spring blinks awake while i walk on smoothened treads

Friday, March 21st, 2014; 3:48 p.m. 

This morning, I woke up with a headache. The kind that sits right above the eye, the kind I can push on and make throb. I walked onto our back porch while the coffee brewed. I saw the sleek, long-haired black cat that Kyle and I have named Greta. She was alone. She came over and meowed and rubbed against me. Sometimes, Kyle and I try to get her to come inside. She has no collar and stray cats roam our neighborhood. We love her and want a cat of our own. But Greta knows there's a wolf inside the house. She never enters his lair. As I turned to walk back inside, it began to snow. Greta's green eyes glowed. 

It's 3/21/14, and it snowed this morning. I was surprised. I wasn't upset. I've long since given up on being upset when the weather doesn't act like it's "supposed" to. Isn't that just ensuring disappointment? The sky doesn't owe us anything. 

I read essays through the morning and into early afternoon, the headache still throbbing above my eye. 

I decided to go back on the porch for a breath of air. The snow was gone, the sun was out--the day was beautiful, had dropped its ugly snow mask. I was planning on going to my nature spot tomorrow but couldn't not be outside today. I ran to get ready to head to Schenley. 

As I sit on my rock now, my headache is gone. 

Because this is where I belong. Outside, in the sun, its light casting a shadow on my writing hand moving across paper. 

Instead of my snow boots, today I am wearing my hiking boots. 

The ones that saw me through my year-long trip right after my mom died. They are worn, the shoelaces bitten through by a puppy named Loala who I lived with for a bit in South Africa. I can't bring myself to replace them. The boots are way past their maximum mileage, the tops so loose there is little to no ankle support, the treads so worn, I would slide down a cliff with no chance at gaining traction. But that's not why I wear them. I wear them because of where they have carried me, the stories they hold, the dirt of three continents and almost fifteen countries pressed into the ridges of their soles.

They have helped me chop wood in a small commune in Germany, walked with me at feeding time through fields of alpacas in Ireland. They have moved me slowly through a Belgian forest during a silent meditation where I befriended a spider, fallen with me as I tripped on a street car track in Amsterdam, struggled with me as I climbed a mountain in the middle of Ghana. They have supported me while I've cried, found my way again, gotten lost again. They are a part of me, and I feel right when I wear them.

They hold all these stories--stories that now, as I begin to write my thesis, I am trying to make sense of, to figure out how they affected me, really, in that first, full rush of grief. To distill, somehow, what they all might mean and how I can move forward with them now. 

Walking, as I just did to get to my spot in Schenley, has always been my solace. When I need a "break" from life, when I need to leave a mental space no longer good for me, I walk. I move, I drag my feet across pavement, sand and grass. I aim forward and let my hips do the work of release. I've moved miles just to find myself again. 

I used my running app today to track how much I walk each time I go to my rock. I found out it is 1.02 miles round trip from my car to my rock and back. 

Today, I am happy to walk in the sun. The details make themselves known to me in a way that they haven't in months--for the first time since coming to Schenley, I see the lights of a stadium in the distance. I see the snow from the day still on the trees. 

I see the trail to a new part of the stream I have never been to before. 

I'm convinced that attention to detail is what makes a writer good. The spark of connection and intuitive joining is the hallmark of the healthy imaginative mind. I am trying to get better at coaxing this forward, in a second-nature-kind-of-way.

I see my shadow in full force, notice its boldness on the tan gravel.

I feel playful in the Pennsylvania outside for the first time in months. The tufa bridges remind me of a story I have been piecing together for over a year now.

It's of a young girl and a castle surrounded by vanilla bean trees; a trailer home in the middle of the dark forest, a bent, old woman inside; the constant comings-and-goings of foreign jewel peddlers who have more to offer than mere rubies and diamonds--they have stories of ancient treason, born for the first time from their lips. 

It's 40-degrees out, but I feel, somehow, as though I might be in the center of a new spring daffodil. That sounds cheesy. It is. But I feel okay about that because, really for the first time in 2014, spring is uninhibitedly here. She's a shy thing, but she's mustered the courage to join us. Let's celebrate that. Bring on the daffodils.  

There's a buttery warmness that feels veneer-like but that I know is genuine. It is easy to be fooled in middle March that the sun is here for good.

I see the forest as alive, the sun illuminating every brown leaf on the ground, the streams gliding with abandon, the birds playing tag, their small hearts pumping and pulsing against the undersides of fresh feathers. I wonder: do birds sweat?  

I saw two cardinals, a male (bright red) and a female (a dull, light brown) together on a branch right near my rock. Last week, I was in Florida for spring break.

slightly different landscape! :)

My grandma told me why she loves cardinals--because they mate for life and protect each other from predators. They understand companionship, survival, teamwork. I agree with her--it's a beautiful thing, this natural, reciprocal love between muddied-red birds. 

So many people are out today. Some walk, some run, some have dogs. The dogs are brimming with confidence. They trot by, their taut chests heaving. They mark weeds and trees, move on, tail up. Today, they own the forest. Spring gives everyone an ego boost.  

My rock is freezing cold, still. It isn't fooled. I don't expect this spring warmth to last for too long. But I'll take what I can get. 

I've decided to do another blog project, similar to this one, over the summer while I am living in Washington, D.C. I will pick a place and re-visit it every week, write about it, post. I've enjoyed this ritual so much and don't want it to be over when the semester ends. It gives me a reason to just go and sit, be alone, breathe. I don't do that often enough when I have no outside incentive. I hope someday this will change. But, for now, maybe I will do a project like this wherever I go--to keep my heart accountable, to keep the ink fluid. 

I have identified the tree that I photographed a couple weeks ago. 

I'm almost positive it's a maple. Hopefully, in a few weeks, I will be able to confirm (or change) this assumption when leaves begin to grow again. :) 

As I sit on my rock, the world feels open again, capillaries are swollen, Earth's body is splayed. I imagine the roots beneath me extending forth for the first time in months, reaching for each other across the boiling inside of earth, meeting and melding, connecting by touch--refreshed and eager for this new regal season. 

Maggie