is with many great discoveries, I came across the park mostly by accident, following my feet down whatever street piqued my interest in the moment. At its entrance, a concrete staircase sprawls across the face of a bluff, overlooking the Milwaukee River for about 30 yards before cutting back on itself sharply and directing you down onto the forest floor. At the foot of the stairs, four other trails converge on a little graveled vestibule: hard left, going off at 9 o’clock, a dirt path follows the river and old men drink malt liquor while fishing off of the concrete retaining wall that drops into the brown water. Further in, a small stretch of forest about 20’ wide hugs this same retaining wall and holds for dear-life onto the steep ascent back up to the street.
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A titanic tree, not just in its size, but in the fact that it’s top half had at some point succumbed to the forces of nature, snapped, twisted and fallen upside down onto the ground below. Nestled in among the great green sea burning nettle, giant burdocks and wild garlic, the branches, thick as light posts, held their shared trunk off the ground like a huge skeletal hand poised over a piano.
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I stood for a few moments examining it, poring over it’s form, looked around to see plenty of branches and sticks scattered about, as one expects to find in the forest, and right then, within the first minute of our acquaintance, I set out to make that fallen tree into something so much more.
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Now, I can’t claim this was an entirely original idea, because 15’ further down that same path stood a structure which I would later learned was called ‘The Phoenix’. About 12’ wide and 8’ tall at its apex, The Phoenix was a dome made entirely fallen logs and branches, stacked, balanced and woven together by hand. Similar to a house of cards, it always begins with an upright foundation log upon which you can branch out and expand. The Phoenix used a living tree as its foundation and once a strong Y-shaped log was found to pitch against it and form the doorway, the rest of the structure essentially built itself, each log and twig deciding where best they fit like a jigsaw puzzle, the architect fitting together whatever pieces the forest offers.
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The original architect of The Phoenix had seen it torn down by policemen and park officials on 3 occasions. The cited reason was that the structure attracted homeless people to the area who often left it a mess, and rather than address the homelessness, they opted to tear down the wooden monuments. After the 3rd time rebuilding it, the architect moved and took up his enterprise on the other side of the bridge hoping he’d be less bothered there, or at least less visible.
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I heard all of this from an old man who claimed to have seen him at work, this mysterious man of the forest, whose works captivated and inspired me. Like a modern-day oracle, he told me I could see him myself if I only visited his camp off the path to the left, past the fishing benches and prairie grass - the camp of a man named Paul.
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I often stopped in Paul’s camp on the way to my own, or on days when I felt more like lying back on one of the tree trunks and just soaking it up rather than building anything. Paul was only ever-so-often there, I assumed spending his most of his time on the street peddling carnations and proprietary bags of dried flowers, so for the most part I was on my own, watching dragonflies dart around the wood pile, listening to the waste water trickle over the rocks. What is any of this really worth doing, working in the city and trading your time for dollars, if it doesn’t afford you at least a few minutes every now and then to let it all go, to cast aside your worries and ambitions and simply be content with existence? They say that one man’s trash is another’s treasure, and perhaps I’m naive for it, but in those moments that park were the golden idol in a concrete jungle, an oasis in a spiritual desert, and where the city afforded me a so many privileges and luxuries, in the forest, I had no need for any of them, honored aplenty with trees and streams and sky.
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