CHUCKASS THE MUNSEE / VOICES FROM INSIDE THE TREE

June 23rd, 2008

i was born in new york city in september of 1977. that makes me 30 today. i grew up in a small arts and crafts community called Sugar Loaf, NY. its a hamlet- not even a town- and its all of about a half a mile long. It was kind of full of hippies, although my parents didnt exactly fit into that category. they were part of this lost time period in the early-mid 60’s where they werent really ‘beats’ but they were a bit too old to become ‘hippies.’ Pretty much everyone in the town was some sort of craftsperson, and we all lived next to each other. by craftsperson i mean it was like the renaissance fair minus the costumes but full on the weed. there were candlemakers, leather workers, jewelry makers, painters, wood carvers, clothing designers, musicians, karate instructors with living room dojos. you name it and there they were, all along Kings Highway. And these people were serious hippies. The place had an interesting history dating way back to the native american tribe the Munsee (Wolf Clan) whose famous leader was named Chuckass, and whom originally inhabited the region in what was at the time one of the largest indian populations in Northeastern America. There are caves all around there, and tons of arrowheads and other cool shit. also back in the day, the famous surrealist artist Kurt Seligmann lived there (as well as committed suicide there) and his good pals Chagall and Dali used to come hang out. Oh and it was also a famous old timey meeting spot for gypsies. Which sort of fueled one of my 2 greatest childhood fears- 1. being kidnapped by gypsies 2. turning into a vampire. PS- these days i am obsessed with gypsies, but no longer fear becoming a vampire.

On the far side of Kings Highway that i lived on, there were 2 other families- the Links and the Bonkenburgs. Robin Link, who was my best friend and worst enemy growing up, lived right next door to me above a restaurant his mom and step dad owned and operated. Ted Bonkenburg, my other best friend, lived next to Robin but across the railroad tracks. This story deals exclusively with Robin. He was kind of my adopted brother. Like i said before, his mom and step dad owned a restaurant (famous for a chocolate cake dish known as ‘the fudgely uglie’) that he lived above, and they were amazing people but i dont know if they were the most attentive parents. As i discovered much later on in life, Robin basically lived, ate, and slept at my house virtually every night for about 7 years because his parents were basically always getting fucked up. I thought they were cool- at 7 years old he showed up at my house with a porno mag his step dad gave him, he had no bed time, and could watch all the rated R movies he wanted. Little did i know, they just werent really paying attention. Whatever. they were still pretty rad people if you ask me. They had an old train caboose in their backyard that we used as a clubhouse.

Anyhow, behind my house and bordering on Robins, there was a little woods with a creek behind it. Most of the time to get from one house to the other, we would go through the woods. We loved that fucking woods. so in the middle of it there was this super old oak tree that was just kind of amazing for being the biggest and oldest tree in the woods. i think my dad told me one time that the tree was probably 300 years old or more. This one summer day when i was about 10 years old, Robin comes over and tells me that the night before, as he left my house at dark on his way home, he had an amazing conversation with this girl who is trapped inside the old oak tree, and that she’s totally in love with me. Now i have to tell you this- i’ve been obsessed with girls since i was in kindergarten. there was never a moment in my life that i can remember where girls were at all icky or awful. they’ve always been badass and i’ve always been bokers for them. like, serious bonkers. so when robin tells me this wack job nonsense about this girl trapped in the tree, i want to both call 10 year old bullshit on him and at the same time go see this tree. and thats what happened. But of course there was some weird stipulation- that the girl can only speak at night.

At about 9 or 10 o’clock that same night, just as its dark enough outside for your imagination to start fuck with you, Robin and i go to listen to the tree. We get to the tree and Robin tells me to be quiet, very quiet. After a few minutes of silence, he says in full seriousness “gordie’s here to see you.” This of course sends shivers up my spine and i am about 5 seconds from running full speed back to my house but for some reason i am still compelled to stay. A few minutes later, Robin turns to me and asks me if i can hear her. I cant. He tells me that she is very happy that i have come to see her and that she loves me and hopes i’ll return to see her again. I felt this weird sensation in my head, kind of like a tingling that also started to permeate through my body. it was nothing like i had ever experienced before at that point in my life.
it was like drugs! i felt disembodied all of a sudden and when i came back to my senses Robin had already crossed though the woods, the sound of his screen door slamming shut snapping me back into reality.

I spent the rest of the summer trying to figure out what the fuck had happened. i snuck out of the house nightly to go see the tree, waiting for a voice, waiting for whatever it was. And i never really heard anything. A few times i thought i did. maybe. maybe i thought i heard some kind of whispering of some unintelligible sort, in a gentle girls voice. but i tell you in a strange certainty that i felt a presence. i had some sort of bizarre feeling around that tree, at night, in the woods. and it was as though i wasnt alone, and that there really was some girl trapped inside the tree, and she was lonely. She had at one point told Robin that she had been there for quite a long time before anybody heard her. This was in about 1987. As summer turned to fall it got to be too cold to go to see the tree every night, and after a while i kind of forgot about her and the whole incident and never thought about it again. until 10 years later.

In the fall of 1997 i was a junior at NYU. I was in the Gallatin school there- which is like the experimental free form division of NYU where they pretty much expect you to be some sort of avant garde freakshow, or at least a bit more bold than the psychology, pre-med or business kids. I was taking a class on ’shamanism and the creation of contemporary art’ with a professor named Barnaby Ruhe who actually had a PHD in Shamanism. for real. He was totally bananas and i was kind of obsessed with his class. One day we were discussing native american burial rituals and beliefs and he told me that certain tribes believed that when a child died, that the childs spirit would inhabit a tree and remain there for the rest of time. All of a sudden i got totally freaked out. i remembered the tree, i remembered the girl, i remembered the whole thing in a crazy flashback like it was the summer of 1987 all over again. Granted, i was taking a lot of acid and special K at the time too, but the strength of the memory was ridiculous. And then it all made sense. Perhaps Robin Link wasnt full of shit. Perhaps there really was the spirit of some Munsee girl trapped inside the tree. It was just too weird a coincidence that Robin could have come up with this on his own. This was a kid who watched Animal House, not the Discovery Channel. And besides, there wasnt a discovery channel on then anyhow. so what the fuck was it. what was that eerie feeling that compelled me to return night after night for a whole summer. its been like another 10 years since then, i’m 30 and i still dont know- but now i cant really forget.

Written by Gordon |