Final Post

I must admit, being in this class cost me a lot of money. I'm not talking about the cost of schooling itself or of buying the books required...

I'm talking about how now, I often visit the nature writing section of the bookstore and purchase book after book that seems interesting. Can I make a list? Oh yeah. I can make a list [which may prove useful to other students who are just as interested in nature writing as I am].

And keep in mind, these were all purchased after attending the first class.

1. A Passion For Nature: Thomas Jefferson and Natural History by Keith Thomson (non-fiction)
2. Turtle Island by Gary Snyder (poetry)
3. Second Nature: A Gardener's Education by Michael Pollan (non-fiction)
4. Finding Beauty in a Broken World by Terry Tempest Williams (non-fiction)
5. Death in the Woods and Other Stories by Sherwood Anderson (fiction)
6. Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver (non-fiction)
7. A Private History of Awe by Scott Russell Sanders (non-fiction)
8. Leap by Terry Tempest Williams (non-fiction)
9. Deep Play by Diane Ackerman (non-fiction)
10. Field Guide to Birds: Eastern Region by National Audubon Society (non-fiction)
11. Jaguar of Sweet Laughter by Diane Ackerman (poetry)

It's a good thing I have an employee discount at a bookstore.

This list does not count the numerous books I've checked out from the library.

I am very interested in writing about nature, but at the same time, I am so perplexed by it. I can tire of it easily if I'm not reading the right stuff. In class, we read a lot of personal accounts with nature. We read about people's personal relationships with nature and place. Face to face. One on one. But I just realized (literally, just now) when looking at my list that I tend to like writings about nature that are not TOO personal. I like it when a writer writes the reader into the work. Where nature teaches us about humanity rather than nature teaching a self. Ackerman does that a lot. And so does Tempest-Williams. Ackerman, moreso. The woman has a molecule named after her. But anyway, writing about nature to write about the self seems selfish to me. It is done a lot, and done pretty well by plenty, but it is no longer original in my opinion. I enjoy reading nature writing that teaches me something about me and us. Not just about the writer. And that's what I aim to do with my nature writing, when it is nature that I am writing about.

I enjoyed the class very much and liked how not only did we experience the class in the classroom, but we went out and worked the land, as well. I thought it would have been interesting if we read a few pieces that were more scientific. We read a little and I understand that the class is focused on creative writing, but I must admit that I love to read science in a creative essay, if it is placed in the essay seamlessly. And I also understand that the MFA program is trying to get a science-writing class put together. That is a great idea. It is always wonderful to read lyrical or glorious writing that is based mostly on aesthetic, but I absolutely love it when information is involved. I think that makes it all the more beautiful and insightful. And it says a lot about the author, as well. There is a deep passion on both sides of the brain.

I will continue to write about nature. This isn't some promise that I'm hoping to keep. I am always out and about in the woods or exploring something that is abandoned or condemned. It is a passion of mine that I love to put into words. And therefore, I will continue.

Wild Spot

Last night, I sat on my roof to look at the full moon. The light it gave off was very bright in my yard...brighter than the white Christmas lights we put up along the picket fence. As I sat on my roof in the cold, I thought about how beautiful this spot must have been in the silver air. I've seen it in the dark before, but last night, I felt that there might have been a different look to it with that moon being so bright and the air being so cold. The colder the air is, it seems, the more clear it is. I like to think that these woods, with that type of night-moon, is sharp and cuts. I imagine it like a blurry photograph that when put through several photoshopping tricks, becomes more stark and gains more contrast. All the images I imagined last night when I sat on my roof are becoming negatives in my mind.

It is really cold. Fall is gone, or so it feels. It technically is still around, merely a shadow of itself. On one of my first posts about this place, I examined a patch of lichen on the wall above the cave. I mentioned that it was shaped like a fat angel. I wondered if it would change shape through the passing months. It did. Much like I did. I feel like something has happened to me. I won't go into detail. It isn't bad, it's a really good thing. But it's a solitary thing, as well. And coming to visit this place only makes the feeling more intense. And ironically, I began reading a novel today that sort of relates to this feeling. Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre. The feeling isn't really existential, or maybe it is, but I don't want to say it is. I guess it's more one of solitude. And being here just makes me feel connected with that feeling even more. Although all these different elements--the trees, the mineshaft, the dead reeds, the bricks, the litter--compose an environment that I have enjoyed for over the past decade, they are all elements that stand alone by themselves. And that no matter how much or how often I visit this place, I will never capture it. Nor do I desire to capture it. I like mystery and I like change. I like surprise. I like what Baca said about how we need to re-create, re-visit, re-do things. I don't ever want to grow nauseous with a place. I want it to always be new, exciting. And another odd thing. Today is the anniversary of Philip Larkin's death. I read this poem of his today:

THE WINTER PALACE

Most people know more as they get older:
I give all that the cold shoulder.

I spent my second quarter-century
Losing what I had at university

And refusing to take in what had happened since.
Now I know none of the names in the public prints,

And am starting to give offence by forgetting faces
And swearing I've never been in certain places.

It will be worth it, if in the end I manage
To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.

Then there will be nothing I know.
My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.

*

This poem is very withdrawn. I like it a lot. I like its solitude.

I am going to continue visiting this place. Choosing it as my wild spot for this class was not a spontaneous choice to re-visit an old spot that I haven't seen in a while. I've been re-visiting and re-visiting without there being any itinerary or agenda. That's because I'm drawn to it. I'm drawn to the dark places. I find this place in other places, as well. In places that most people don't find as dark. It's interesting and hard to explain. The same ill-ease I feel when I visit this place sometimes is the same ill-ease I feel when I enter my closet at home or walk under the New Kensington bridge. I want to keep this ill-ease, though. I like being uncomfortable. I like the threat.

Jimmy Santiago Baca

Baca is a very recollective writer. What goes through my mind when reading A Place to Stand: The Making of a Poet is "how does he remember that?"

Of course, I already know that a major part of writing memoir is knowing that you have to administer fictional (yet close enough to the truth) elements into prose so that you can fill in the much-needed details. I still can't help but wonder about this, though. Any astute reader, when reading any memoir where the writer writes about their childhood, would wonder how that writer remembers such solid, amazing details. Kids don't remember that! It's really interesting that we don't even question it, though. That the thought doesn't even cross our minds. How does Baca remember that the jail smelled like whisky vomit? How does he remember the dialogue between his mother and her secret lover the day he witnessed them having sex?

There are more questions, though, regarding the technique. When writing about one's childhood, what kind of voice should be used? There were times when Baca seemed like a child retelling the story, so I figured he took on the voice of a child to tell this portion of his story. But at other times, the voice seemed inconsistent or contrary to that--that the voice belonged to Baca as an adult. So, I got a little confused. Which way was he trying to go?

Wild Spot

People don't seem to understand my fascination with dead animals and their  bones. To lighten up the mood, I often say, Well, I like animals when they're alive, but it's hard to pet a wild deer or bird. I am hunched over the remains of a dead deer. It has been dead for months, I'm sure. I love this change in my wild spot's landscape. This area, in August, was covered in foliage, weeds, and high stalks of bamboo-like weeds. From up near the mouth of the cave, I was unable to see this forest floor that I am walking on now. But fall is here and its various falls have happened, allowing the forest floor to be seen and easier to explore. But this deer. It has been dead for quite a while. Long past stench. Long past maggots. I pick up its skull and there is only a little bit of flesh still clinging to the light-weight bone, but not too much. A hoof, still covered in fur as if it refused nature, is riddled with orange ticks, little circles with legs. I can't seem to scavenge many of the other bones that belonged to this deer. What stands out most is the skull and this preserved hoof. I wonder how this deer died. 

It is deer season now, for those who hunt with bows. The Monday after Thanksgiving is a holiday for Pennsylvania. The first day of deer season for those hunters who hunt with rifles and shotguns. On that Monday, there will be more people out hunting in Penn's Woods than there are people in the state of New Mexico. Not only is it deer season in the woods, but it is deer season on the roads, as well. All those hunters meandering through the woods, getting down on their haunches, poking their rifles through thick leaves, covering their human-smell with anise oil, scare the deer into the crowded streets where they meet their demise by rubber, metal, and glass rather than the projectile-quick bullet of lead alloy, as small as the eye it will inevitably close.

So, there are a lot of animal carcasses in Pennsylvania. Not just because of hunters. Some animals just need to cross the street. Some are attracted to the lights. Some smell human. And some want to lick the hot, sweet asphalt as it cools in the midnight hours. When driving home from my camp near Brookville [in the Allegheny National Forest], I tease my family saying, I saw more dead animals on the road than I did out in the wilderness! 

So here I am now, stroking the contours of deer's skull. A skull that was carried by a body that bounded through the forest in fear many times. Probably died in that same fear. But in this area where I am at now, with this deer carcass, is an area I have mentioned before. It's an area at the deep  base of the cave where deer sleep. For in the summer time, it is well-covered and there is a lot of foliage. When I venture into this area in the summer time, I see a lot of bent grass where the bodies of deer would lie in the daytime. When I would first enter this area, I would hear the deer raise their bodies from the ground and bound away, their little white tails like flags getting smaller and smaller in the distance.

I'm looking around. I want to find something romantic. I want to find something funeralesque for this deer. I want to liken the deer to elephants who actually cry and have grave sites for the members of their family. A bamboo weed shoots up from the ground near where the skull lies on the ground. The bamboo shoots here are no longer a rich green like they were in the summer, but a little bit more dull: a gray/green. Attached, though, to this particular shoot is a piece of wood that has grown around the shoot to the point where the shoot looks squeezed by the wood that embraces it. I see this a lot in the forests. When wood embraces or becomes attached to something that is not itself. You can find it in backyards...where clotheslines or fences grow into the bark of trees. But this isn't a growing into. It's a growing around. The wood is embracing the shoot. It's interesting to liken trees to weeds because it always seemed to me that trees lasted longer. But in order for this phenomenon to take place, the weed had to stay alive and in this spot for a long time, along with the piece of wood that wraps itself around it. This reminds me of a poem my boyfriend read to me once.

The Way They Held Each Other by Mira

A woman and her young daughter were destitute

and traveling to another country
where they hoped to find
a new life.

Three men stole them while they were camping.

They were brought to a city
and sold as slaves; each to a different
owner.

They were given one minute more together,
before their fates became unknown.

My soul clings to God like that,
the way they held
each other.

*

Pittsburgh & Environment

Businessmen can tell you. Delivery men can tell you. Mailmen can tell you. Truck drivers can tell you.

Pennsylvania has terrible roads. The worst in the country, probably.

I drive almost every day on Route 28. This road is a very special place in my life. I drive north on it to get to my camp. I drive south to go to work, go to school, visit Pittsburgh, visit friends. When hiking on the Rachel Carson Trail, I get a nice aerial view of it from the various hills that parallel it. When walking to my wildspot, I can see portions of it. I can see portions of the various large hills that were broken by dynamite in order to make that road. When sitting at my wild spot, I can hear the cars driving on that road.

Before history books were written,
family blood ran through this land,
thrashed against mountain walls and in streams,
fed seeds, and swords, and flowers.

Jimmy Santiago Baca

But this road, it cut through large hills, forest-land, streams, and other various natural habitats, including people's homes. When driving on a side-road with my ex, he pointed at crumbled foundations that spotted small plots of land between thin trees. He pointed to a particular foundation of bricks and said his family lived there until Route 28 was being constructed. When driving along the road, I always take care to look at the sliced mountains that bear their various layers and stratigraphy of rock and dirt. The differing shades of browns and yellows and grays. It is glorious to look at but devastating to comprehend.

But the most devastating realization is that this 97 mile-long highway is always under construction. Although it is built and developed, it seems to be going through a constant rennovation or face-lift. If they're not widening the lanes near the Cheswick exit, then they're adding lanes near the Sharpsburg exit. About seven years ago, plans were developed to turn natural farming and forest landscape into Pittsburgh Mills Mall--a mall that is architecturally appealing, but not doing so well financially. I was away in college when the construction of the mall was taking place, but I do recall a lot of levelling machines and bulldozers. I go up that way often to shop at Wal-Mart or go to Starbucks and god, the sky is so beautiful up near that mall, which is perched on top of a large, elevated land.

But face it. Construction projects always disturb the natural landscape. Luckily, there are laws now that forbid road construction or development if it causes a disturbance to a natural habitat to an endangered species. When driving around Altoona with my boyfriend, he pointed at a hill covered moss-like with trees and mentioned how there were once plans to build a road through that hill, but those plans were cancelled because that hill belonged to an endangered species of owls.

So, when construction jobs such as these take place, there are regulations that the developers must follow. It is important to preserve the various surfaces of water flows, be them above or below ground. This helps sustain the species that inhabit the area.

Luckily, PENNDOT funds various research projects that are conducted by professionals and students in universities such as Pitt. For instance, PENNDOT funded the Swanson School of Engineering so that they can study new concepts of roadway design that will help improve the environment. I'll have to keep this in mind next time I'm stuck in traffic and wriggling in my seat, impatient with PENNDOT.

Wild Spot

The sun is due to set soon and I am sitting away from the cave entrance, at the bottom of a steep grade. My walk here was very aromatic. A sweet smell stopped me in my tracks almost out of fear. Of what? I do not know. It didn't smell like a natural sweetness. I immediately thought of rot or death. The smell literally stunned me. And now I sit here, my feet in the leaves, feeling each minute get colder. 

I hear sirens in the distance and short, loud sounds as if someone or something else is exploring this darkening section of woods. The horizon is golden with leveling sun and the night sounds and song birds are revealing their noise. I hear three different birdsongs and the squeaky stop of a city bus on the main street in Creighton across the river. Brown skeletons of flowers still stand with their off-white crumbly blossoms. Yards away, a wind I cannot gauge or feel is blowing the hanging, leafy branches of a tree which has not gone barren yet. The sky is blue-white and cold and all the leaves on the ground can easily be mistaken for something stilled with fear or something else that is dead. That one looks like a chipmunk on its haunches. That one, a splayed-0ut mouse. That rotting wood looks like the  backside of a groundhog. And speaking of backside, I just heard a loud rustle behind me. It may be a deer. Quick sounds in the leaves. And then silence. All of it behind my back. Yet I turn and see nothing. I hear it again, but it's out of sight. Unclear. Not nearly as clear as this tree in front of me with its deep-grooved bark that gives the tree a canyon-like appearance. Something just landed beneath the leaves near my feet and I see its burst-movements beneath the leaves. A mole?  An insect? Again, I see nothing and it's right in front of me!

What looks like a snake skin poking up from under some leaves is a strap of material. I pull at it and relieve one end but the other end won't budge from its roots underground. The rich, black dirt I pulled up, though, smelled delicious. I read somewhere that some pregnant women crave dirt. What an amazing time to experience the outside world--when one is pregnant! I c an only imagine how amazing yet conflicting it would be to truly sense the world outside me when so much is going on inside me. I am jealous of animals in a way. They are always out there. Making their calcium eggs and regurgitating their food for their young. They gather, sort, bury, climb, build. I want to make a nest. Lay an egg. Teach my children that they must learn to fall before they learn to fly.

"The Solace of Open Spaces" by Gretel Ehrlich

I felt that there were a lot of open spaces in Ehrlich's essay "The Solace of Open Spaces". Spaces that she could have filled in, I mean. While reading the whole piece, I felt as if I were holding onto a very thin thread that kept me going along with the rest of the essay. But barely. There were several times where I felt I was just hanging by this thread and at some points, I just wanted to let go.

I must admit, though, that the topics on which she writes about are interesting, but the way she goes about writing them is not. She approaches the subject on which she writes about as if it is dirty dishwater and her task is to dip her hand in and pull the plug from the sink. She doesn't seem to want to get her hands wet with her essays. In her essay "The Solace of Open Spaces" there were quite a few people she mentioned, but I felt no attachment to them whatsoever, and I felt that I should have been attached because she spent a lot of her time working with and collaborating with these people. These essays are not too intimate and I wonder if that is her technique, though. I'm not judging or despising her work. I am keeping an open mind, or so I'd like to think. The word solace has the prefix sol- which comes from the Latin solus meaning "alone" or "single". The idea of open spaces allows ideas of vastness and overwhelming to enter the mind. There is all this space for the mind to move around in this essay. It's like driving a bumper car with no one else to bump into... so it's kind of tedious.

What I did find interesting was the sociological information she shared within her essays. Some of this information is coupled with a quick anecdote that allows intimacy, but as soon as I begin to enjoy it, it is taken away. Here is an interesting excerpt from "The Solace of Empty Spaces" where she talks about how the landscape reflects on the people who live within it:

Conversation goes on in what sounds like a private code; a few phrases imply a complex of meanings. Asking directions, you get a curious list of details. While trailing sheep I was told to "ride up to that kinda upturned rock, follow the pink wash, turn left at the dump, and then you''ll see the water hole." One friend told his wife on roundup to "turn at the salt lick and the dead cow," which turned out to be a scattering of bones and no salt lick at all.

In this excerpt, interesting sociological information is shared about the people who live in this landscape and a brief, amusing anecdote compliments it. This is one of a few feel-good moments in this essay, for most of her writing isn't really humorous. She seems to have a very serious tone throughout her essays. In her essay "About Men" she gets serious about how the media portrays the cowboy compared to what a cowboy really is. She could have gone into better detail to show the distinction between the two, if you ask me. I thought more personal experience...dialogue, anecdotes, relationships...using those ideas and techniques would give her more credibility as a woman who knows what a real cowboy is.

It isn't that I don't like her writing. It's just that the style of writing that I would use or admire is different. I like the topics and ideas in her essays, but in my opinion, they could be portrayed so much better if she had manifested more personal experiences and emotion.

Wild Spot & Some Very Bad, On-The-Fly Poems

O, Sun!

I stopped in my tracks, I paused,
when I came upon the threshold
of my wild spot. Today, with this sun,
rings glory. I did, eventually, start walking,
but more slowly, my head up. The blue jays
are out. The canopy, dissipated,
I see everything that falls or takes flight.
It is one of those days where the sun
is so bright that even the clear air
takes shape, a thin fog. Light so bright
that the invisible becomes visible.
It is quite the phenomenon.

*

[That was actually prose, I broke the structure and rebuilt it into a poem without changing a word.]

The crows are still out. When I get home, I'm going to research how I can possibly attract them to my backyard. And then I'm going to collect leaves for next year's compost. The forest floor is a confetti of golds and browns. Everything is bare and vulnerable to my eye. What a transformation. And how sensational this all is. I want to put leaves in my mouth. I can imagine what they taste like and what their texture would be. This leaf, as I chew it, tastes like water at first. And then bitter lettuce. It's still slightly green and pliable to my tongue. I spit it out.

A day like this makes me want to focus on every single thing.

SMALL WHITE SPIDER

You seem no different,
you white speck crawling
down my black pant leg,
than a louse, a tick,
that blood-stain bug
I'd smash against cement
as a child, feigning pain
with something else's blood.

SPIDER WEBS

The dogbane holds you.
The air plays your trembling strings.
The light wears you.
Diamonds.

DOGBANE

is what native americans used for rope.

First, you pull the dryest,
deadest stalk and peel its fragile bark away,
exposing the taut cord, that thick vein.
Take an end in each hand and twist them
with your thumb and forefinger. Watch
as the air seems to bend it into rope. Watch
the physics of twine and pull and twist. Watch
how something can move contrary to air. Envy
that movement, wish you could do the same.

Then burn it.
Get the excess off.
Tighten the strings.
Tune it.
Boil it
until the water
turns
brown.

*

Before winter comes, I want to build a bird's nest and see if in the spring a bird will use it. I will make it and keep it in the freezer all winter and put it out in the spring. Or perhaps I will keep it outside all winter. I don't know yet. I need to do some research.



[Today, before I walked to my wild spot, I read some poetry that seems to compliment this entry, so here it is.]

MY NOVEMBER GUEST

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

Robert Frost

Many people find autumn to be ugly. I think it might be my favorite season, though. Honestly, I think it is the most comfortable season. I fall along with everything. I settle into things. I crawl into warm areas and dark areas. Part of me hibernates into myself. I make more time for myself. It feels just right.

Nature in Poetry

Gray whale
Now that we are sending you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing

I write as though you could understand
And I could say it
One must always pretend something

*

This is an excerpt from W.S. Merwin's poem "For A Coming Extinction". I like when nature writers take a more conservative stand-point towards nature. Perhaps "conservative" is the wrong word, though. But I must admit, poems that idolize animals and celebrate nature on the surface can be very cliche and boring. This poem is not celebrating endangered or extinct animals on the surface, but is idolizing humans in a demeaning way. The truth is...is that the poem is very honest. There are several types of honesty, though. An objective and a subjective honesty. And the strange thing is that I don't know which is which. One type of honesty would be that we, as a human race, determine what is important. And what is important is us. Everything is based on our perspective. If we really wanted animals to have rights, we would let them vote. That type of thing. We naturally override everything natural around us because we obtain a consciousness that allows us to do (or think) so. The other truth is that we are not, really, any better than the natural world. "Better" is subjective, for it is a term that we create and strive for as a human race. But in the long run, just to sound like a broken record on purpose (which is what this poem is doing, and I like that), like the manatees and whales, we're all going to die.

Another interesting approach to nature is embodied in Lucille Clifton's poem "defending my tongue". Not only is nature landscape in this poem, but it is also lifestyle and voice. The natural voice of this poem is very evident--that of an uneducated African American woman defending the tongue of her ancestors.

Both of these poems are very blunt and verbal poems, which I like. I find it interesting, though, that I also admire Pattiann Rogers' poem "The Hummingbird: A Seduction". The title itself hints at sexuality, and although there is sexuality in this poem, it is very subtle and I like how it doesn't seem forced or too blunt.

And if I saw your sweeping and sucking
Performance of swirling egg and semen in the air,
The weaving, twisting vision of red petal
And nectar and soaring rump, the rush of your win
In its grand confusion of arcing and splitting
Created completely out of nothing just for me.

*

This is a love poem. Some of it gets a bit carried away, in my opinion, but there are beautiful parts in this poem that show a sincere celebration of the lover. "I would bless the base/of each of your feathers and touch the tine/of string muscles binding your wings..." Such a beautiful image right there! It is interesting that the poet chose the hummingbird to demonstrate this love, for the hummingbird is quick, easy to not notice, and brash in its movement while at the same time very deliberate, beautiful, graceful, and in flight. Personally, if I were to write a love poem that concerns a bird, I would choose something larger, perhaps. And slow. Something that perches high up and observes, then swoops down for a closer look or a kill. Something predatorial, but only because that is what it must do. Predatorial might be wrong. Maybe I'm searching for intent and deliberation. A goal. A desire to pursue. To pursue with grace.

An uneffective poem would be "Milkweed" by James Wright. The poem is too self-indulged to the point where the "me-ness" drowns the image or essence of the milkweed. I'm not even sure what is going on in the poem because I am so concerned with what the narrator is explaining about himself. When I think the milkweed is being alluded to, I doubt myself, thinking, "This isn't the milkweed, this is something else. Something more alive." I need a better description or presence of the milkweed in order to understand the presence of the narrator.

Because poetry is a technique that allows us to narrow or zero in on something particular, one would think that nature would be an easy subject for poetry, but it absolutely isn't. For all the comparing of nature to humanity that we do, we do not always compare nature to our own personal lives...the simple things we do between walls and underneath roofs. When we think of people vs. nature or people & nature, we think pluralistically, rather than individually or singly. It is easy to use nature as a metaphor or soundboard for how awful we can be as humans, but we don't often write poems about how nature reflects our experiences in the bathroom as we brush our teeth or do the dishes or say goodbye to loved ones. I think it would be interesting to see more of that. Interesting. And mandatory.

Wild Spot

There is not a cloud in the sky today. And it is warm. The weather is very fickle and it is interesting to watch the landscape here go from sopping to crisp. The ground isn't so cold beneath me and the lichen has resumed to its crumbly texture. It's amazing how dry everything has gotten. I noticed it yesterday, too, when I was in Millvale with my friend Dan. We hiked to the top of a large hill, started a small fire, and boiled some noodles over it. The fire a decent size in just a matter of minutes and it burned hot against the legs of our pants.

I woke up with a tick on my thigh this morning...from being in the woods with Dan yesterday. It must have crawled up my pant leg and was feasting on me all night. I scraped the sucker off and struggled to flick the thing into the drain of the sink. Right after I washed it down the drain, I regretted it, thinking that I should have kept it and analyzed it. But I was in too much shock. With all the hiking I have done, I have never had such a huge tick on me, just small ones.

It would be interesting to scavenge this area, looking for bones, broken glass, rocks, and pieces of metal. It would be easy to do a small excavation here. Before the end of the semester, I would like to perform a small excavation and see what I can find. Another thing I would like to do before the end of the semester is visit this place at night. I need to do both of these things before it gets too cold. Especially the excavation, because I don't want the ground to freeze too much.

I wish rivers made more noise, much like how an ocean does. I wish the tide was stronger and more turbulent. The Allegheny River is supposedly very fast and dangerous. Although it is intriguing for something so dangerous and slick to be silent, it would be very interesting to be able to hear the river from here...or from my house which is only four blocks away from the river. I don't hear the barges on the river right now, but I still hear the mechanical clangs of the factories across the river. The crows are still cawing in the canopy as it undresses itself in the wind. Soon the crows will be nothing but silhouettes on naked branches, their beaks open like the shadow puppets I used to make when trying to fall asleep as a child.

I have been staying up later. And so I have been even more intrigued to explore outside the confines of my house after the moon has risen. I shall come here soon, quietly, and with little help or light. I will sit here where I am now, maybe a little distant from the entrance to this cave, so that I do not disturb what may go in and out of it in the night. I want to explore the world that people retreat from when the sun goes down or when the weather is disagreeable. There is a whole world that we miss when we go in when it rains or gets dark. People tie these to danger, but I would like to tie them to wonder. Instead of just seeing the footprints, I'll see or hear the feet. Instead of walking through the bowing grass of deer-beds, I will see the glow of their eyes or the weight of their hoof.

"Blue Iris" by Mary Oliver

There is a struggle in Mary Oliver's poems. Even in the poems beyond her book Blue Iris. Within her poems are dual worlds which the narrator straddles and contemplates. One world is that of ambition and the other seems to be the sanctuary of nature. Ambition concerns money, fame, success, and the daily-grind. Nature concerns an inner-knowing, peace, and appreciation. Here is an excerpt from her poem "Black Oaks" that embodies the struggle between ambition and nature.

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
one boot to another--why don't you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money.
I don't even want to come in out of the rain.

We are living in a time where idleness is the enemy and ambition is the force. In her poems, Oliver wants to choose idleness and encourages sleeping in the grasses and lounging near the river. Her poems make me think about Rachel Carson's essay "The Sense of Wonder", about how we need to encourage children to be curious about nature so that we, as adults, can learn something from these children.

A poem by Mary Oliver is very easy to recognize when looking down at the page. Her poems trickle down the page like formed raindrops, in stanzas where all the words seem to count. When reading these poems to myself, I realize that the form and line breaks of these poems makes me really want to hear these poems be read aloud. In my desperation to hear a Mary Oliver poem be read aloud, I went to youtube and found this video of a woman reciting "Wild Geese" while waiting in the car for her husband while he was at a doctor's appointment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqmQ829qYRc

Her poems make me, as a human being living in this world, feel delicate. Like I am in touch with the soft animal of myself. That I should allow this body to to crawl into whatever hole or nook that it desires. And lately, to be honest, I have been allowing this.

At the Entrance to the Cave

I am
a soft stone, sitting
and waiting for the moss'
green down to spread across

my back. The cave breathes
come in. The spiders spell
home with silk ink
that stretches above my head

like the black, slick roof
between two streets
where my mother waits to greet
this body. This shiny skin.

Wild Spot

As I climbed up the hill to the mineshaft, I came across an old, white, dirty golf ball. This past summer, I went on a mushrom hunt with the Western Pennsylvania Mushroom Society and they warned me not to get too excited when I think I see an amazing mushroom ahead, because it will most likely be a flourescent golf ball. It was very appropriate today, though, that I found this golfball instead of some psychadelic shroom.

My grandpap passed away Friday night at 10:30, about four hours after I visted him as his last visitor. He squirmed in his hospital bed like a tiny bird, unable to breathe. I stroked his feathery hair and guided his hands to restful positions.

My pap loved golf. He ventured onto the green hills well into his eighties. His partner of thirty-one years, Cindy, told me that if I have something to put in his coffin, I should do so. I had no idea what to put in there.

Until now.

If I think about it, my pap is more connected to this place I'm sitting at now than anyone else. The dark places I have explored in my childhood and now adulthood are pretty much his backyard. I am close to the Allegheny River right now. In front, I hear the barges and their heavy metallic noises on the water. My pap lived right near the river where he used to send thousands of golf balls arching into its current. He used to work at the old glass factory near here that has been shut down and now mounds of glass blocks and shards accumulate. He lost his eye at that job. It was ironically replaced with a glass eye. And I don't think that I am forcing a connection as I sit with this old golfball at my feet, next to a hole in the ground. A hole I had entered not too long ago, alive, breathing, in awe.

But at the same time, it feels like I haven't been here in a while. The ground is now covered with leaves and the foliage down below, where the deer sleep, is less dense. The temperature has definitely dropped these past two weeks and frost has settled. Snow has accumulated not even 150 miles east of here. Dew droplets dot the scraggily spider webs above my head, weighing them down. They look more like a scene after a celebration when all the ribbons are loose and balloons are deflated. There's definitely a lot of lowering and dying going on.

I'm going to take home some leaves and press them, maybe make a boquet of them to hang on my bedroom wall. I am still in the long process of moving back home and I have a forest of things, but no place to put them. Hundreds and hundreds of books. I sleep on the floor and it makes me feel like I am here for some reason, at my wild spot, taking in my surroundings.

I feel like I am going through a "wildening" of my own. I've been withdrawing into the outside. Even in the most public of places like the book store I work at, the school I go to, or the grocery store. I feel that everything is asking me to hold my breath and crawl into it as an observer. I feel I don't belong in any of these places. At my pap's viewing, I took solace in the flowers and a curl of hair on a baby's head. I'm taking all these steps back all of a sudden and I have not yet ran into a wall.

I like it.

The entrace of the mine shaft still smells like peanut butter. Leaves are still falling their propelling fall and the birds I wish I could identify are still calling their call. I was prompted to buy two magazines about birding when I went to buy my new 2010 Farmer's Almanac. Hopefully I'll learn something. The lichen, to the touch, is not crumbly since it is now wet. It is more like makeup and it sticks to my finger like foundation. I never wear makeup, but I just smeared an arc of the calcium green foundation across my forehead.

I hear two men walking the path together. I don't think that they can see me up here.

He makes enough mother-fuckin' money...

It's amusing that such thoughts and conversations exist in a place like this. And why wouldn't they? Anything normal can happen out here. I can read a book and drink tea here. I can serve freshly baked cookies here. I can call the bank here. I can worry about my school loans here. I can have my final thesis board meeting here. That last part was a joke....although I'm sure that quite a few professors would enjoy it.

I'm glad to be here right now. I'm not saying that because I see this place as an escape from the loss of my pap, either. I can cope with the inevitable, even though it is hard. I don't like using nature as an escape. When I venture into it, it's not to lessen anything or leave anything behind. If anything, it's to gain. To think more. Be engaged. Have an adventure.

I'm glad I'm here.

And I'm glad that I didn't find a mushroom.

Wild Spot with my Guest-of-Honor

This is not a cave. It's a mineshaft.

I brought my boyfriend to my wild spot. The leaves were falling like a surrender and we meandered all around the cave before finally lowering our bodies into it. It is about time that I brought another set of eyes with me to my wildspot. While my eyes scanned the ground, finding old bottles that I now collect and display in my kitchen, rocks, acorns, leaves...my boyfriend Jeremy found a nest of baby raccoons in the crevasse of a tall tree. The little masked children looked down at us without fear, not knowing, maybe, that we are typically something to fear. Look, Jeremy said, pointing up at them and I was in love in more ways than one right then.

We continued to follow a familiar path I had followed before. A very rough path that if you took the wrong step, you'd fall or slide off the side of a steep grade. Grasping on to weeds, jutting roots, and crumbling rock walls, we continued on the trail until we reached a look-out spot that overlooked the Tarentum Bridge that connects New Kensington to Tarentum/Natrona Heights. It was a beautiful view. It's interesting how when all your senses are working together, you create one scene. But if I were to close my eyes, I would hear traffic and a phone ringing. If I were to close my ears, I'd see a wide, meandering river, hills and hills of changing trees. If I were to close my eyes and ears, I'd smell the herbs I was unable to identify. At first it smelled like peppermint, but I know what peppermint looks like. Jeremy found the source of the smell and I pulled several from their roots. Over breakfast the next morning, he hung them upside down in my kitchen to dry.

I entered the cave/mineshaft first. This was my second time and I was a little bit nervous. I was very relieved that Jeremy, after seeing the not-so-welcoming entrance, was as giddy to enter the cave as I was. We entered like a backwards birth, into the cave. We located stalagmites and calcium deposits that were about a decade old. We came across raccoon tracks and their scat. On some of the scat, there was a strange mold that grew. It appeared like white hair and when I touched it with a stone, the white hair melted away from the rock towards the cave floor and turned black. Amazing! We were so excited. We were so excited, yet another underground excursion for us. We are growing used to being the warmest things.

Beyond Desert Walls: Essays from Prison by Ken Lamberton

For three days, there was a dead mouse on the sidewalk near my garage. On that third day, yesterday, I came home in the middle of the afternoon. I went out and scooped the stiffened mouse onto a paper plate and took it inside. It sat on the counter as I did my come-home routines. Fed/watered the dog. Closed the blinds. Went to the bathroom. Turned on some music. The whole time, I thought about the mouse, dead on a plate on the counter. I thought about how a dead thing can't really harm anything. But we act like it does. We don't want to touch it or witness it or be around it. We don't want to bring it into the house and know that it's sitting there as plain as a mouse as we go about our routines of living.

I eventually sat down at the kitchen table with my rotting friend. I brought my nose up close and you can imagine the smell, I'm sure, if you ever smelled rotten potatoes or rancid roadkill. I examined the fur, trying to find lacerations, a reason for death. I thought about the setting of its death. Near the garage. A bird, I'm sure, had the mouse in its talons or beak. Dropped it to its internal bleeding death. I stroked the soft fur that was contaminated with still, white worms. They did not move or seem alive. Dead larvae? I wasn't sure. I'm still not sure. My favorite thing, though, was the mouse's belly. How it moved at every jab and poke of my index finger. How soft it felt. I felt it was full of blood. I stroked its small, almost non-existent ears. Its teeth, kind of buck-toothed, seemed like a metallic grey. I couldn't open its mouth. I didn't really try. Its tail was curved towards its body, coward-like. The eyes were closed, coward-like.

I did this yesterday, before I even began reading Lamberton's book Beyond Desert Walls. When I read the first chapter or essay, I was astounded at the coincidence. I read about roadkill and taxidermy and dead animals. And hours before, I was poking at a dead mouse, bringing it close to my nose. It might as well be my lips. Lamberton wrote,

Killing was my way of dealing with an environment I didn't understand, a brutal, arrogant reaction to its incomprehensible and awful strangeness. And because everything was strange, I killed over and over again. It was my first religion.

This made me think of Gessner's "gross contact". Experiencing nature through the unconventional. Experiencing nature through all the senses. Through rule-breaking. Through solitude. All of these elements, ironically, got him in trouble in his personal life. When I realized that these essays were from prison, I had expectations. From the selection of essays that I read, those expectations were not met. Although the essays we had to read for class were interesting, I didn't feel that prison played a major role in the writing.

I did like Lamberton's constant struggle with obtaining a parallel between his personal and professional life. By the end of the book, he proposes that his professional life is his personal life--that teaching isn't just a profession, but something that his life naturally insists upon. This is a feeling that I can relate to. How I would love for all my passions to turn out to be exactly what I can make a living from. It is important for the professional life and the personal life to become intimate. Lamberton craved intimacy with nature, in his own way. He writes,

I desired romance. Even more, I wanted the kind of relationship where reomantic chance encounters would be the interlocking strands of some new and profound ecological vision, where I wasn't a mere observer but a participant, where I was connected and my place made sense.

Not only did he want his placement as a teacher to make sense, but his placement as a naturalist or wildlife "interactor". There is that awful wall between humans and nature when human immerses their body into the natural landscape. It seems that whenever I walk into the forest, I must be very quiet and pause at every sound. Of course, I naturally do it so that I can pay closer attention to whatever I disturbed, but I also do it because I feel like the intruder. When people walk into the forest, they do it to be alone sometimes. Any sight or proof of civilization turns out to be a disappointment: a soda can, candy wrapper, a blazed or marked tree, footprints, etc. This leads to another interesting, but longer, excerpt that I really liked from this book.

Joseph Wood Krutch was right when he wrote: "When all the 'collecting,' photographing, and experimentation is taken into consideration--the best friend of the birds is often the one who pays no attention to them." First we cut down their trees. Then poison them with DDT and shoot them as pests and for sport. Today, more wise for the experience, we love them to death. Why is it that even the footprints we leave behind cause harm? Why must human culture always have an impact? And here I am, just as guilty as the developers and tourists. Checking birds off as if they were items on a shopping list. Teacher, bird watcher, writer--but still a consumer in the end. Seems I can't escape my own greedy human nature.

As amateur naturalists or nature enthusiasts, it is difficult to find our placement in nature. The things we love are the things we scare away. When you are observing a bird and the bird knows you are there, you are not observing the bird, per se, as a bird being a bird as if you are not there. You have changed the equation by adding yourself. The outcome will be different. The bird is going to be a bit more careful and wary with its actions since you are there. You're observing it be wary of you. Depending on the animal...you can also watch it want to destroy you.

Seems like a huge metaphor for love.

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray

I feel that I can relate to Ray, who found wonder and adventure in a place considered filthy or dangerous. I spent and still spend a lot of my time in hot pursuit of dark, dangerous places that remind me of the places in my recurring dreams. My places are abandoned, off-limits, dangerous, full of junk, filthy, and dark. In real life, you can find me in caves, mine shafts, abandoned tunnels, ventilation shafts, river-sides, abandoned buildings, factories, swamps, cemeteries, basements, and deep closets. I am always pursuing the cramped, the dark. It can get me in trouble and hurt me. It can make people lose trust in me or worry for me. But I am fine--and as wrong as I know it sounds for me to say this--nothing terrible ever happens to me.

Like Ray, I would have been at home, easily, in a junkyard. In fact, I often drive past them and fantasize about being in the bowels of them, always thinking to myself, this would be a great place to lay down and die.

On page 25, Ray mentions "surprise" concerning the wide variety of groceries her father would bring home. I love how Ray remembers and portrays her childhood through processes, for that is something I always encourage myself and others to do--to remember how to be a child. Surprise is such a beautiful thing and actually, it has a lot to do with my thesis on curiosity and Rachel Carson's child-like wonder.

One technique that Ray uses to instill a child-like persona in her writing is the use of lists. She uses some amazing lists in her writing. Here are a couple examples:

Axles, transmissions, a wheelbarrow with a flat tire, split plastic buckets, ahlf a toilet, a postmodern clay statue of a twisted man with a cigarette in his ear, wire cages, broken wood stoves, an upside-down washing machine.

...bathtubs, motors, an airplane wing, the bucket to a crane, tractor tires, sparrow nests, froze-up treadle sewing machines, kids' swimming pools going to crumbs, rusted harrows and plows. More motors. Transmissions. A small mountain range of bald tires and rims. Hubcaps. A gaggle of bent, broken, mutilated, unusable bicycle frames.

The interesting thing about her making tese lists as a writing, professional adult is that it reflects and proves that she grew up among a lot of junk.

Another way that she captures child-like wonder is that there are stories. There are little myt stories concerning how she and her siblings were "found" instead of born. In the chapter "Built by Fire," she tells a tale, personifying pine and lightning.

While reading this book, I didn't really feel like I was reading a "nature" book. The natural aspects of this book, I think, were tied in seamlessly. Compared to Gift's book, I think Ray did a better job at tying in her personal life with the natural world. It seemed more like Ray's life existed more naturally within nature and in Gift's book, it seemed more like an effort or a different part of her life. Something that is separate and has to be given an allotted amount of time.

What is interesting about Ray's book is that even when she isn't talking about nature, she seems to be talking about nature. The term "nature" seems to take on a persona that is more than just Abbey's snakes, desert, and politics, or Gift's weeds and out-of-placement. When reading Ray's book, I didn't feel as if she manuevered the metaphorical camera of this book to focus on something specific. I felt like everything in the book existed together within one scene. There wasn't any evident, obvious change.

What makes Ray's book different from other books I've read is that nature isn't just something outside herself and out in the world. It's in people, as well. When I read various stories about her father, how crafty and inventive he was, I felt like I was reading about a crafty, inventive animal...but an animal that is close, familiar, and intimate to the narrator. Same goes with her siblings or her college "lover" and the wild things he did and encouraged her to do.

I've been steeping ideas in my brain concerning what I want to write my essay about (for this class). I know that once I choose the idea I want to go with and sit down with it, it will flow out easily. It has been several months since I've written an essay. Before I even read this book, though, I thought that I would write about my excursions in these dangerous places in nature that resemble my dreams so well. So, it was really nice and relieving to read Ray's book. It's good to know that there are people who enjoy those parts of the world and also try to make all the various branches of their life--be them classes, friends, decisons--beneficial to the passions in their life.

Place Entry #4

It is pouring rain. The rain forces me to sit closer, under the jutting entrance of the cave. If I wanted to, I could lay my body down upon the lowering grade at this entrance. Half in and half out of something. Story of my life. Seriously, I find it interesting that all this morning, I was surrounded by people, clothed for the rain, droplets dotting their hair. I was at work at the bookstore where many of these people walk around with their hot teas or lattes, the only danger or discomfort being a burnt tongue or a paper cut. After work, there were even more people. I drove up to the Carneige Library in Oakland, spent fifteen minutes finding a place to park. To keep myself from imploding, I amused myself with the fact that within the hour, I would be at my "wild spot" where none of these people will follow me. I imagined everyone being me for a moment. Driving into the city just to pick up three reserved books and finding out that one is still in transit from another branch. An hour of routes and suburban roads later, their works pants are rolled up mid-claf, flip-flops replace their fancy shoes, a hat sits on their heads, and they walk the half mile to a cave just to write for an hour or so. What if everyone had a wild spot they had to visit? I'm glad all those people are in the city. Leave me alone.

And so it is raining. And thus this pace exists the way it does. I just took my flip-flops off and placed my feet into the cave. This is my first time writing here when my back isn't to the cave. This is my first time writing here when my back isn't to the cave. Half in, half out, I am. It is a shame that we go inside of something when it rains. Sweaters, umbrellas, buildings, homes, porches, cars, under bridges, awnings. We let the rain stop us from our routine outdoor plans. I try to go running a couple days a week and I go even when it rains.

Strangely, the cool air that comes from te bowels of te cave smells like peanut butter. Not real peanut butter, but that grainy, fake peanut butter in crackers. Or maybe it smells like peanut butter cookies. I wonder why that is. I'm rubbing my feet hard against the slope of this ccave and it is hard as cement despite having a crumbling, clay-like appearance. Above me there appears to be forgotten spiderwebs. Webs that spiders give up on. I guess we do that a lot. Abandon beautiful things without really caring or giving a second thought. I do that with my writing, I guess. Not to say that what I write is beautiful, but it has potential. I can go through all my junk and probably find dozens of my own abandoned webs.

My toes are cold, pruny, and dirty from debris from walking here in the rain. I want for my body to really react or interact with this place. I could probably take all my clothes off now if I desired to. I'd be cold and get bitten by mosquitoes, but that is okay. Perhaps I should save that for a dry day.

The sun is shining at my back, so I turn around to see the sun reflect in white gleams on all the wet leaves. I t makes me think of Bob Ross and his landscape art. How he effortlessly dipped his fan brush in the white oil and dotted the evergreens, his happy trees. So little effort, it seems, goes into creating something so beautiful or realistic. Keep in mind, I watched Bob ross after "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood". Bob Ross is like Monet to a five-year-old. Still the mosquitoes are biting. Each week, I have been getting a new constellation of bites on my legs. I would like to bring a magnifying glass and look at a mosquito more carefully. Hopefully, I'd find something so beautiful about it that I'd consider not killing it.

The sun's even brighter now and here I am, still dipping my feet in the cave and my head in the sun. A mile away, my dad is warm and his feet are socked and he's on his knees in front of the TV, ready to watch the Steeler game. I mentioned before that I just moved back in with my parents. And I love being home with them again during this season. I miss sitting with my dad as he watches football. I'd sit there pretending to care as I actually did homework. And now I have that again, for a little while, anyway. He has no idea that right now, I am half with him and half elsewhere. He has no idea that I'm at this cave, shooing mosquitoes, wondering if it is actually still raining or is the wind blowing droplets from the leaves? If it weren't for my father taking me bike riding for the first time on the trail that is near this cave...if it weren't for him instilling a curiosity in nature within me by taking me hiking and fishing...I would not be here craving peanut butter cookies, yet being so far from eating one.

Now it's time to go "watch the game".

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

Brutal writing.



I like this idea of Abbey's a lot. To me, it means capturing nature through words that are not biased or based on history, formerly perceived metaphors, or through romanticism. It is capturing nature for what it is, what it does, why it does, and how it is right now. I admire this idea because it takes "us" away from it. When we compare a cleomie flower to a firework exploding in the sky, we are comparing that natural element of the world to something more cultural, aesthetic, and memorable. The cleomie is no longer a flower, but a firework. I like the idea of capturing something for what it is, because that's exactly what is going on. My intent on living out my life is not to impersonate or imitate anything that is similar to myself. I want to get down with Abbey's "bare bones of existence....the bedrock that contains us." This leads to Abbey's mentioning of evocation vs. imitation. Abbey does not aim to imitate through writing, but to evoke emotion, thought, and visions. This is a wise move, I think.


Although I admire this idea of brutal writing a lot, I didn't capture as much of it as I would have liked in Abbey's writing. I don't know if it's me, but I noticed a lot of tone/voice changes within his various essays. Of course, that makes sense, because the tone changes with the content, but sometimes it felt as if different people wrote these essays. I can come up with a few examples of when I thought Abbey didn't follow his "brutal writing" idealism. His descriptions concerning the mating dance of the gopher snakes was interesting and somewhat ritualized. Although it is indeed a ritual, it seemed to be described too...flamboyantly? I'm not too sure. It was too much portrayed as a "dance" rather than a necessary mating ritual. But perhaps I am being picky or misunderstanding.

But I do want to try this out. I want the cave that I visit to just be a cave--no longer the cool, gaping mouth that breathes mosquitoes with its moss-scented breath. I want for the crows I hear among the trees to just be crows that call and call. They do not sing. They do not talk. They communicate and I must face the fact that I will never understand. Ha! What an interesting word to use there--Brutality. To whom is this idea being brutal? To the reader? Are cold-hard realities punishing and harsh? What about to the writer? Is there not any comfort in comparison or metaphor? I can appreciate that a black snake on the ground is just a black snake on the ground. I can appreciate that a black cat crossing my path is just a black cat crossing my path and not bad luck. But where is the fun? That's brutal. Reality and stripping. Stripping things of their likely entities in order to get to the true entity. It hurts to not turn the cool, dark cave into an object that warms me someow. To not turn it into a desirable womb or eggshell or home.

Wouldn't the most "brutal" writer be the person who does not write? Is the intent in writing almost always leaning towards "pedestalism"? Is the subject not memorialized or celebrated through decorated words, exaggeration, metaphor, and memory? As a person who wants to write, I often tell myself, "Don't be better at writing about this than you are at actually doing this." I am often envious of people who I come across and find talented or experienced in one thing or another, but do not document it through some creative outlet. They just do and that's good enough. No blogging about it later. No self-taken photographs of themselves doing it. No paintings that are inspired by it. I'm not raging against the arts here. I'm just cheering for (and envying) those who can experience art (brutal!) without having the need to document it through something else that can be shown off. I think that is art.

And wow, I think that was a huge tangent.

I really loved the essay "Water" because for a long time now, I have been fascinated by mechanisms of survival, be it emotional/psychological survival, evolutionary survival, or wilderness survival. Abbey's voice is very evident here. To the point and quite humorous. I really loved how he began this essay with a conversation he had with a tourist. A tourist mentions that the park will be more enjoyable if there were more water. Abbey claims that the park would not be the way it is, then, if there were water. How often we crave just one small change to our physical or emotional environment, thinking that one small change would just make us more content and not really change our environment completely. And how wrong we are! To receive that one small change is more profound than we'd like to believe. I also loved, though, how peaceful this conversation was between Abbey and the tourist. I often found myself surprised by Abbey's calmness for I always associated his name with brutality, cynicism, and impatience.

But in "Water", I like how the form of his writing mimicked the content. For instance, he is blunt about dehydration and knowing when to just shit-give-up when in a desperate separation in the desert. He is blunt, brutal, and rational. This tone or personality he has specifically in this essay reflects (I'd like to believe) nature itself and how blunt, brutal, and rational it is. I might be pushing it a bit by saying nature is rational. But I do believe that nature follows a course that is influenced by cause and effect, chain-reactions, actions and consequences.

When someone approaches me with a story of their luck or good fortune, I tell them that they should thank the world. I believe in the whole butterfly effect phenomenon and how consequences and paths line up or pass at just the precise moment and causes that lucky, good thing to happen. Every statement has its little reasonings behind it.

Place Entry #3

I don't feel the cool of the cave's mouth today as I did last week. And I just heard a man's voice over a speaker. Probably someone from one of the factories across the river. It's amazing that such intrusive sounds travel to a solitary and beautiful place such as this. To think that when I'm not here to hear it, there is always the beeping and humming sounds of these riverside factories. There is always the roar of traffic on Route 28, just across the river. Sometimes I can make out the sound of just one big rig or some teenager's high-powered engine. I wonder about those people in those cars, on those roads, and in those factories. Right now, I have one thing in common with a woman sitting at her kitchen table in Creighton, a mile away from where I am at now. We can both hear the music chiming from a church. It is approximately 12:00pm.

I am again sitting with my back to the cave on this hill. Below me, I see a chipmunk scurry along a fallen tree limb. He is just a skittering stripe down there, preparing himself for the winter. The leaves here are still green except for the fallen ones that lay curved and brown on the forest floor. The sun is more modest this week compared to last week but the colors are still glorious and the insects still land their teeth on my skin. What is the difference between a bug and an insect? When I think of "bug", I think of rounded grey creatures that burrow beneath stones and roll their food and pieces of home along the ground, slow. Potato bugs. Ants. Dung beetles. Insects, in my mind, have wings. When I say "insect", it is like a beat of the wings. The word seems more elegant and long.

The rocky wall that surrounds the opening of the cave seems very loose. I can blindly place my hand on any part of the wall and pull a piece of it loose. I can't help but wonder what this wall would look like if I stayed here all day and dismantled all the loose rocks one-by-one. Huge slabs of rock would collapse, of course. The entrance of the cave would be smothered by fallen rocks. It is definitely interesting to realize what an intergral part all those small, loose rocks play in the formation and deformation of this wall. I just picked up a small chunk of rock that no doubt used to be a piece of this wall. It is small enough to fit in that tiny pointless pocket one can often find inside the pocket of a pair of jeans. With little effort, and the use of one hand, I broke it apart. Wow, how this cave will certainly change just by the touch of one hand! It's as easy as bringing a curious child who touches and touches. It's as easy as a hiker running his hand along the wall for balance. It's as easy as lovers pressing their bodies against it for support. It's as easy as gravity.

*

I left the threshold of the cave so that I can further explore the area surrounding the cave. The topography here is breath-taking. There are lower parts where a lot of tall, stalky weeds grow, but then there are random levels and hills with small trails leading up them. It is sometimes easy to differentiate between a trail made by an animal such a a deer and a trail made by a human. Humans have appendages that jut out horizontal to the ground. When we move through brush, we do not enter it head first, but legs, hands, and arms first. We trample, break, and push away. We are a wide, shattered path. The path of an animal is thin and fluid. They do trample and sway their necks side to side, but they bend the leaves and grass like calm water. I followed a path of bent grass, up a hill where I found little makeshift huts made of tires, branches, and rocks. I'm guessing some crafty kids make these little shelters for when they play paintball. I came across four or five of these and am sitting in one right now. The children or teenagers who built these are probably in school right now, or they should be. I wonder if I had stayed long enough, I'd see them today. Doubt it.

I do not know how to spell the sounds the crows make in the trees. They begin with a vowel, I suppose. Eh. Eahl.They all of a sudden started talking. Some sound raspier than others. I can't see a single one of them.

While walking to this shelter, I came across a black snake, almost four feet long. It stretched long across my path, it's mouth open. I just moved out of a house that is infested with these snakes. Their skins hang from the rafters in the basement. I touch him and he doesn't move. I grip him slightly and he slithers away, but towards me at the same time. His mouth open at me, stuck mid-thought, smelling me.

Here I am by myself, just a short walk away from the cave. This area is new to me despite being so close to a part with which I am already familiar. It isn't that surprising. Many people live next to neighbors whose homes they've never been in. I am in a wilderness that belongs to a youth, most likely boys, who see this as an out of the way haven for a somewhat dangerous sport. I admire their craft and how natural it seems for them to adopt this place as a memory--as a place they can easily slip into and then out of.

The wind blows in the canopy above me and a squirrel clings to a tree, its body horizontal to the ground. It talks to a squirrel somewhere behind me. I hear four different bird calls and I can't help but wonder why I am so silent.

Place Entry #2

As soon as I climbed the rubble hill up towards the cave, I immediately felt the refreshing cool air that emits from the dark slope of the cave. Today is a warm day but still very nice. It is around 1 pm and the half-mile walk on the trail to get here was relaxing. It is a sunny day and as I sit here, I like to look at the forest below me and notice the contrast between the lime green, sunlit leaves and the darker leaves that brood in the cooler shadows. Mosquitoes fly around my face and feet. I am a warm, soft thing compared to the chalky grey cave, cool and careless behind me. The mosquitoes are biting through my thin shirt. I can hear, but not see, the barges on the Allegheny River. Just to let you know exactly where I am, I am north of Pittsburgh about thirty miles in a town called Arnold. This is the town in which I grew up and since five days ago, moved back to.

The trail that I walked on to get here used to be an old railroad track, but it is now gone and maintained as a private walking trail that has various trails meandering away from it and up the hills or down to the river bank. Because there used to be train tracks, there are also "ruins" of brick train stations, covered in grafitti and ivy. In the summer, any view of these structures are obscured due to thick bamboo-like weeds that grow taller than I am. From where I am sitting now, I can see what seems like a brick column, like a chimney, on the ground. If I walk past that a bit, there are brick walls to the left. I will have to bring my camera sooner or later.

On the tree next to me, a fuzzy vine of poison ivy snakes upwards. I always tell people that I can roll around naked in poison ivy and not get a rash. I'm not quite sure if that's true or not. I do know for certain that I have been exposed to it plenty of times but have never received a rash. This experience, though, is contrary to what Gift mentions in her book _A Weed By Any Other Name_. She says that the more you become exposed to poison ivy, the more likely that you will receive a rash.

Upon looking at the cave, I see various slabs of rock jutting outwards above me. And there are many colors. Rust orange. Any and every shade of grey. Light salmon. And there's the chalky, calcium-green splotches of lichen that give parts of the cave a crumbly looking texture. To the touch, the lichen is like a very dry and crumbly clay. And it smells just as moist and dirty as moss. It was not until I read Gift's book that I learned that moss and lichen are related. When I look up, I see ledges of rock with moss that hovers above the edges. It is not the dark green, compact, carpet moss, but the lighter, dryer, hair-like moss. The sunlight captures it brilliantly. There are also spider webs that adorn some crannies of the cave and since they are in the shadows, the silk of the webs take on a lavendar hue. One web in particular contains the outer skins of what looks like maggots. It reminds me of my dad's old fishing bait. I'd open up the blue plastic containers and find dried up adult maggots that have shed multiple skins.

I am looking at a particular splotch of lichen that takes on the silhouette of a plump angel. An angel with big hips and small wings. I wonder how that angel blotch will change over the next few weeks or months.

Sometime soon, I would like to bring someone along so that I can get a second pair of eyes. It is amazing what one can miss when looking in one spot and not another. This is a very beautiful spot, not very disturbed by human contact. I cannot help but wonder, though, what it must have looked like when the train station was still in working order. It makes me think of a television show I once watched that documented what would happen to the Earth if humans all of a sudden vanished. This documentary gave a timeline for various things like how long a pet would survive.

The wind blows in small gusts and is bringing golden leaves down from their boughs. They all seem to lay on the ground in the fetal position, their little spines and ribs too obvious. I pick up a small yellow leaf, speckled with brown dots. It has eleven veins on each side of the stem and the top bends downwards as if ashamed. A small brown ant walks along it much like how I would walk in an open field.

And these leaves, man, they don't gracefully fall like they're in some scene from Fantasia. Behind me, I hear them land crunch on the ground like something on purpose. They're heavy with some knowledge of the fall. Sometimes I feel like something has been thrown at my back. A pebble? A stick? Is someone there?

No, it's a leaf.

A Weed By Any Other Name

Before I began to read this book, I began thinking about weeds that I have grown up with and can identify. Last summer, when I was up visiting my camp (property my family owns up north near Brooksville), I came across what I thought was a beautiful looking fungus. It shot up from the ground like a stalk and it was transparent and waxy in appearance and to the touch. It had a mauve hue to it, as well, and I found it to be absolutely gorgeous. Not only did it shoot upwards from the ground, but at the very top, it nodded downwards like in prayer. Beautiful! It looked almost like an archetypal angel, for some of the tendrils along the stem sprouted out like wings.

Last fall, I was talking with a friend of mine who graduated as an undergrad from Chatham last year and she studied botany. I described this wonder-of-the-woodlands to her and she didn't exactly know what I was talking about, so I finally just googled the description and voi-la! I learned that this mystical wildflower (not fungus!) is Indian Pipe (monotropa uniflora). Quite a beautiful name, right? But there are several more beautiful names that I feel accurately describe the flower such as Ghost Plant and Corpse Plant.

Besides this Indian Pipe that I discovered last summer, there are plenty more weeds that I grew up with including Morning Glory, Plantain (I, too, often chimed mama had a baby and its head popped off), dandelion, crabgrass, clover, red clover, ivy, poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, and much more. My yard at this moment is adorned with several weeds and the morning glory is really hopping and taking over the clothesline. While finishing the book this morning while sitting on my porch swing, I took a look at the rest of my yard before my father cut the grass. There is plenty of clover, the morning glory, ivy is crawling up along the brick house next door, and moss is growing near the water spigot next to the porch. Surely there are danelions and plantains in the yard, as well. It's all very beautiful.

I thought it was very interesting when Gift, in her book _A Weed By Any Other Name_, talked about going to the Springdale golf course to spend an evening picnicing on the grass with her family. I can imagine that when sitting on that grass without a blanket would be very soothing despite the chemicals used to make the grass the way it is. It made me think of the moments when I sat in various fields in Virginia where I went to college. When I'd sit in those fields, ready to open a book and do some work, I'd be plagued by bugs. They'd crawl up my pants and land on my book and every single tickle on my skin had to be a bug. And the grass down there is harsh and rough. Spiney. I wasn't comfortable and I eventually packed my stuff up and went back to my dorm to do my work. That grass, of course, was not maintained with chemicals. I do not mind insects one bit, but they can be quite the distraction when I go out there on purpose just to be productive. So, reading about that moment at the golf course had a huge impact on me. I'm not too sure how, but it made me look at my bug-infested situation in a different light, I guess. I now understand why those fields were so alive with insects compared to other fields I have lounged in.

Before I began to read this book, I thought the book would be more informative and scientific than it actually was. I really like how personal the book was and it was very nice to personally know the locations Gift mentions in the book. I have hiked the Rachel Carson Trail where she came across the turtle. I drive through Springdale almost everyday. I have visited Rachel Carson's Homestead. I know about Homewood and O'Hara Township. It was very appropriate for her to use the metaphor of herself being a weed in Pittsburgh, for she was new to the area and belonging in Pittsburgh in her own way, even if it is not the way of the "natives". I like this specific passage on page 72:

I remember the thrill of finding the weed, leafy and flowerless, appear suddenly on its matching page in my guidebooks, and feeling for just a moment that I knew my place. I belonged here--in weed science, in this Kentucky soybean field--among the spurges...

...I hope by now that my transplanted friends in Greenville feel equally at home in their soil, with or without the spurge.

I loved the chapter on moss. I have a very intimate connection with moss and as simple as it seems, it was very interesting to read that "moss is probably the reason we crave carpets in our homes"(89). I wish I could have seen more of that in this book: how our domestic lives are a reflection of our wild lives. I am trying to think of some examples. Having indoor plants is an obvious one. Perhaps sleeping in high-up beds is a reflection of how we used to sleep high up in trees in order to stay away from predators. Stuff like that.

I also wish that there were illustrations in this book. It would have been interesting if Gift gave us a detailed illustration for some of these weeds that she explained so eloquently. I especially loved how she explained plantains. I didn't know what she was talking about when she mentioned plantains earlier in the book until I got to the actual chapter about them. The way she described walking through them and getting them stuck in her toes immediately sparked the same memory (not too long ago memory). "Now I know what those are called!" I said to myself.

I think that the first time I ever p

aid very close attention to a weed was when I went truck driving with my father right bef

ore I started high school. We went on a two-week trip across the country. On our way back, we

went through the deep south where I saw a lot of kudzu. Kudzu, when you look at it, is very haunting (I like the ghostly, creepy looking weeds!). They look like creatures fresh from a swamp, smothered by a green that threatens to pull them under again. Kudzu is an invasive species and invades trees within the Appalachian Mountains and these trees take on human-like figures like this one that looks a lot like a woman in a dress, trying to give something to the sky. Her hair is tied back, but isn't she beautiful?

Place Entry #1

I used to ride on this trail everyday. It is a road-width trail that meanders through the woods along the Allegheny River. This trail is not even a mile from my home, but feels so separate--so foreign--and when I slide my body through the fence and re-enter "civilization", I still feel alien and unique to the cars passing me by to drive up Drey Street to go to K-Mart or Family Video. I am having a hard time choosing a specific spot along this mile-long trail to sit and observe for the next few months. 

But I find myself sitting here next to a gaping mouth in the ground, a cave. A couple of years ago, I had a very adventurous day. I packed rope and a flashlight and headed out here to explore the areas off the trail. I followed a scent that day--the scent of soap. It took me to trees with white blossoms that fell like snowflakes onto the ground. Those trees are still here and I have yet to identify them. But I came across this cave that is nothing but a grey hole in the ground. I look at it now and think to myself, "What the hell possessed me to go in there?!" To enter this cave, you must lay on your stomach and enter legs first. As you further enter the cave, the opening becomes smaller; just a puddle of green leaves and sky. Insects crawl along the ceiling right next to your head. Soon enough, you're able to get on your knees and then stand up, much like those charts that show the evolution of man as he progresses from walking on feet and fists to sauntering as a biped. 

I will go back into this cave someday. I've been meaning to, but haven't. As I sit here next to this cave, I am on a sort of edge or cliff overlooking a small meadow where a stream flows through. On that one adventurous day I had years ago, I got a deep cut that left a Nike sign of blood on the inside of my ankle. I washed it in that stream and was very tempted due to dehydration to even drink from it, but didn't. 

Today is a crisp day and the ground isn't as wet as I thought it would be considering I'm sitting in the shade. Yesterday was the first day that I noticed the leaves were changing. I have never seen this specific place, though,  in the fall or winter. I usually just rode my bike or walked it during the summer. 

The Allegheny River nearby has always been a very haunting river to me. I have many memories of it, including a memory of finding a dead, floating piglet on the shore. From here, I can hear the sounds that come from the river. The metallic sounds of the barges and the shhhhhh noise of sand from the riverbed being dropped onto the barge. And there is also the low hum of the power plants that follow the river south towards Pittsburgh. 

Once in a while, I get a disturbing feeling when I visit this place. I have been told stories about the homeless that come here. Right down this edge and past the meadow a bit, there is evidence of small fires and the newspapers surrounding those old fire pits date August 26th. It could be teenagers, it could be grown men with beer on their breath. There are cans and trash scattered here and there. I have morbid thoughts sometimes. I will pass a place up or see a random dark place on this earth and say, "That would be a good place to die." This would be a good place to die. Inside this cave. Is it instinctual to want to die alone and in a dark place? Animals do it. I'm only wondering. Who said it?

I wonder as I wander...

Response 1: What nature is to me and what it is in nature that I want to explore.

On my own, and due to my desire for solitude, I have walked in "nature". I know that the sound of walking through the web of an orb-weaving spider sounds like the peeling of a large chunk of sun-burnt skin. And that is exactly what it feels like after accidentally walking through one. I know that just the act of delicately brushing it away can lead to a sting that develops into a small, painful welt. Although it is truly a pest on the hiking trail, I still cannot help but stop sometimes and look around at these immaculate webs that float like CDs, reflecting the sun, a spiney dot of arachnid right in the middle. 

I like to walk.

But how I would love to saunter. Thoreau begins his essay "Walking" by explaining the difference between walking and sauntering. The etymology alone is fascinating--

"...from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going 'a la Sainte Terre,' to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, 'There goes a Sainte-Terrer,' a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander."

In my opinion, to desire to be a saunterer is very romantic and dreamy. It is easy to fantasize about. There is a wild freedom there. Some of you may have read the book _Into the Wild_ about Christopher McCandless, an intelligent young man who gave up all his belongings and ties and sauntered westward to Alaska where he ultimately and romantically died. No doubt he was inspired by this specific passage I came across while reading "Walking". 

"...prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again,--if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man, then you are ready for a walk."

That's interesting that Thoreau put "and are a free man" before "then you are ready for a walk." Some people, myself included, would feel that the walk itself is the freedom part. But it seems here that there can be freedom without that walk. And that is absolutely true, isn't it? This leads to my question: Why is it that when people desire to be free and outstanding that they feel that going back to "nature" is the correct answer? Is going back to nature a going-backwardness? Is it about roots? Can going back to nature be done without a huge ego? Can't someone find solace with themselves without going into the wild? Why do we have to be animal to prove ourselves to ourselves? We are animal. Okay, that's not just one question, but a series of questions and actually, I can come up with plenty more. But ultimately, why is "nature" the haven or the answer? People complain about a society that doesn't care about them. What makes people think nature will? 

I just had a beautiful image in my head. I'm sure someone has already painted it, but I'll explain it right here and now. In the background, there is a line of trees or a forest. It's just a mesh of greens and browns. There is a slight appearance of sky above the canopy of trees. It's not very blue, but just a normal white/blue/greyness. Now, in the foreground, there are people walking towards the forest. A bunch of skirts and suits walking towards the green and brown abyss. Cellphones to their ears. Children holding basketballs against their hips, walking towards the forest. A taxi cab in the nearer foreground--the driver, stepping out of the yellow cab, a cigarette hanging on his lips...all of them just walking into those dark woods. Isn't that illusion interesting? When you look into a patch of forest and it looks so dark, but when you finally enter it, there isn't so much darkness.

This image in my head reminds me of that famous painting of the shepherd herding the sheep. His back to us, he holds his long cane and leads the sheep into the forest. So, I establish a connection between my mental image and an actual painting. In the painting, there is indeed a leader--the shepherd. But who is the leader of the people who actually go into the wild? I don't think people do it because of free will. I think that such decisions are difficult and one must actually prepare themselves for such a sojourn...a sojourn that is more difficult than staying and dealing with the day-to-day scenario we are all going through.

The nature writing class I am in right now is not only exposing me to different writers and their ideas, but also to fellow classmates who are from all over and have varying experiences with nature. Like in any class, I like to pay close attention to these people and make connections with what I assume about them and who they really are. I am very excited to learn about everyone and find out about their own intimate relationship with nature and what they believe it to be. I don't know how to define nature, to be honest. I don't like to take a stance on nature and the environment, either. I feel that I don't have a place in such situations. I do not like to commit to a specific ideal or fashion of thought. I simply like to make observations and come up with small conclusions. I do have passion for nature and that passion is through appreciation. But my appreciation doesn't consist of eating organically or expecting everyone to be good to the environment. A lot of that is lifestyle and fad. People congregate and make their gardens or have their elaborate organic meals. I think that true passion can be done alone. If you can't appreciate or do something by yourself without the need of others, then that is a flawed passion. It's not passion at all. I like to think that I have passion for the natural world. Most of my experience with it consists of being alone and choosing by myself to take myself out there and get sliced by the briar and succumb to the gravity on steep hiking hills. And yes, I'll finish my hike and go get an ice cream or go to Starbucks because I belong in that world just as much. That is nature.

I am going to encounter a lot of difficulties in this class, but I like a good challenge. I try not to be biased with my thoughts and concerns. I am going to be confused as to what people believe is nature. But we often forget to ask another important question when we ask what is nature? To ask that question makes us very "other". So, here's a very important question:

Who are we?