the streams rush and we are warm again

Friday, February 21st; 1:42 p.m.

We are at halftime now. The earth is half born. A chick sticking her head out of the egg she's cracked open herself. A mother dog licking clean her pup who is still sticky and gooey from her insides.

The world around me is half brown and half white. The rain and new warmth have melted away so much of the snow. The leaves on the ground, hidden for weeks, appear again. I looked out at Schenley like it must feel to look down on Earth from the moon. All swirls and alternating colors.

The forest is thawing and the streams are in full rush. I hear them and the forest makes sense again. An undercurrent both figurative and literal.

The streams gush and remind of Great Falls Park near my home in Virginia. I visited my family last weekend and we spent the afternoon at the falls, part of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. We had never seen them so full and fast. We had never seen them so dirty, either.

Their speed conjures up the muck at the bottom. I wonder about human speed. About how moving through the world too quickly can bring up the bad, the inattention, the heart-muck.

There are lines and curves again in the forest, which the snow had previously eliminated. The river bends and the trail, too. They are again distinct.

I think about an essay I read recently in the 50th Issue of Creative Nonfiction magazine. It'is an essay called "Meander" by Mary Paumier Jones. In it, she talks about the movement and curves of rivers and relates them to the course or form of an essay.

She says:

"A Nova show about the forms of nature prompts me to look up meander. Having always used the word to refer to walking, I am surprised to learn that it comes from water. Rivers and streams meander, verb, have meanders, noun. Meander, in fact, comes from the name of a river, one in ancient Phrygia, now part of Turkey--the Maeander, now the Menderes....In what we do on foot, meandering implies an aimless wandering, with the pleasant connotation that the very aimlessness of the wander is something freely, even happily, chosen."

[Read the rest for some great connections to essay writing.]

On the way to my spot, I meander and then I begin to jog because the world feels alive again and so do I. I go against the current like a salmon, a revolutionary. I am sweating and my boots are untying, but that's okay because we're moving, the river and me, and we are content.

When I don't jog, I skate on the ice. The trail is still completely coated in ice even though the area around it has thawed. It reminds me of figure skating when I was a kid. I skated from the time I was 5 years old until I was fifteen years old. I got to Delta level. I miss the sensation of the ice beneath my blade, the feeling of power I got from bending into a controlled spin, the rush of racing around the ice. I miss the ice shows--I was a Christmas tree one year, an alien the next. I miss the physical challenge of perfecting technique and balance to accomplish something that both felt and looked beautiful. I miss the popcorn smell of the rink lobby concession stand and coming into the cold in the middle of summer, changing from shorts to leggings, then getting too hot on the ice once the work and blood-flow of movement kicked in.

My rock today is cold under me in a way I haven't felt in a while. It isn't snow cold. It's hard cold. Today I didn't have to brush away any snow.

I've continued to think about place this week. I leave for Seattle tomorrow. I've never been. My boyfriend, Will, said I'm going to fall in love with the Pacific Northwest and never come back. I'm not saying he's wrong.

I was talking with my roommate, Kyle, last night about why we both feel more balanced and like we're where we're supposed to be when we are on farms, in the "country," working with the land, simplified in the best of ways, surrounded by the natural world. We are surviving in the city-like environment of Pittsburgh, but we have to try at it more than we might have to elsewhere.

What makes one person thrive in New York City--a place I personally haven't fully connected with yet--drink its crowds like water, while another person finds peace in the open spaces of Wyoming? What makes us tick when it comes to our habitats? Is it nature? Is it nurture? Is it both? Why do some love the beach and some the mountains? Some the desert and some the forest?

I developed a theory about this while we were watching the Ed Abbey movie in our nature writing class: I think we are all non-human animals disguised as humans.

As humans, we can essentially adapt to live almost anywhere. We can build structures that protect us from the natural heat, cold, wetness, dryness, predators, etc. But, just because we can live somewhere, doesn't mean we are meant to. Animals don't really have a choice. A fish can't decide to live in the middle of New York city just as a monkey can't decide to live in the desert. Animals, without human intervention, always live where they are best suited to.

So what about New Yorkers makes them love busyness? What if New Yorkers are actually sharks? Beings who can never stop moving. Or maybe they're buffalo, herd animals. What if beach lovers in Florida or California are really seagulls? Beings who exist best around the ocean and the sand and who often love seafood. What if dry-heat, desert lovers are actually camels? Beings who have a high tolerance for heat and can spend long hours braving it? What if northern Minnesotans are actually a variety of penguin? Beings who blossom in the freezing air, who love its challenge and its extremeness.

It's when the camel moves to the beach or the shark moves to the desert that they may feel less balanced or at peace. They can survive as humans, sure, because of technology and the ability to "falsely" adapt because of manmade devices. But that doesn't mean they are where they most naturally flourish and find happiness. Maybe, as a farm lover, I'm a sheep or a goat transplanted in Pittsburgh. :) (Although I realize, too, that these are domesticated, transplanted animals, as well.) Just a theory!

What animal do you think you really are? Where do you live best? Why?

I have done some further investigating about what the tree in front of my rock might be. The leaves that fell around it are showing again and they still look like oak leaves to me, though my dad thinks otherwise.

I have looked up "shaggy bark" tree and have gotten a lot of suggestions that it may be some kind of maple tree. I am wondering if the tree is in some specific part of a shedding cycle that I am not aware of because none of the images of tree bark I have found online really look like this tree's bark. Maybe I will continue to get more clues as it gets warmer and buds begin to form again. I am not giving up!

Today, is a full-of-life day. More color exists again. The world is stretching and I am stretching with it, only slightly wary this is a tease and that spring is far from fully here...

Maggie

blue jay calls and thoughts on earthly shaping

Thursday, February 13^th, 2014; 12:28 p.m.

I’ve had to switch notebooks because I’ve filled the one I was keeping my nature notes in. I picked another off my shelf that is already partially filled.  All of my notebooks are partially filled with different parts of my life. As I sat down on my rock to write today, I flipped randomly to the back of the book and found I had written:

Creative awareness is about waking up to life—to all the choices and possibilities for change. The basis of creative awareness is acceptance.

I try to keep this in mind as the snow falls around me and further blankets my spot. I’ve never been to my spot when it’s actually currently snowing. It’s twenty-three degrees out, but it somehow feels warm. My fingers do not freeze at all as I write. I think the snow absorbs some of the wind. The flakes fall on my page and smear my ink--natural teardrops that come as I write a love letter to my place.

Something about the snow today feels timeless. Earlier in my walk, before I had gone down the ramp and into the heart of the woods, I looked out over the white forest of Schenley as the noon bells struck at a nearby church. I felt transported to 18^th century England.

The sound took on a new quality, too. The snow mutes the sounds in some respects, but it also makes them more acute. The birdcalls seemed longer and more decipherable than normal. I heard one bird calling back and forth with another and recognized it but couldn’t place it. Cardinal? I thought. I couldn’t see either bird in the tree and then suddenly one of them moved and it was a blue jay, long and swift.

Three hours earlier, I had been talking about blue jays with my dad on the phone. I was saying how loud they are, how much bigger than the thrush or thrasher that comes to eat my suet on the back porch almost daily. Dad told me we have a blue jay living near our home in Virginia, too.

I also heard the voices of children, talking, laughing. As I continued to walk down, I glanced below me and saw them running through the snow. 

I thought how wonderful it is on this snow day that a teacher or parent told them to enjoy the snow, to touch it, to become one with it. No curling up in front of the TV, no staying inside. I want to raise my kids to be one with nature, to care about how it works, to nurture curiosity by following the lead of the Earth and its many questions. To love its animals and trees and waters.  To know where it is they came from.

I continued to walk and noticed the way the trees were collecting the snow in their crevices and angles. 

I am enamored again by the dark stream as it runs between the hard white snow banks. 

I think about how it's all just water in different forms, how we are mostly water ourselves, 60% of our bodies made of the hydrogen-oxygen lifeblood. During the Sabbath, on a farm I stayed on in South Africa two years ago, the owner blessed water instead of wine. To him, it was more sacred. I think I agree.

As I’ve been getting to know my place better, I have begun trying to identify some of the trees around me by their bark and by leaves they dropped that are still visible on the ground nearby. This is the tree I look at while I sit on my rock:

I haven’t found a match online that looks exactly like this bark. My instinct is that it is some kind of oak as that is what the leaves on the ground nearby seem to be. 

Then, I thought maybe it was a London plane tree, which I saw featured on a sign at the entrance to Schenley. 

London plane trees, according to the sign, are “the signature tree of Schenley Plaza…a hybrid of the American sycamore and oriental plane trees. It grows 75-100 feet tall and has a large spreading canopy…its most distinctive feature is its flaky bark, which peels off to reveal a lighter bark underneath. This ability to exfoliate is what makes the London plane an excellent city tree, because it constantly sheds pollutants.”

However, when I looked up photos of London plane tree bark, they did not quite look like my tree’s bark. 

Image of London plane tree from http://www.localecology.org/images/treewalk_washsqvill_planetrees_3.jpg

I would love ideas or suggestions and will keep sleuthing to identify this tree.

I also learned from the sign about the European beech tree.

It says, “This large tree native to Europe typically grows between 50’ and 60’ and lives between 150 and 200 years…bark is light grey and smooth with a somewhat wrinkled appearance.” I am thinking now that maybe what I thought was a birch tree near my spot is actually this European beech tree, but next week, I will examine it more closely. (Many pictures online of the European beech tree show brown and grey bark.) I took these last week:

The sky above me now is like faded aluminum, solid. 

The snow falls on my head and I hear it straight in my ears, like a bunched-up plastic bag unfolding itself. It may be self-centered, but on days like this when the world feels enclosed by the sky, limited by the whiteness of the snow, I feel like I might be on the Truman Show—the Pahos Show. The world feels like a movie set, unreal, constructed, like at any moment I could be told it’s all a ruse.

I’ve been thinking lately about the importance of place. Jonny’s blog post about his West Virginia upbringing and his parents’ banjo voices got me thinking of it.

If I had grown up near this place, how would it be different to me? Is there anyone else who considers this exact spot special? If we went to Arizona State University or Florida State University instead of Chatham, how different would this project be? The snow may not have been a part of our stories. But now I can’t imagine our blogs without the snow as one of the main characters. What else would we have written about?

I think about what role place has in making individuals who they are, defining their beliefs and their demeanors, deciding what they find beauty in and what makes them tick. I think about all the places that have shaped me. 

I don't come from a beach or the deep woods. I don't come from a mountain or a dense city. I come from a suburb, middle America, midwest, flat but sturdy, often plain but strong. I haven't been molded by cruel precipitation, salty air, desert dryness or hard urbanity, but something less focused and more balanced, steady. For those reasons, I don't always consider the physical landscape of my childhood as having a role in making me who I am. It is a quiet person, reserved but very present. Not gruff, glamorous, sharp-edged. It doesn't seem there are very obvious connections between its personality and mine. But, of course, there are. Of course, growing up in the western suburbs of Chicago shaped me. 

I come from wide porches and gridded streets--First, Second, Third, Oak, Elm, Maple, Washington, Lincoln, Adams. I come from calm Saturday mornings of muffled lawn mowers and soft sprinklers. I come from a quick drive to the high school and afternoons sliding into home plate. I come from July art shows on the front lawn of the public library. I come from Zingleman’s fries and frozen Cokes on Friday afternoons in Town, a two-block walk from the middle school. I come from a place of obvious wealth and some very deep, good hearts. I come from drives to the city, the sun glowing around the silhouette of the Sears Tower as we sped down the Eisenhower. I come from people stopping to chat in the grocery store.  I come from a mother with a subtle Chicago accent and a father with Minnesotan charm. I come from hot summers and frigid winters, blissful springs and soul-warming autumns. I come from light pollution, the pink of the city creeping up above my home. I come from fireworks over Navy Pier and boat afternoons anchored in front of a towering Hancock as we jumped into always-freezing Lake Michigan. I come from King Cold blintzes, bowls of homemade popcorn and Land O'Lakes American cheese. I come from Friday night football games. I come from singing and running and piano keys. I come from love. 

Other places have shaped me, too, in ways that are deep: Ghana, North Carolina, South Africa, Belgium, southern France, Greece, Paris, southern India, Turkey, Israel, Virginia, and now Pittsburgh.

In Pittsburgh, I've come to appreciate the complexity and necessity of bridges, the beauty and struggle of living right on the river. I've come to understand better the importance of putting down roots. And Pittsburgh will continue to shape me in ways I have yet to understand. 

I think about how my nature spot here has begun to shape me, allowed me to view the natural world not as something that inherently exists but as a continuous opportunity to question and wonder and challenge and admire. It has slowed me down and helped me to make a habit, a practice, a lifestyle of deeper looking.  

I think about how I could be anywhere else right now, but I’m not. Somewhere else on this planet, people are snorkeling, sipping espresso in cafés, climbing mountains. But I’m on a cold rock in a slice of forest in western Pennsylvania, USA while the snow falls on my head, on my words and in my ears.

I want to keep considering the importance of place and actively trying to understand the geography of what made me, the people I love and strangers I meet along the way. We so often attribute direct experience to how we view the world. But there is the ever-present, often silent current of the land beneath our feet, the weather in our hair, the sounds in our ears that is chipping away at us, molding and re-molding our inner selves, like a precious stone shape-shifting in the wind. 

As I sit on my rock and begin to close my thoughts for the week, the snow drifts down and collects like so many things. I feel how old the world might be--the snow, white whiskers on its chin. 

For some reason, in the falling snow, it is hard for me to leave my spot. I get up to go, turn my back to it. Then, I turn back around for one more look. Without thinking, I’m blowing my spot a kiss goodbye, a kiss on the wind to the forest, thanking it for its time, hesitant to leave, but grateful I will be back. 

Maggie 

the framework of history and whispers from the bridges

Friday, February 7th, 2014; 2:18 p.m. 

I've been hesitant to look up the history of my place. I wanted to get to know it on its own terms first, as I saw it, as it exists one-dimensionally through my eyes. 

Context can change everything. I think this is the beauty and curse of the creative workshop, maybe specifically creative nonfiction workshops. We get to know each other so quickly and so intimately because the content we are putting forth every week is the stuff of our lives, some of the most private and personal parts. This allows us to give each other better feedback, to know where gaps exist and to be able to allude to past essays and midnight bar conversations to enrich essays-in-the-making. 

But we also become irreversibly biased towards our peers' work. We have an automatic interest in their work because we know the creators, the people whose lives we are getting a better picture of. It takes a lot of hard work and mental agility to try to read a piece as a random person picking up a magazine would. Sometimes we know too much to be wholly critical. 

It's the same reason I don't like to watch movie previews or scan the backs of books before I read them. Sometimes, not knowing as much lets me form a more honest opinion. 

And so I've liked getting to know my spot on my own, with no intention other than to look deeply at what is already there. I can see the trees how I like to, make up stories about who has walked through here or over the bridges, without much outside influence. 

But, after four weeks, I have decided to learn my place in a new way. I've researched some of its history, gotten to know its story form the human perspective a bit better, and it's helping me to locate my place in space and time. 

I found the following information on the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy website:

(I did my best not to summarize this history verbatim, though it is fairly straightforward).

Mary Elizabeth Croghan was initially willed Schenley Park, which was known as "Mt. Airy tract" in the 1800s, by her maternal grandfather, General James O'Hara. However, in 1842, when Mary was 15 years old, she created an international scandal by leaving her boarding school in Staten Island to elope to England with 43-year-old Captain Edward Schenley. Mary's father, enraged by the scandal, took action to win the title to her property, which he did. However, he and Mary eventually reconciled and she inherited the land from her father in 1850 when he died. 

Edward Bigelow, the Director of Public Works for Pittsburgh, wanted to create a grand park system and couldn't imagine doing so without the Mt. Airy tract. In 1889, Bigelow learned that a real estate developer's agent was on his way to London to try to buy the land from Mary Schenley. In response, Bigelow sent an East Liberty lawyer to London to try to buy the property first. He ended up reaching London two days before the developer's agent. 

In 1889, Mary gave the 300 acres of Mt. Airy tract to the city with the option of purchasing 120 more, which the city did in 1891. The only conditions from Mary were that the park be named after her and never sold. 

Bigelow connected all parts of the park system with boulevards and began building bridges in Schenley to make it easier for people to travel through and enjoy. Two of the three bridges remain, though many of the initial attractions in the park have disappeared, including a 120-foot circular electric fountain on Flagstaff Hill, the Schenley Casino, which was located where the Frick Fine Arts Building now stands, and a band shell where Anderson Playground is now located. 

In addition to learning about the history of my spot on a grand scale, I also found information about the Visitors Center and Cafe, which I pass each time I walk to my spot. This is one of the last remaining buildings from the park's original creation and is over 100 years old. Before it was renovated to become the Visitors Center and Cafe, it was used as a tool shed, the home of the Pittsburgh Civic Garden Center and a nature museum with all kinds of snakes. In the 1980s, it went into disrepair, but in 2001, it was converted by the Parks Conservancy into the structure it is today. 

I did research online before I visited my spot this week, but I also stopped to look at the signs as I passed them this time, which I don't normally do. I found the most interesting piece of history on these signs. 

In the 1930s, the park got improved further thanks to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration program, a response to the lack of jobs and economic stimulation during the Great Depression. Through this program, WPA workers built a dozen of Schenley Park's foot bridges and paths, including the stone steps and ramp that lead from the Visitor's Center to the park--the stairs and ramp that I climb every time I visit my spot.

This is the reason for the etchings in the bridges, which I noticed during my first visit to my spot. 

I actually really love learning more history about my spot. As I sit on my rock, I start to think about this history and what it might mean for today.

I think about the concept of a city park. I think I take that for granted now because this park is four minutes from my home. It just seems like a natural part of where I live. But to live in a city--in addition to the presence of hard-working conservancies--whose residents and urban planners have such an appreciation for green space, is incredibly lucky. To even have the large quantities of natural forest that exist in and around Pittsburgh is a gift. Less than five minutes in a car from where I sit amongst the quiet trees is the hustle and bustle of downtown life. The eclecticism of this urbanature is invigorating and speaks further to the variety of experiences Pittsburgh has to offer, the ways in which the many ideas of creation are always intertwined.

As I sit on my rock, I think about the specific section of forest where my spot is located. I think about the WPA workers from the 1930s who created the steps that I sit next to every week, the bridges I cross over and back every time I come to my spot. 

I think about the stacking of rocks, the mortar laying, the lifting

Now, in my mind’s eye as I look backwards in time, I see people around me hauling stone, cementing, hammering. The workers probably actually moved my rock to where it sits now across from the other rock—gatekeepers of the stairs. I doubt this symmetry of two same-sized rocks happened naturally. I never considered this before. 

I think about the stairs themselves, how they were carved out, the stone laid. I think about the bridges made of tufa, which I learned about my first time here, and what the process must have been for creating them.

I try to picture what the workers looked like. They were probably all men in the 1930s. Did they wear jeans? Have tool belts? How many were there at one time? Did they enjoy the work? Were they grateful for the WPA or did they resent it? Did someone sit on my rock with a thermos full of coffee and a ham sandwich at lunchtime? How long did it take to build the bridges and stairs that I see now? Did they have to take out any trees to carve the stairs? Did they work during all four seasons?

Now, I begin to see my spot as part of a bigger story—a piece of inheritance, a salvation, a part of a country in a struggle to stay on its feet. An object of pride for Pittsburgh and a respite for its people. It makes me want to explore the rest of Schenley, to know all parts of this grand, multi-purpose piece of city nature.

My spot today is still mostly snow-covered. The ground is incredibly slippery, iced-over. The world seems crispy-coated. I had to hold onto the railings with both hands, almost hugging them, to make it down the stairs.

I can hear the stream today, though not any birds right now. I did hear a woodpecker as I was walking the trail, but I could not seem to locate him with my eyes. 

There is something so beautiful about the dark, liquid stream next to the hard white snow. The contradiction is arresting.

The temperature confused me today. Initially, I was freezing. I had on my usual three pants and two jackets, but every time I took my gloves off to snap a picture, I lost feeling in my hands. As I continued walking, I grew warm and had to unzip my outer jacket. But, as I sit on the rock, I cannot feel my ungloved hand and my toes don’t feel like they exist either.

The sky above me is mostly blue, and I try to stay out of the tree’s shadows so that I can soak up more heat.

While I have learned the people’s history of this place, next week I hope to look more into the natural history of what exists here. I have taken some pictures of bark and leaves and will try to get to know my place in this way in the coming week, melding the man-made and the natural for an even fuller picture of my spot. 

bark from the birch tree

a look ahead

I am happy I have begun to know my place more deeply through its history, despite my initial hesitation, and I will continue to do so in the coming weeks. My place no longer exists solely in 2014 but across centuries. It was part of the vision of ambitious men and women and part of the process that attempted to bring this country back to life in the 1900s. It isn’t just some random forest but one that has been cared for and worked and sewn into the fabric of this city. I am happy to be a part of it. I am honored to pass on its story.  

Maggie 

winter imagination: those things that can't be seen

Friday, January 30, 2014; 2:41 p.m. 

Today, I have decided to share my spot. With this dude, Noah, my five-year-old bearded collie.

He is quick and energetic, walks in anything but a line. He's curious about everything he can reach and even things he can't.

It is warm today, 38-degrees right now. It feels a bit like spring, though I see my breath as I write. I don't need gloves. I feel the sun on me today for the first time in weeks. I hear a plane overheard and more birds than normal: short, shrill, wispy calls. Here, then gone. Perhaps their small throats have thawed since last week.

The snow is still here but it feels different. It has lost a bit of its novelty, its brightness, its glow. Perhaps because it's warmer, too, the snow isn't as miraculous--out of place, even. It exists in this warmish day as a memory of something that was once good. It is cold-stiffened, thicker, crunchier, less forgiving to the step.

I almost slid down the stairs from its solid slickness a few minutes ago, holding onto the railing as Noah pulled me along.

I follow behind Noah as he sniffs, learns this place he's never been. I think about the nose as a pair of eyes, as a brain. How he takes in so much information that way. What could that possibly be like? Sometimes, we humans follow our noses. Away from gas or fire, towards chocolate cake or flowers. But to read the world that way, to know histories through the nose is something I have absolutely no concept for.

So today, as I brush new snow off my rock, I think about the things that can't be seen. The smells, of course, but also those things that are hidden from view.

For instance:
How many bugs lie under the rock I sit on?
How close is the nearest rabbit den?
Where are the snakes of the forest curled up?
How many birds would I see if I truly looked 360-degrees around me?
What is the moisture of the snow giving life to that I have no idea about?
How many miles below me is the closest drop of magma?
What is inside Noah's heart?
Has the air I breathe with this inhalation ever been in Norway?
How many ticks crawl the bark of the tree right behind me?
How many forgotten acorns are slowly becoming oak trees in my presence?
How many years has this rock seen? Did a woolly mammoth ever lick its side? How many dogs have lifted their legs on it?
Is there clay beneath lying-down Noah right now? Or only rich soil?
How far down does the snow seep? To the center of the earth? Or does it spread and dry up?
Is the water of the frozen stream sweet or salty? Smooth or silty?
How long are the birch tree's roots?
How does the forest breathe, grow, prosper around and below me in ways I don't even know to ask about?

evidence of humans on the frozen stream

There are still only outlines, traces of my place. In the spring, there will be an abundance, a surplus of all that's here. There will be less barrenness, more complication, more color. We may know more then. Winter is the question. The answer is in the thaw. But winter is the season of imagination. We must connect the dots, fill in the blanks of life as it is happening around us. We are not given so much to work with as the earth curls up, shrinks, retreats for survival. Winter is minimalism at its finest.

I see birds playing in the tree overhead through the inky, thin branches. In the summertime, the leaves would have hidden this from me. I would have heard the birds playing but been unable to witness their fluttering bodies. So, winter reveals as well. Reveals our fortitude, our patience with the snow and the cold, our ability to take in what seems like nothing, what seems like less and to accept that, to see what it provides instead of what it has taken away.

I watch Noah in a new way. I try to picture him as a wild animal, though I know he's not. But some part of him, yes, is wild. He relies on me for food and water and warmth and shelter. But in the forest right now, I am not sure which one of us would actually survive for longer if we were forced to live off the land. I feel a bit inadequate next to him. He takes on the slick snow and stairs with such grace and ease. I trudge behind him trying to keep up. If a predator were behind us, he would take off and escape and I would be food. He takes the cold much better than I do. His fur protects him. The pads of his feet allow him to climb surfaces my unreliable shoes would cause me to slip on. He can smell danger, fear, threats. I can only hear and see them, for the most part.

Noah tries out the rock

So today I try to understand my spot from a new perspective: through smell. I try to be Noah, I try to learn what I can through my nose. I close my eyes, try to shut off my ears. I smell still air tinged with metal. I smell the sweet, damp yarn of my scarf. I smell the chalkiness of drying snow. I smell the matte emptiness of hollow winter breathing. I wonder further what Noah smells, how far back the history in his nose goes. Does he know how many people have wept here? How many have fallen? How many squirrels have chased? How many raindrops have hit, scattered, vanished?

On the way out of the forest, as we climb the last set of stairs, I see movement to my right. I catch it for one second, a rabbit perhaps, bouncing along quickly in a thin, dark blur. But then it disappears. I don't know where it's gone. I cannot discern which path it's taken. I stare, hoping it will appear again, but it never does and I am left still wondering about those things that can't be seen.