I did not see a parakeet. Nor did I expect to because the last time anyone saw the kind I could have seen was one hundred years ago. But had I seen one, it would have had a green body, a yellow neck, and a red crown, like a granny smith apple, turning into a golden delicious, ending with a fuji flourish. Unlike apples though, this parakeet would have been indigenous. Back in his day, Audubon fixed four of them, all on a branch of matured cocklebur, their name swirling below–Carolina Parrot or Parakeet—just as live ones would have swirled above and outside his page, until they all passed (a century later) into life only re-presented (drawings, pictures, reminiscence, taxidermy).[1] So, I did not see a parakeet.
But I did see cane, as I was in a canebrake. Switchcane, rivercane and hill cane, the genus Arundinaria trio, bamboos native to North America. I am not sure which species of cane I was in, though my guess is switchcane (A. tecta), as rivercane (A. gigantea) also has the name of giant cane for its remarkable height—at maturity it is taller than a grown man on a grown horse; and hill cane (A. appalachiana) has a topographic preference that did not describe the place where I stood.
Nevertheless, they all look similar, more like plants in diagram rather than plants in dirt, their linear stems appear pencil drawn, their lance like leaves seem generated by straight edge. Enmassed, canebrakes look like early computer-generated greenery before sinuosity was possible. In a way, they are an early plant—a fire rolls through, clears the understory, perhaps takes a tree or two down with it; the flames cease and cane is among the first to resurface, and resurface quickly for it is not as dependent on reseeding as it is on its rhizome.[2] Like the longleaf pines which it once accompanied over the land, it looked forward to the fire next time. Out of the flames came thickets, which though they may have barred other plants, they were quite welcoming to Carolina parakeets, warblers, “cougars, bobcats and wolves” canebrake rattlesnakes, creole pearly eye butterfly and untold others.[3] Walls of cane were a kind of mass housing for the many migrant, squatter and settling organisms of the southeast. They (particularly river cane) also provided materials of home and place making for humans, as their straight stems were (and still are) gathered by Native American communities especially the Cherokee.[4] Once hollowed out, canes can become basket or blowgun, mat or flute, or—as has become a rustic object— fishing poles. There are not many significant canebrakes today. Cattle ate them, draining and development cleared them, fire suppression stymies their return; the scattered groupings I see along the road are remnants of a lost empire, holding out amidst a concrete ground that stifles them, a dense forest that smothers them, and farmland that suppresses them. But unlike the parakeet they remain. Though, like the parakeet, I was not in the canebrake to see the cane—it fortunately just happened to be there.
I only saw the canebrake, because I was in a conversation easement, which I only noticed because of a small, yellow, all caps sign—"NORTH CAROLINA SOIL AND WATER CONSERVATION EASEMENT BOUNDARY”. “Easement” is one of those legal terms that I knew more by general use than specific meaning. Modified by the word “conservation” easement suggested the land was protected, but why, by who and to what extent was unclear until I looked it up later. The NC Department of Environmental Quality defines conservation easements as: “voluntary legal agreements designed to ensure the long-term viability and protection of the natural resources within a surveyed and recorded boundary. The easement planning process establishes allowances and restrictions that are beneficial to the landowner, the easement holder, and the environment.”[5] The conservation easement then is not foremost a means of protection, but (much more interesting I think), it is a way of organizing layers of rights and access upon a property. Someone owns the lands, but the easement gives some else a right to use it (or not use it, in a way, when conservation is the right being exercised) which in turn inflects the rights and possibilities of both the one who possess the land and others (like myself) who neither own the land, nor hold an easement, but still gain some benefit from the easement’s existence (i.e. enjoying a now rare landscape feature).[6] The yellow sign that alerted me to presence of the easement was nailed into a sweet gum tree. In the FAQ for conservation easements one of the questions asks: “Are there way to precisely identify the boundaries of a conservation easement?”
The answer:
As part of the restoration project, all easement corners were surveyed and monumented in the ground with metal rods. Most of these rods are also topped with 2” diameter aluminum caps. DEQ also uses a variety of methods to post easement boundaries including signage, metal posts, and tree blaze. These may be a witness post or witness tree, located near the line but not the exact location of the boundary.[7]
In some ways, my studies right now could be described as figuring out the extra-legal work of these “witness trees” and their “artefacted” forms into “witness posts” (and columns and panels and all sorts of other wooden things that “witness” human contracts and contact).[8] It gave me pause then, after reading the FAQ to realize that I had witnessed a witness tree that still witnesses (instead of being one in a historical document or text), but that in the moment the sweet gum’s legal function had not even registered to me. I was much more taken by the train of ants along its trunk likely extracting honeydew from aphids up in the canopy, and by the trail of Virginia creeper going up further than the ants, in search of its own luminous food. From the tree’s perspective, witnessing a survey has been only one frame in a very long film still being made around, and around and around it.
In truth, I did even see the easement sign until I was near the tree. And the reason I was near the tree is because a few feet away from it, along the road was the initial object of my attention—a set of black and yellow object marker signs denoting some feature adjacent to the road, a feature which is this case was a culvert underneath the road. Culverts, in their projecting pipe form look like engineering/infrastructural litter, debris left over from a drainage project. In addition to being the ugliest kind they are also the cheapest and least efficient—they do little to channel a flow directly into their opening, which limits how much comes out their exit, potentially leading to the water overflowing the road. Luckily, the culvert I came to see is the recessed box kind with wings extending on its side to welcome water into its inlet, guiding it towards its outlet.[9] Embedded in the earth, moss covered, and a bit worn, there is a minimalist beauty to this kind culvert that does not readily betray the complexity of its task at once to convey ground traffic above and the traffic of water underneath. On the outlet side, some of the water pooled, its clear bottom supported small fish and tadpoles, while its silty edge moistened mosses and grasses and a bit further up also the canes. The water this culvert channels comes from the Indian Branch River, which drains into Deep Creek River, which drains into the Tar River, which drains into the Pamlico Sound, which joins the Atlantic Ocean. Follow these larger waters and you’ll find the larger history of the canes and the Cherokees, the parakeets and the many trees which have witnesses the work of so many kinds of settling, the human version being the most recent, but likely not the last. Though we often like to think otherwise, our homes and other feats of building are ultimately done under a kind of “natural easement”, the land allows us access for a while, but as all the other prior communities of plants or persons show, no claim of possession is final, no root is long and deep enough to always remain (though many can be long remnant). Maybe I will be able to spend a good deal of my life following these state and nation spanning roots, weavings, waters and rhizomes.
But it is not yet time to go so far out. Afterall, the only reason I saw the signs for the culvert, which put me in range to see the blaze on the tree, which brought me close enough to see a canebrake, which led me to imagine what it would be like to still be able to see parakeets, was because I pass the culvert nearly every day when I am home. Fifteen hundred feet from the front door, I have crossed this place many times running, enjoying the brief respite of shade provided by the gums before the land opens again for the farms; and I have driven by it many more times on the way to town, the car bouncing lightly over the culvert. So, I have noticed this spot for nearly thirty years, but this is first time I have “witnessed” the three hundred years of history flowing and growing in it. Either part separately is valuable—to live in a place and feel its features or to come to a place and learn its features, nesting sensations (the shade of the trees, the bump of the road…) or nesting histories (extinction, settlement…). But to bring them together, may, for a moment sustain that special sense which is just able to catch an apple-colored dart zipping across the far end of the eye.
Photos
[1] The Carolina Parakeet, once common from New York down to the Gulf of Mexico, seems to have gone in the first half of the 20th century. The last documented one, named Incas, died in captivity in 1918. It is unclear exactly why it went extinct though habitation destruction seems part of the problem. See: https://johnjames.audubon.org/last-carolina-parakeet and https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-carolina-parakeet-go-extinct-180968740/
[2] There is strong interest in canes and restoring canebrakes. For a general overview see: Barret, Richard; Grabowski, Janet; Williams, M.J. "Giant Cane and Other Native Bamboos: Establishment and Use for Conservation of Natural Resources in the Southeast" U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service, 2021. For a 18th account of cane use in North Carolina see: Lawson, John. A New Voyage to North Carolina. London: 1709. Digitized at https://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/lawson/menu.html. Lawson recorded many ways that cane was used by the Cherokee.
[3] See: Platt, Steven G., Christopher G. Brantley, and Thomas R. Rainwater. “Canebrake Fauna: Wildlife Diversity In A Critically Endangered Ecosystem.” Journal of The Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society 117, No. 1 (2001): 1–19.
[4] For contemporary work to maintain these traditions see: https://theonefeather.com/2012/05/22/river-cane-important-cherokee-cultural-staple/
[6] Though my enjoyment in this case was not a right because this easement is not public (i.e., I was trespassing).
[7] See link on note 4.
[8] Other have already done some of this work. See for example: Miller, Daegan. This Radical Land. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2018.
[9] Here is a wonderfully informative video on culverts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15XJDmawbYU
Images:
Carolina Parrot or Parakeet” in The Birds of America: From Drawings Made in the United States and Their Territories Volume 4. John James Audubon. New York: J.B. Chevalier, 1842. p.306.
Image 3208 (Canebrake in Northeast Louisiana early 1900’s). USDA Bureau of Plant Introduction. See note 2 for source.
La quasi-totalité des enfants indiens sont inscrits à l’école, maintenant obligatoire de 6 à 14 ans. Les frais sont pris en charge par l'État pour les familles démunies, cependant tous les enfants ne la fréquentent pas et beaucoup doivent encore travailler dès l'enfance. L’Inde est le pays le plus touché par le travail des enfants. Les estimations varient entre 44 et 110 millions d’enfants actifs, mais l’évaluation la plus couramment citée est de 60 millions. Actuellement, on compte plus de 10 millions d'enfants qui sont en position de servitude. La plupart du temps, ils ont été échangés contre du bétail ou pour effacer les dettes des parents envers les compagnies.
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Almost all Indian children are enrolled in school, now compulsory from 6 to 14 years. The costs are borne by the state for needy families, but not all children attend it and many still have to work. Estimates range from 44 to 110 million active children, but the most commonly cited estimate is 60 million. Currently, there are more than 10 million children in easement status. Most of the time they were traded for livestock or to clear the parents' debts to the companies.
“The Army Corps lacks statutory authority to simply stop the [Environmental Impact Assessment] and issue the easement,” the tribe said.
“The Corps must review the Presidential Memorandum, notify Congress, and actually grant the easement,” Standing Rock officials added. “We have not received formal notice that the EIS has been suspended or withdrawn.”
Sam Knight, Impending Trump Dakota Access Easement is Illegal, Standing Rock Sioux Say » THE DISTRICT SENTINEL news co-op
Question: What is the legal right to use another person's land for a specific purpose (e.g., a driveway or utility lines)?
Answer: Easement. An easement allows someone to use a portion of another person’s property for a defined use like access (driveway), utility lines, drainage, or pathways without owning the land itself.
For example, a common type is a right-of-way easement, which lets you pass through someone else’s land to reach your property.
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Question: What is the legal right to use another person’s land for a specific purpose (e.g., a driveway or utility lines)?
Answer: Easement. The legal right to use another person’s land for a specific purpose, like a driveway or utility lines, is called an easement, a non-possessory right allowing limited use (e.g., access, drainage, utilities) without ownership, often documented in writing and binding on current and future owners, with a specific type, right-of-way, granting passage.
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Question: What is the legal right to use another person's land for a specific purpose (e.g., a driveway or utility lines)?
Answer: Easement. The legal right to use another person's land for a specific purpose, such as a driveway or utility lines, is called an easement. An easement is a non-possessory interest that grants a person or entity the right to use a portion of another's property without owning it. These legally binding rights are often formalized in written agreements or property deeds and are crucial for providing access or necessary services to a property.
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What is an easement? legal right to use another person’s land for a specific purpose, such as utility access or pathways. Understand different types of easements, how they affect property ownership, and the legal implications for both landowners and easement holders.
