the rocks are cold but the stream flows freely

Saturday, January 11th, 2014; 4:23 p.m.

I have found my spot. It is in Schenley Park near the Phipps Conservatory. 

On the way in, parking, the couple in front of me was annoyed I was parking so close behind them. I had a “No Parking” (with an arrow pointing away from me) sign to account for, and they had four feet in front of them to move up, but they chose not to. Took their good, old time. Now, in the quieter park, I am reminded of my 10-day silent mediation last year, and I let their negative energy go. I will not accept it. I will not think ill. I will just be.

It is about 52 degrees outside. It feels colder because there is no sun, it's a bit windy and it feels like rain is coming. I'm wearing my new red Christmas jacket and my hiking boots. I have my small green backpack that took me through Israel and Turkey, and I feel like I'm on an adventure again. 

I am amazed by the complexity of this place, how it is so close to my home. I still managed to get lost on my way here, but I loved it. I love running into new things. I love the stone of this place--the stone steps and the stone bridges, which I learned from a sign are made of “tufa," a naturally occurring calcium-based building material.

Pittsburgh has 1,100 bridges that work to connect the city and its surroundings over the three rivers that run through. I want to have gone over all 1,100 by the time I’m done.

I wasn’t sure what kind of place I wanted to “be mine” for this project. I hit a large bridge right away when I got onto the trail here. I wanted to be a bit far away from it so I didn’t focus on it. I have it now in my periphery as a reminder of what “nature” may or may not be. (Ashton Nichols, who we are meeting on Tuesday during class, would tell me that this concept of "nature" vs. urban as a binary construct is conventional and inaccurate. He strives for an "urbanatural" framework when thinking about what and where nature is and believes that the distinction between natural and urban settings is blurred and complex). The bridge reminds me, though, of the intersection between human civilization and what would be here anyway.

I love to think about that. What would still just be here anyway, regardless of whether or not humans existed? (Forget the larger question of what wouldn’t be, for now). I think about that as I travel, too. This shopkeeper would have sold these cherries anyway, these boys would still be playing soccer, these goats would still have run down the hill whether I were there watching or if I were at home in Virginia cooking dinner. That is part of why travel is so appealing. We get dropped into another life that doesn’t depend on our existence. We become privy to the world as it would be anyway. It becomes a secret we are let in on and that becomes a part of our own story as it lengthens over time and space.

The same with nature.

My spot is at the top of a stone staircase, thirteen steps (including the ground at the bottom) in all. I followed the scream of many birds to get here and saw them all fly, black and in unison, from the tree when I sat down. Not because of me, just a coincidence. I am too far away.

I am next to a stream on purpose. I want to hear/see/feel as it changes over the next twelve weeks. There are thin sheets of ice at certain points over the stream. The water flows under them. I’m not sure where it comes from. I love the softness of the sound. Are the fish all dead? Were there any to begin with?

The stream runs through and under these stone-type bridges. I am attracted to them. They are mossy and winter-cold like their surroundings and link, quite gracefully, the manmade with the already-there. I can see three bridges from where I sit and will probably walk over them once I am done writing.

The trees are bare now. The leaves have fallen a while ago. They are brown and soaked through on the ground, morphed into the shadows they created just a few months ago. I think some may be oak leaves. It is a counterintuitive thing, the way it may be brighter under the trees in the dead of winter than in the summer. The light comes through more when the leaves have fallen to the ground. They protect us in the summer. Though there is light, winter is a place to survive. Even the leaves can’t do it.

I wonder if the forest likes it more in the winter. It has no expectations to be beautiful or to present life in the winter. It can remain still and damp and no one, nothing, expects or wants more from it.

I think I see a birch tree. I remember them from Minnesota, in the backyard of my dad’s childhood home. The white bark was magic. It peeled easily and felt ancient in my fingers.

I saw a hornet’s nest on the way in. I wonder if I will see the hornets in a few months. The nest sat precariously at the end of a tree branch. Will the hornets re-inhabit it in the spring? Are they still in it now, hibernating? Have they died from the cold? I don’t know the way of hornets. I wish I did and will try to fix this.

There are small white flowers next to me, their carcasses on thin, brown stems—tall, almost as tall as me.

Runners come by often. There will probably be even more when the weather gets nicer. Pittsburgh is a hilly place. When I first moved here, running was harder. But quickly, my legs, my heart adjusted and became stronger than they were. I will be ready for the San Francisco Nike Women’s Half Marathon whenever that happens for me.

The sky is two-faced, probably more than two, actually. The sky to my left feels like a warehouse ceiling. It is gray and thick and unchanging. 

In front and to my right, there is blue sky and clouds. I hear cars passing on the bridges, smell a runner’s perfume. My big right toe is frozen and so is my bum. The rock I am sitting on is mildly moss-ed and damp. Cold, wet. I wonder if the rock gets warmer farther toward its center. I am reminded of a poem, “Stone,” by my favorite poet, Charles Simic:

Stone

Go inside a stone 
That would be my way. 
Let somebody else become a dove 
Or gnash with a tiger's tooth. 
I am happy to be a stone. 

From the outside the stone is a riddle: 
No one knows how to answer it. 
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet 
Even though a cow steps on it full weight, 
Even though a child throws it in a river; 
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed 
To the river bottom 
Where the fishes come to knock on it 
And listen. 

I have seen sparks fly out 
When two stones are rubbed, 
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all; 
Perhaps there is a moon shining 
From somewhere, as though behind a hill— 
Just enough light to make out 
The strange writings, the star-charts 
On the inner walls.

I am excited to watch this place grow. To know the bridges more intimately and the birch tree that is like a stag. I wonder—hope, maybe—that this nature, this park will help me further understand loss, will let me grow further into it, at least. Is it selfish to wish that nature will give me something? Maybe it will give me nothing and I will trick myself into understanding. Maybe nature deserves more credit than that, I don’t know. I will have to wait and write and see.

Maggie