blog 10

    In the clearing, empty gallon jugs hang from the limbs of a tree, and a pile of unique rocks are gathered on an old stump. Certain trees are caged, and bird feathers are stuck in the wire. Trees have been axed down,and dragged into odd positions. Bundles of vine lie around the lawn of grass, roped together. Shards of tree bark are arranged under some of the spruce trees. Stones are rearranged into steps. There's a pair of boots and a few plastic bags resting on a rock, and in one tree, hanging from the upper limb, is a bundle of rocks, a railroad spike, and a long piece of scrap metal. The odd object hangs with surreal intentionality. All these changes are inexplicable.

     With no explanation, it all seems so strange to observe. Rocks are tied to tree branches, and materials are gathered in strange ways. It reminds me of Andy Goldsworthy—almost purposeless intentionality. The reason for these choices are hard to comprehend. Near the trail, there's a large limb tied to the upper branch of a young tree, weighing it down—bending its growth away from the trail? I don't know. It's a guess about this unique manipulation to the clearing. Do we all have such idiosyncratic relationships with nature? Do we all bend the trees and rearrange the rocks and gather the most unique stones?

    From our short survey of nature writing, it's clear we all approach the physical world differently. We connect with certain animals more than others. We can despise whole categories of insects and animals. We can love dogs over cats, cats over dogs, or not like pets at all. Some people connect with wild animals in symbolic ways. Some of us love the sun, but hate the bugs. Some of us camp and roll in mud, while others love National Geographic. Some like the ocean and sand while others enjoy bow-hunting. And writers experience nature, then write about it. We tell stories. We share science. We share experience and philosophy. We share religion and worldview. We share understanding and connection. But it's clear we pick and choose our nature. We choose backgrounds and sounds and sights and feelings. We prefer different temperatures and different vistas over others. At times, we have the will to make nature fit our preconceived notions.

    Our views of Nature, as a whole and as multivalent manifestations, are formed by thought, experience, family, religion, reading, and many other influences. When I walk around the clearing, I try to make sense of the random changes, of what seems random—bending trees, hanging rocks, stepping stones, felled trees, bundles of vines, and branches hung with empty jugs. I'm not sure this place will ever make any sense, though, or form a story. It's already a poem, an abstract expression of one person interacting with the physical world.  Similarly, each blog, each reading, each author bends the trees, colors the sky, and rearranges bark to bring others closer to nature.

blog 9

    I came here for something, and I can't find it. I pace around the clearing, inspecting things at random. So much changes from week to week, but is any of it worth writing about? The grass is green from rain, and thorn bushes sprout small leaves. I watch the clouds move across the sky. I run my hand across the bark of trees. I walk around and notice things, I observe changes in the environment, but there's nothing to write about except the spruce planted around the clearing.

    There are spruce trees of different size and species. On the lower edge, a row of spruce trees more mature than those on the upper side. Some of the trees in this lower row didn't make it through the summer. Orange-brown needles hang from dead limbs like year-old confetti. The others stand two to three feet tall with thin, sharp needles.

    Spruce are pyramidal trees with narrow, horizontal branches. I bend closer to the spruce, and the blue-green needles densely crowd each branch. The stiff, sharp needles bristle out in all directions.

For weeks I thought they were all blue spruce, with their color and prickly needles. The color and shape of each tree is nearly the same, but this week some stand tall with growth while others are pruned by the hunger of deer.

    This is the only way I found to tell the species apart. According to tree guides I've read, deer do not eat blue spruce. Beyond the prickly needle, they release a sharp acidic flavor if chewed. The deer choose not to suffer the flavor, but they're able to eat other spruce, such as the white, for starvation food. With a long winter, it's not much surprise that deer browsed on the white spruce.

    Compared to others, these young trees are mutilated. The deer ate needles and twigs, stripping some of the young, tender limbs clean off. Only half a spruce stands with a few random twigs spotted with clumps of needles. I've seen no deer today, but their presence in the clearing is unmistakable.

    Their hunger left a mark on the spruce. Their hunger left a mark on me, and there it is—something to write about. But is it enough to bring to you? Is there more to offer? I wanted to find something, but it wasn't there. Is this enough?  Like the deer, I take what I can get.

blog 8 - urban nature through a window

     The streets are dark and damp from last night's rain. Cars splash over the road, wipers swiping back and forth, as a few people walk down the street with an umbrella or raincoat. The rain increases. The sky is gray, just a solid white-gray with no clouds. From my desk, I watch the trees across the road. A slight wind blows the highest tips gently back and forth. The bark is dark from rain. They stand on the corner of the block, in someone's yard, and I've never touched or climbed or identified them, but I've watched them for years.

     Straight across the street, behind the row of houses, there's a small stand of hundred foot conifers. In the late of winter, the branches droop and big clumps of cones hang around the tree. The tops move in the wind, and I think of John Muir climbing trees. My imagination floats through the window and out to the trees and rests among the pine cones, rests among the birds, and the squirrels running the telephone wire. Can you imagine the insecurity of a pine cone or a bird, or maybe it's faithful confidence? A single bird sits in the very top of the tree, grasping with claws, riding branch and wind, swaying an inch this way, an inch that way.

     From the comfort of my office, I watch the rain come down heavier. It looks cold, and water begins to drip from the telephone and electric wires. The trees are dark bark skeletons, but in a few months they'll bloom and fill. Spring leaves will change the color palette of the window and offer privacy from neighbors. The summer wind will rustle the leaves, and summer rains will keep the roots wet. By fall, though, when the chlorophyl degenerates and leaves turn to red, yellow, brown, someone else will sit in this apartment. With plans to move in June, small features of my current place come into focus. The trees have changed for four years, and the conifers have kept a steady appearance. Sunlight, rain, snow, and wind have availed the trees. There are days when branches are filled with birds, when their song fills the air.

    

Every morning, the sun rises above the trees. Every morning, it's different, brighter, darker, clear or obscure, red, orange, purple, never the same. It's only visual perception of light, it's only trees and birds and squirrels, rain and wind, but it's what fills my window. An evolving picture, a perpetually changing painting of one Squirrel Hill street, a part of my mind and memory—the city streets, the light poles, the electric wires, the grass and sidewalks, conifers and children, noisy cars and singing birds, the wind and snow, the changing leaves.

blog 7 at night

    After dark, the streets of Squirrel Hill quiet down as less traffic travels through the neighborhood. Yellow apartment windows dot the sky. The moon waxes crescent, and tall apartments tower in the distance while squatter buildings line the streets. Through an intersection and under streetlights, I walk toward Schenely park. The temperature whispers spring as the wind echoes winters. Trees lay shadows over lawns of grass, and orange clouds hang above. Lamps line the road, a few cars pass, and down the hill from where I stand, below Beacon Street, three deer smell the ground and forage. I'm surprised, by their location and timing; however, “Movement may occur at any time of the day or night, especially when it's sunny or warm compared with the preceding few days … [Actually,] Nighttime feeding is common” (126)

    One of the deer lifts it head to look at me but goes back to eating. They stand out in the open, in the middle of a wide grass lawn. I've never seen deer after nightfall, and I wonder how common it is for them. In the The Deer Watcher's Field Guide, John H. Williams discusses distribution and activity levels of deer throughout the year, and he says, “It's long been accepted that once cold weather sets in, the deer's daily movements, general travel patterns, and level of feeding activity all decrease dramatically. 'Up to 40 percent' is the figure often given. My observations show that this is a misleading oversimplification” (122). Williams claims there are many variables to deer activity and feeding habits. Cold weather and seasonal changes alone do not deter the deer, he says, but rather, the harsher conditions of strong winds and heavy, deep snow are important factors. The last snow melted about a week ago, and the temperature is higher than the week before.
    “The deer's reaction to snow and cold in late winter is strikingly different from that of early winter … If winter breaks early, the deer immediately become very active and widespread throughout the habitat … Their activity will be spread throughout the twenty-four-hour day, no longer confined to the warmer, less windy times of day.” (126)

    Maybe their late-evening walk through the park isn't abnormal this time of year. Are these deer strolling the neighborhood, exploring their surroundings—like me, out for a walk? John H. Williams says their spring exploration is “a reflection of their curiosity and investigative nature more than anything else. By early spring they've been cooped up in their winter areas for a couple months, and they're trying as quickly as possible to see what's happened to the rest of their world while they were away” (127).

    I sit on a park bench and watch the deer. They pay little attention to me or passing vehicles. They graze and nibble. In the absence of cars, there's a faint crack of teeth crunching nuts. They move forward, they eat. They move forward, they graze around.

    “A couple of decades ago it was common, even in scientific journals, to read that deer were 'browsers' as compared with 'grazers,' but now it's widely recognized that this is highly variable, depending on location … Beyond a doubt, the deer of … any heavily forested region will procure a much higher percentage of their dietary intake by browsing” (144), but tonight, the deer graze on grass, nuts, or forbs, rather than browse for woody twigs or leaves. After the scarcity of winter, they may even be eating soil. John H. Williams has “read that deer and other animals eat soil to obtain needed minerals, but [he's] only witnessed this personally during early spring” (149).
    They graze for quite a while, out in the open, with no hurry. According to Williams, “leisurely feeding is the rule rather than the exception at all times of the year … On many, many occasions, [he's] watched deer feed in a very leisurely, relaxed manner” (147).

    Above the deer, the moon hangs low among orange-red clouds reflecting city lights. Below the dome of orange-red, redwood sequoia office buildings, glaciers of hospitals, and the rock-tower of learning light the dark horizon. Trees, grass, and shadows remain silent as the deer move along. They cross the lawn until they come to sidewalk. The intersection is empty, and the first deer steps onto the road. It startles and picks up pace and jogs across the street. The other deer follow right behind and slip into the tree line. A few moments later, a car through the intersection. I stand up, and walk home.

blog 6, undulates and conifers

    A fresh blanket of snow is nature's dare to me.  A secret dare to beat the others, to be the first footsteps.  I can't stay home when my memory yearns for bright sun, soft snow, and stillness of air.  On my way to the clearing, I walk among trees draped with globs of wet snow. The snow has stopped, but flakes fall from trees and clumps of slush splat on the ground.  From every corner of my eyes and senses, the motion and movement sparks sensation in the brain.  Movement, matter, energy.

    Through the trees, there are two deer. They watch, think, then run. No time to stand and stare. I follow them down over the ridge, but they're out of sight.  In the clearing, there is no grass, only white. After ambling over the hillside at a meditative pace, I look up and there are three other deer below the ridge. They stare, loose but nervous, not stomping or stirring. I start to move around, go around and up the hill, and watch them through the brush.  It seems my position will force them to the lower ground, and from the hill, I will have the better vantage to watch. But in a second, they ascend the hillside.  This is their ground, their hill, their way of protecting life. They graze the forest but make the ridge their home, and this is why.  I've known this; it's written on the trees and over the hills, but the motion movement of their bodies up the ridge, left to right, with caution and grace and fright.  The first two climb the face incredibly fast, nearly straight (but really side to side), like mountain goats.  The third and weakest struggles at the top, catching breathe, out of energy.  From high ground, they watch me with the better vantage.
   In the clearing, the pines and spruce remain no matter how close I come, no matter what my fingers do to them, but they sense me no less than the deer.  All over the park, snow melts and falls, and water drips from the limbs. Drip, drip, thip thup thip. My brain and forehead squeeze from the sun and reflection of white, white, bright white.  Motion, energy, neuron overload.  Do the conifers have a headache too? Do their senses overload in the snow and sunshine?

   Do trees feel buried?  Of course, they do.
   The shorter trees have their lower limbs buried in the snow, so I bend down to brush the young branches. It's a prickly species with short, sharp needles—not easy to identify either.  It's a spruce, white or blue, and there are nine others with identical needles.  None of them taller than my waist, none of them native to the park, none of them caged, except an eleventh that's two or three inches tall, barely peaking from the snow. Two other conifers grow in the upper half of open, white hillside. Near my chest in height, each has its own cage. The needles are much different—longer, rounder, softer—much more edible for undulates.  The lower limbs, where the cage doesn't reach, are stripped and eaten bare, by something, and my guess would be my friends watching from the ridge.

blog 5

    Black, mysterious eyes, orbs of infinity, and black, flaring nostrils covered in thick, mucous moisture stare in my direction, fixed. Soft snow slants in the wind as a deer stands in the distance, camouflaged by trees and hanging vines, disguised by snow and stillness. I move a few steps forward, and so does he or she. We lose sight of each other as trees and brush comes between us.

   There's another deer. It moves through the brush beyond the other. I creep forward; each step is a risk that may take me further from the mystery of encounter. They are nervous, and as I step too close, off they go, four or five deer bound and weave through hanging vines and dead limbs. Where were the others standing? I hadn't even seen them, and all I see now are white tails leaping through the brush. What did they see?

   "Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration – that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively.” – Bill Hicks

   From a distance their eyes look solid black. Empty orbs, but up close, dark-brown and orange-brown pigmentation surround horizontal pupils. Do the darks of my eye look any different to the deer than theirs look to me? What am I to the deer, anything more than life existing independent of itself?

   “a great unifying life force flow[s] in and through all things—the flowers of the plains, blowing winds, rocks, trees, birds, animals—and was the same force that had been breathed into the first man. Thus all things were kindred and brought together by the same Great Mystery” – Luther Standing Bear

   Before the deer, there was a hawk. Not far into the forest, it saw me before I saw it and startled me when I came too close. With a loud flap of feathers, it jumped from its low perch to a higher branch. With dark eyes and white-brown feathers, its body blended with a landscape of bare tree limbs and falling snow. Like the third, fourth, and fifth deer, it appeared from out of sight, emerging from the landscape. From a higher perch, the hawk watched me, another consciousness. We observed the actions of the other, a short encounter, until the hawk caught the wind. High above the trees, it flew further than my eye could follow.

   “We never cease to stand like curious children before the great Mystery into which we are born.”

   Below the ridge of deer, in the grassy clearing, there are pines, maybe a few fir trees. There are two species, one with short, lanceate needles, and the other has longer, thinner needles. Some of them are caged and the others stand free, but they're all young, no more than a few years old. There are four conifers above the clearing of grass and more below. They are clearly planted between the bike trail and the clearing, on the upper and lower edges. They might be loblolly or white pine, fir trees, maybe even spruce.  For now, they remain another mystery.

    The deer, the hawk, the pine, and myself, existing separate and distinct from each other, yet flowing from the same force, from the same eternal mystery.

   “'This Mighty Mudball of a world spews out breath, and that breath is called wind,' began Adept Piebald. 'Everything is fine so long as it's still. But when it blows, the ten thousand holes cry and moan. Haven't you heard them wailing on and on? In the awesome beauty of mountain forest, it's all huge trees a hundred feet around, and they're full of wailing hollows and holes – like noses, like mouths, like ears, like posts and beams, like cups and bowls, like empty ditches and puddles: water-splashers, arrow-whistlers, howlers, gaspers, callers, screamers, laughers, warblers – leaders singing out yuuu! and followers answering yeee! When the wind's light, the harmony's gentle; but when the storm wails, it's a mighty chorus. And then, once the fierce wind has passed through, the holes are empty again. Haven't you seen felicity and depravity thrashing and flailing together?'

    'So the music of the earth means all those holes singing together,' said Adept Adrift, 'and the music of humans means bamboo pipes singing. Could I ask you to explain the music of heaven for me?'
    'Sounding the ten thousand things differently, so each becomes itself according to itself alone – who could make such music?'” – The Inner Chapters

a winter sleuth - blog 4

     In the summer, the trees are covered in leaves, spiders, and ticks; thorns are longer, stronger; snakes are awake and moving; poisonous weeds are in full bloom. In winter, snow and cold temperatures tames these threats into submission. In the summer its best to stay on the trail, but in winter, there are many different ways to walk, many different directions to explore. No season is better to learn the land and its topography.

With no leaves, the blank silhouettes of trees stand contrast with snow like an Ansel Adams photograph. Without poisonous weeds or snakes, the brushy, wooded areas are safer to tread. Without the snap of twigs and rustle of leaves, each step has more stealth and chance of coming across a deer. With snow on the ground, you can walk in nearly any direction, but the land, trees, and brush guide you nonetheless. There are impassable areas of thick thorny brush and unclimbable, steep hills, and the deer use this to their advantage just the same as a patch of grass growing in the winter.
 

     The details and lay of the land are important to survival, and this area appears to provide many advantages for feeding, roaming, and sleeping. It's this area, bordered on nearly every side, that is their home. From feeding to escape, the topography of this ridge seems to help the deer. On the western edge, where I enter, there is a gravel parking lot, a baseball diamond, and the front of the park, where there are grassy knolls and dog parks. On the southern border of this area, there are residential homes that line the ridge of land. To the east, down over the slope, there is a road that divides this area of the park from another. The northern side of the ridge slopes down to a stream that has cut through hills from years and years. This is the only border that broadens into the rest of Frick Park. It's this pocket, this niche, of the park that they make their home.

Sleeping near the cliff for sight and protection.

The ridge, the highest point of ground, is especially advantageous for the deer. Although the area is fenced-in by backyards, dog parks, and roads, this also protects and limited the intrusion of other animals and predators into the area. Aside from a flowing water source and food supply, there are gains from the topography. I make the assumption because there are patterns to their sleeping spots.

You can just barely see three spots spread out here.  The last is beyond the log, and the second is in front.

There are few, if any, spots beyond the stream on the northern border, near the dog parks, or any imprints are found in clearings, or near the eastern road.  It's the flat parts of the ridge where they cluster.  On a single day, I find 15 to 20 spots total. It's impossible to say if the deer move through the night to other beds, or if each spot represents a different deer. The spots tend to be in clusters, of two to four. Each deer rests about three to four feet away from the others, and this positioning appears intelligent and strategic.
      There are three large, possibly buck, spots along the lower cliff of the ridge, and further up, there are groups of three and four spread over the flat expanse of wooded area.  This is where they live and roam and hide.  They do not sleep in the cleared and replanted area; it's too sparse and open to wind and sight.

 
     Their tracks travel through, and their feeding is clear, but they sleep on the ridge.  It's on the ridge where they bed, and where they return after a day of roaming and searching.  From the stream to the road, from the homes to the dog park, and all through the park they roam, but it's the ridge where they sleep, and I see them most.  Without the snow and cold temperatures of winter, I wouldn't traverse this area so easily.  The steep hills are loose with dirt in the summer and dangerously covered with leaves in the fall.  In winter, snow packs under foot and enhances a good hike through nearly any part of the park.  Winter clears the leaves and allows a clearer vision through the trees.