Dear Parks Commissioner Betsy Gottbaum:

This can't wait until the next time we ride circus racing elephants together in Flushing Meadow Corona Park. I write now to urge you as parks commissioner to interdict "Wildman" Steve Brill. I make this call for mobilization after witnessing his incursion into Cunningham Park woods last Saturday. For Brill, the foray was another return to his life's "turning point."

A podiatry school dropout and a one-time tournament chess player and a student of culinary arts, Brill was biking through Cunningham Park one day in the mid-1970s when he spotted some Greek women foraging in the woods. "They showed me how to collect grape leaves and made me aware that more wild food than berries (which my mother had shown me) grew in parks. This was a turning point."

So on Sept. 1, 1990, deep into the wilds of northeastern Queens, away from the civilized traffic of Francis Lewis Blvd. and Union Tpke., the Castro-bearded revolutionary led a battalion of his followers (Brillos?). Equipped with knapsacks and/or plastic and paper bags, magnifying glasses, and copies of his illustrated manual for identifying edible and poisonous plants, they marched for hours, far from the beaten paths, living off the land. These were clearly guerilla maneuvers, albeit consistent with that jungle species' vegetarian diet.

I know you said you didn't want 'war' with Brill. That was back in June when he resigned as a Parks naturalist rather than submit to the mind-constricting benefits of bureaucratic discipline.

Your agency was quite correct to insist he punch a time clock, take one-hour lunches at prefixed times, submit for approval all correspondence connected with the parks foraging study program he created, and desist from engaging in art exhibits promoting the program. Exceptions from procedural routine for the sake of creativity and spontaneity cannot be tolerated. That would run counter to the kind of civil service mentality which such regulations seek to inculcate.

The individualism he demonstrated in 1982 as a private citizen devising park excursions spotlighting weeds as wondrous things to touch and taste should have been sufficient to identify him as a subversive influence threatening our urban lifestyle. Your predecessor Henry Stern, unlike his forerunner Gordon Davis, initially recognized the implicit danger posed by Brill acquainting city denizens with the delights of dandelions.

Whereas Davis granted Brill permission for hands-on field walks in city parks, Stern had Parks Rangers conduct an undercover and underbrush investigation leading to the botanist's arrest March 29, 1986, on criminal mischief charges: to wit, munching wild onions.

Up to that point Stern had been properly stern. But then under a landslide of editorial lambasting, the commissioner wilted and let Brill wangle a job as city parks naturalist to do legally what he had been arrested for allegedly doing illegally.

This surrender to the ecological adventurer continued nearly four years until your appointment as parks commissioner early this year. Soon thereafter Brill was sent word to shape up, snap to, and salute or ship out.

When the rule-book squeeze succeeded in' forcing his resignation, accompanied by his announcing plans to resume private foraging tours in the parks, you promptly fired off a letter reminding Brill of Article Ill Section 7a. It bans removing vegetation without your permission as commissioner.

Your closing phrase ("... and I will not grant permission for you to do so") will long ring through the annals of parks' history. It was the gauntlet tossed down, the line drawn in the sand, the chip placed upon the shoulder. Bully show, Betsy: you're quickly becoming New York's own Margaret "Ironlady" 'Thatcher!

But incorrigible Brill still bounds through brambles and trudges through thickets, heeding not your prohibitions; he and his devotees continue eating wild berries, thereby giving your words the raspberry.

Saturday they started, two dozen strong, or reasonably so considering the grey hairs predominating. There were some old-hands and a few novices, going bravely where no joggers and muggers have gone before, into seemingly virgin parkland unrecognizable as department property due to the absence of garbage, graffiti, and disrepair. The cultural shock inflicted upon the city dweller's psyche by such exposure must not be underestimated.

Far more destructive than the few plant leaves nibbled is the notion that the Brill expeditions unleash: of municipal parks as potential wilderness preserves. I agree that his digging up some common roots to show student ecologists must remain the focus of propaganda painting him as a parks violator in order to divert attention away from the real threat that he represents. For were the public to catch his unbridled passion for the parks as places where even weeds are not without worth and dignity, the ability of government planners and contractors to carve up and pave over parkland would be critically impeded.

Incidents during his Saturday safari serve as examples

When Judy Zeichner of Flushing, a painter, was told by her husband, Marvin, that she had just been brushing against poison ivy, Brill advised squeezing juice from a leaf stem of a nearby yellow-flower bedecked Jewelweed and rubbing its natural lotion on the affected area of her arm. Soon others who had been exposed to poison ivy's caresses were similarly spreading soothing Jewelweed sap on their skin.

"Don't tear the plant up by the roots, just snap and squeeze a stalk," Brill cautioned. "It's hearty and will grow more. The plant usually shows handy antidote, where poison ivy grows in abundance. But it needs its roots, as do we. Leave it in the ground to grow for others."

When Brill showed how even the twigs of the Black Cherry tree have the cherry smell, recalling the origin of cherry-bark flavored Native American medicines, his listeners began sniffing the tree limbs until Manhattan graphics designer Donah Geffen noticed a spider and its web on a branch.

"Be careful not to disturb the exquisite architecture of her weaving," the Brill trooper warned. "She must have worked so long at it; so intricate, so delicate."

The park woods warriors waited and watched in awe as Ms. Spider spun her graphic designer structure in the sun-speckled shade.

Later, as they chewed green leaf Ladies Thumbs, Judy Davis of Hicksville, a retired Grumman research librarian ("in the company's science and technology library"), and Hubert Davis, a postal clerk and amateur photographer, discussed Elderberry pies and wine. He's much involved in monthly vegetarian feasts at Forest Park. The two Davis, unrelated and of quite different ages and backgrounds, shared enthusiasm for their common mother: Earth.

The Brill band included the kinds of people who always start revolutions: the intellectuals, the artistic, the educated.

There was Ray Greenwell of Hempstead, a Hofstra math professor; Jack Griffen of Manhattan, a photo retoucher; Marilyn Rasmussen of Jamaica, a film and video producer; Mimi Gladstone of New-Jersey, an interior designer, and Marie Quitta of Hollis, dressmaker. Not one looked or acted like a rebel, yet each by his or her participation was making an anti-establishment statement declaring themselves for city parks as live-in wildernesses.