They're Back!

Downy Woodpecker
Junco
Mockingbird
Black-Capped Chickadee
Carolina Wren
Oregon Pink-Sided Junco (? possibly)
Red-Breasted Nuthatch
Purple Finch
Dove
Cardinal
Tufted Titmouse

...and most of these came in multiples! Now that the semester's over, I could guiltlessly watch the birds in my backyard this morning instead of rush to revise essays the moment I got out of bed. It was fabulous. I only wish the doves had been turtle-doves because there were two of them. :-)

Updates on the backyards and blue jays: They both had a wonderful summer. I wondered why I didn't blog about them during the summer, and I concluded that they're so obviously beautiful when all is green and verdant and lively that it seems like overkill to call attention to what's already so apparent on its own. But this time of year, when the snow and ice are coating the backyard, and blue skies (like this morning) are rare, when the birds depend on our birdfeeders and the heated birdbath, I like to mention the brave birds who stick around even during the cold, dark Pennsylvania winter.

Some notes:
The mockingbird disappeared all summer, much to my great disappointment. A few months ago (Oct 5, actually), the mockingbird came back, perched on top of the black walnut tree, and sang for about a half-hour to announce his return. (Okay, I don't know it's the same one, but I like to think so.) I think I even heard a seagull in his new repertoire. Where were you all summer, dear bird?

About a month ago, I was outside at 1:00 a.m. trying to see the Leonids, but it was too cloudy. As I was stepping back into the nice, warm house, I heard an owl! It wasn't in my yard, but a few yards down, in a thicket of pine trees I believe. Judging by its hoot, I think it was a Great Horned Owl. I've been listening for it in the meantime, but I'm afraid he was just passing through. Sad. We've certainly got enough chipmunks around to last him the winter.

Ugh.

I know. "Ugh"? On my nature blog? From the one who says she likes bats?

That's right: Ugh. Look what I found in my yard.


Have you ever seen anything more hideous in the environs of your home? One of these monsters lives just outside my kitchen, the other visible from my bedroom window. I've seen a grasshopper stuck cross-wise in the web of one of these monsters, and then seen it disappear as the spider eats it.

I don't do well with spiders.

Normal looking brown and black spiders of a respectable size, sure. I have removed my share of arachnids from college dorm rooms and apartments in my day, but even I have my limits.

Still, strangely enough, as I take a ramble through my backyard, I always stop by these two webs to check in on the strangers in my garden. Today I finally decided to see what kinds they were, if they were native to my area, and if they had the poison potential to eat my cat.

As it turns out, they're apparently quite common and known as the Yellow Garden Spider. (Read more here at insectidentification.org.) Their webs are beautiful (and both in my yard have the characteristic zig-zag), and their colors are indeed striking. I just wonder that I'd never seen one before. If I had, there's the slight possibility my stomach wouldn't flip every time I see one anew.

I'm also hoping they prefer the winter's cold to my house's warmth. Finding one of these in my backyard is one thing. Seeing one waltzing across my bedspread would be quite another.

At any rate, based on its colors, I'm guessing it likes Western PA the best. After all, where else do black and gold spell "local" than in Steelers Country?

Magazines!!!

A few months ago, I made the mistake of ordering a really cute trench coat online. The coat itself was not the mistake; it's where I ordered it from. In the four months since placing this order, the catalogs sent to my name have gone from one or two a year to at least 20 in the past few months.

!!!

Anyone have any suggestions for cutting down on the incoming junk mail so I don't have to haul 80 catalogs a month to the recycling center? I used to send the order form back requesting to be taken off the list, but none of the magazines on my desk have order forms. Is there a central "no-send" database like the "no-call" list for telemarketing?

...unfortunately for my wallet, some of the things in these catalogs are rather tempting too....

Sustainable Storage Choices

In my short researches this afternoon, I've found that glass containers are acknowledged as the best, with porcelain, ceramic, and stainless steel following up as good choices. My plans now are to raid the old kitchen things my mom and grandma have given me over the years as they've modernized their kitchens, to find the glass and ceramic containers I know I have somewhere. Next, I'll raid Goodwill and Salvation Army shops (where, bonus!, I usually also find great old vinyl records).

If you'd like to support some green, sustainable product manufacturers, I did come across a few awesome websites that you could check out for brand-new good stuff.

http://worldcentric.org/
http://www.to-goware.com/
http://www.grinningplanet.com/

Other options are glass products from such well-known names as Pyrex, Corningware, and Anchor Hocking.

It's easy to reduce plastics in your kitchen! And I'm even taking one website's suggestion and storing my smaller sewing items in some of the old plastic containers I've removed from the kitchen cabinets. Next on the agenda: get rid of all paper napkins and paper towels. I'm already halfway there.

funky cloth napkins rolled up and ready for dinner

Cabinet Clutter

If you have a kitchen, you have problems with clutter. I don't care who you are or where you live; if you don't have clutter problems, especially in your storage-containers cabinet, you are probably not human.

Today, my mom left the clean reusable I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and Cool Whip containers on the counter after unloading them from the dishwasher, and I set to work putting them away.

"We have too many," I said after several futile stacking attempts, and she agreed.

I pushed around a few more containers and found six Cool Whip containers in the back.

"Do we ever use these? We could get rid of them, you know."

Mom considered, and then said, "Well, I like them for when I make soup in the fall and winter."

Images of plastic containers in the freezer popped into my head. Then, in CSI-like quality, I could see the plastic poisons leaking into my mom's frozen soups, like cartoon neon-green poison fumes in old episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

"Mom, I want to buy you new containers."

At first, she wondered why I would want new containers when we already have containers. I'm a chronic reuser, after all. But when I explained my fears of plastics, especially old ones, she saw what I meant.

"I mean, if you don't want to ..." I said.

"Well, I don't want cancer, either!" she said. So I set to work.


Most of the containers are recyclable #2, #4, and #5, which is great (they won't go to landfills yayy!). And some of the unlabeled lids will fit nicely under flowerpots in the potting shed. But what are we going to store Mom's soups in this winter if we get rid of all of these?

...which is what I'm researching this week. Mom remembers her mother and neighbors exchanging foods in glass canning jars, so I'll start there and see what other options I have. Stainless steel? Protected aluminum? Wood? We'll see. Stay tuned.

ah, Ha ha ... ha ... so ...

I'm finishing up my book list for one of my classes this fall, and I just noticed that all of the authors are women, and at least three of the books are concerned with seeking home. Clearly there is a theme, but it's an unintentional theme. My plan going into this book list was to seek diversity. Hence the title of this post.

Before I carve these authors and titles in stone, I ask you, my faithful readers, to provide me with one title of a literary nonfiction book with a male author or regarding some topic other than home or place ... or preferably both. Just one from each of you and I will be delighted.

Many thanks to all. And if you don't give me a suggestion, I'm blocking you from my blog for the rest of time. Just kidding. I'll probably just add another woman writer's book about home to the list and risk being accused of having a one-track mind.

Seven Apparently Recyclable Unrecyclables

Time for a confession from your local conservationist (me): I only just began to recycle.

This sounds worse than it really is. While I lived in Baltimore and had curbside recycling, I joyfully separated my trash and sent it on its way to reincarnation. While I lived in Germany, I became a pro at understanding the differences among Biomüll, die gelbe Sack, Restmüll, and various forms of glass and paper recycling. However, since returning to this beautiful land of mountains and countryside, I have unfortunately also returned to a township that does not offer curbside recycling.

This summer, I finally set up boxes in my garage for separated plastics, junk mail, magazines, and metals. Every couple weeks, as the boxes fill up, I'll drive them a mile away to a collection point. The collection point is even across the road from my favorite pizza shop, so it works well for everyone.

Something I have only just learned, however, is that I can't recycle everything here the same way I would have in Germany. My mom found this article through the Weather Channel about seven things you can't recycle. How illuminating! Caps, yogurt, glass....

I recommend a read-through. Some things are more obvious than others, but in all points, they provide a good explanation instead of simply saying "don't."

I'm Uninformed ... and know it!

My brother the engineer says that if he didn't know me already and read my previous post about solar- and wind-powered cars, he would think I was an idiot and a crazy person who didn't know what I was talking about. Raving lunatic, I think were his words. Environmental wacko that gives conservationists a bad name.

My apologies.

Those of you who know me, know I was being ridiculous, but it's probably good to establish for the other readers out there that yes, I do realize I know nothing about this technology, and that I'm also absolutely assured that people who do know things are working to get this stuff off the ground. That's one reason I posted in the first place: I think the people who develop things like that new wind turbine are absolutely amazing. They are that vital link between the uninformed ideas and actual, solid inventions.

So, satire aside, thank you technowhizzes who are making the world a better place! I'll try not to make my brother and his coworkers mad next time I post on things I don't understand. (Ha!)

Wind Powered Cars

Woohoo!!

My classmate Pam just posted this article on her blog at Sustainable Living. How exciting!

You must understand that I've been saying for years that we need wind and solar powered cars. I have also done exactly zero research into this possibility. I'm no scientist, but the way I see it, if we make the car roof a solar panel big enough to generate at least enough power to start the engine, it will get the car moving.

Then, to keep the car moving, we integrate small windmills into the design of the car. I'm not talking about driving around with Don Quixote on your rearview mirrors. I mean to form slits or gills on the sides of the car that the wind passes through as you drive. Put a bunch of small windmills in these gills, and it's sure to generate enough power to keep the car moving.

It always looked a little silly to me, though, in my imagination, and I was pretty sure there would be no tiny windmills powerful enough to keep a car zipping along at 70. And what about people who park their cars in garages or have convertible tops? These wouldn't be able to use that solar technology.

Well, this new wind invention gives me hope for my plans yet. Surely it's got to be easier to integrate these into the design of a car than it would be to fit windmills.

And if not, at least Haitians will get power. And that's good enough for me.

Long-Awaited Photographs

I've been out of town a lot lately, so I haven't had the chance to watch my yard gradually transition into its current state. Not that springtime generally suggests "gradual transition" anyway; each hour, something new and different has popped up in my yard or changed color or unfurled into a huge leafy fern. Still, leaving for a few days and returning has reminded me anew that the yard of sticks and starkness of wintertime becomes a Pennsylvanian jungle come spring.

Last week, one of my friends and readers mentioned to me that to those of you who haven't been to my backyard might like to see more pictures of the setting. I must say, I would have hoped to describe it well enough to not require pictures (nudge nudge, wink wink). However, being perfectly honest, now that I have a new--that is, functional--camera, I can get over my actual hangup and capture some of images of my very photogenic backyard.

To begin, a view of the vegetable garden, shaded by the ash tree. Behind is the housing development that used to be a small woods.

The strawberries refuse to grow within the garden fence, but here they are, preparing to switch from white blossoms to sweet red berries.

Next, what we call the Fairy Garden, perfect for relaxing with a glass of wine on a summer evening.

Then, of course, the famous view from the garden swing.

In my opinion, the existence of phlox is proof that God loves Pennsylvania. Whether in cascading millions along the driveway border...

...or as a single blossom, this native wildflower is one of Pennsylvania's greatest treasures.

The forget-me-nots, too, are as spectacular en masse as they are alone.

Our shade garden, however, is one of the most Pennsylvanian squares in the yard. After we moved in twenty years ago, my mom spent hours and years transforming it from a solid mass of packed clay to a display area for wildflowers lovingly transplanted from her uncle's woods.

Buttercups...

Mayapples ... and a bleeding heart peeking through the leaves...

...all make for a lovely bouquet.

Lovely enough even for the wookiee to enjoy.

Something Tells Me It's All Happening At the Zoo

I do believe it's true. A friend of mine sent me this article from MSN all about zoos and their current movement to be more natural and environmentally friendly.

The only zoos I've ever been to and enjoyed were the National Zoo in DC and Busch Gardens in Florida. They had natural habitats for the animals, not concrete slabs, and they had huge ditches to separate humans from dangerous beasts, not bars and cages.

I'm glad to see that more zoos are taking that initiative, and that there are programs that encourage this sort of zoo setup over the other, less humane versions. It's also exciting to see that the Philadelphia Zoo is offsetting its carbon use. As much as it helps for individuals and families to think ecologically, it's the huge institutions that will really make a difference just by setting an example.

Encourage the good zoos around you. Appreciate their conservation intentions, and consider how they can improve still more.

Dirty Feet

My feet are dirty and I couldn't be happier.

Yesterday, I returned home from a weekend in Philadelphia, staying with a couple of dear friends in their 7th-floor apartment across from the Art Museum. My feet kept going numb all weekend. Something about walking on pavement, I think.

Today I wore sandals and rolled up my jeans before taking a walk around my remarkably green backyard. The thicket of bushes that Mom and I once christened The Fairy Garden looked hopelessly dead all winter -- so dead that you may have noticed I never mentioned it -- and the mockingbird that camped there all winter had poor camo for hiding in a transparent cluster of empty sticks. Between Friday morning, when I left for Philadelphia, and yesterday, when I got home, the Artist spilled his green paint on the Fairy Garden and even added some blossoming crabapples for good measure.

When I came in, I had to wash my feet.

This afternoon, I wore sandals again to aerate my compost bin and add some grass clippings from last week's first mowing. I encountered the wookiee birdwatching behind the garden shed, but for all his wookiee-like aggression, he's more of a gentle giant. He chases squirrels from bird feeders and leaves the birds alone.

When I came in, I had to wash my feet again.

And then this evening, I went completely shoeless while scrubbing up and hosing down the window screens. Hose water + the backyard = muddy feet. It also = clean screens, which is glorious for the sudden spring weather. I washed my bedroom windows and put in all the screens. I was 1/3 through washing the living room windows when it began to rain.

I should probably have stuck my feet out the window for a natural wash, but I didn't. They're still dirty.

One Sunday morning when I was living in Baltimore, my friends and I were walking from the car in the parking lot to the front door of the church. Between the parking lot and the foyer, however, was an open yard of grass. I kicked off my dress shoes and walked barefoot across the grass. It was maybe ten steps all together, but those ten steps held me through another week of pavement and downtown.

I got claustrophobic in my friends' apartment this past weekend, and it's not a small apartment by any means. But for all its square footage and windows, I felt like I was in a shoebox in the middle of a crate stacked in a storeroom in the bowels of a strip mall.

This past Sunday, while they were driving along a woodsy country road, my grandma looked out the window at the trees and said to my mom, "You know, sometimes I think we get too far away from nature."

And you know? My dirty feet and I think my grandma was absolutely right.

Dog-Sitting

My neighbors went on vacation this week and asked whether I'd like to watch their dog.

The answer, initially, was no way, but I didn't tell them that. I'm not much of a dog person, and this particular dog has a bad reputation. But I did agree to at least meet the canine and let his owner walk me through the basics of vacation care.

The dog loves me.

I don't know why, but he has taken to me like a mockingbird takes to a new birdcall. And their yard, just three doors up the hill from mine, is like a different environment altogether. As the dog sniffs around his yard and does his thing, I get to watch a different set of birdfeeders, observe a different view of the horizon, and listen, listen, listen.

Yesterday, there was a rufus-sided towhee whistling in the trees. Today, I could see elk on the next hill over. Even the wind sounds a little different from that part of the hill.

Tomorrow is my last day of watching the dog, mainly because I myself am going out of town for a few days (if you're lucky, you might get an update about it on my travel blog). But I think that I might still venture up to my neighbor's yard occasionally this summer when I am in town. It's funny how a slight change of angle can give you a whole new perspective on a familiar place.

You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello

To my classmates,

It's been a pleasure. I hope you keep up your blogs long after today so I can continue to learn about your regions and read your perspectives. I can hardly wait to transfer our digital discussions to classrooms and coffee shops in August!

Continue to find nature in your own backyards, and contemplate the errant dandelion.

Becca

A Final Reflection

For those of you without a syllabus to refer to, next Saturday I will email my final assignments to my course instructors and pray for good grades to complete my first semester of grad school. Our final blog prompt for the semester asks us to reflect on our experiences and what we’ve learned, but it’s such a fitting close that I imagine I might have taken a stab at it without the assignment. (That is, if I would have let myself take the time away from other assignments to do so.)

My three courses have intertwined themselves like the English ivy on the walnut trees, so that I’m not sure what one class has taught me outside of the others. I do know that, of all times in my life to be forced by school to go outside and simply be, this season in my life was the when I needed it the most.

Nature is cruel. Nature keeps winter from disappearing from my region when I just want sunlight. Nature left a pile of feathers behind the garden shed after a hawk caught her dinner. Nature tears shingles from rooftops, floods creekbeds, and brings on cancer and heart attacks and grief.

But nature is kind, too. It’s connected; we’re all in this boat together. I’m not the only person to lose her father suddenly and unexpectedly and on the eve of the most family-oriented holiday of the year, and that knowledge, while not making the loss any less sad, still helps me keep some perspective. Nature is cyclical. Seasons change. Transitions happen. Sometimes, like a democracy, the change in season happens peacefully, without you even noticing. Other times, the passing season refuses to let go its hold. But it still can’t stop the change. Even when there are remnants of cold, the warmth shows itself in little ways.

My life is a series of settings. I track myself based on where I am, not necessarily on who I am or who I’m with or what I’m doing there. What I’ve read this semester and observed in my backyard has reminded me that setting, so strong a character in my life, should be as strong in my writing. As the seasons change, I’ll learn the trick of establishing place.

This backyard won’t be in my family forever, but my family will be in it. It has my dad and my mom and my brother and me stamped in every inch of its soil. Our pets have been buried here, fresh veggies have been harvested, firewood has been stacked and wine has been sipped in the flickering light of mosquito candles and the shining summer moon.

I’ve always loved my yard. I took photos of the yard with me to Germany, and I bragged about my yard when I missed having space to breathe in Baltimore. But after a semester of simultaneous stress and grief and healing, I love this yard like I would love a doctor who cured me of a disease. Still, a big part of healing is getting past the healing and back to a normal life.

This morning, I watched a pair of hawks soaring on the wind.

Dancing With the Daffodils

Outside my window, it's snowing again, but the flakes are swirling around electric yellow daffodils. A few weeks ago, two kids, passing my house on their way home from the bus stop, delivered the daffodils I ordered last month for Daffodil Days. Shortly after those hothouse blossoms drooped in their vase on my desk, the bulbs scattered all over my yard took it upon themselves to shine like droplets of summer. I confess I'm surprised that they're still open; it's been snowing for the past 15 hours or so, and if I were a daffodil, I think I would have closed up by now and retreated to the warmer earth.

But I guess daffodils aren't like that. They seem determined to hearten us this first week of April, every year, no matter where we are. My mom reread her gardening journal last week and laughed to realize that the daffodils have sprouted in our yard the same week every year for the past decade.

And my classmate Johnny sees daffodils in his garden, too, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. These intrepid little flowers know no boundaries. Even across an ocean, they're rising at the same time. And in England, they may even bloom again in June.

One of my favorite memories from my travels four years ago occurred in Poland during the first week of April. I was in a bus headed for Krakow somewhere between winter and springtime when I learned of the Pope's passing. By the time I arrived in his home city, it was already clothed in mourning. My last day there, his funeral aired on giant screens in and around the city, and thousands watched in respect.

The event cast a pall on the vacation my friends and I had expected to have that week. None of us was Catholic, but all of us respected the devotion the entire city was showing to a man we all thought well of. We wanted to have fun, but we also wanted to respect this moment in history and the memory of a great man.

It was the daffodils that reminded us to hope. With the sound of the funeral mass still ringing in our ears, we came upon a field of daffodils.


There will be grief. There will be sorrow. There will be winter. But all over the world, there will also be transition into summer, and the daffodils won't let go, even in a shower of snow.

The Winter That Never Ended

Yesterday, I put on my shoes and a jacket and mumbled, "Gotta go outside so I can write about it later." I sat on the garden swing for a half-hour, and a couple of goldfinches fought over the remaining seeds in the feeder on the pussywillow tree.

"What am I going to write about?" I asked them. It seems I've reached that point of the semester when assignments are burdens, books are dead weights with print that bounces off the surface of my memory. Ideas are fleeting.

When we moved in here, the house was on a corner of two roads. About ten years ago, a new (third) road was put in between my house and my neighbors', setting my family's property on a peninsula of grass and giving access to the backhoes that dug up the woods and planted suburban fake-estates in its place.

Behind me, beyond the fence along the new road, the sound of cars blended with the sound of the wind. The gray oily clouds gnashed and whirrled in the sky. Last week, I could hear the grass growing as spring rainwater trickled into the cracks in our clay soil. Yesterday, I just sat there getting cold.

"What am I going to write about?"

I kicked at the mulch under the garden swing and noticed the trees on the hill across the hollow. They're just as stick-y and dark as they've been all winter, but it looked like someone had spilled a little white and a little red on their branches. A little cloud of color. A smudge on my glasses.

The color of spring is yellow. Yellow crocuses, yellow daffodils, yellow buds on the bush by the garden shed that I can't identify. Yellow pollen on the pussywillow, yellow goldfinches.

A few months ago, I dreaded the spring. I couldn't conceive of a bright and cheery season when I was so sad. But I'm sick of being sad. I'm sick of cold winds and heavy skies. I want the weather to pick me up and carry me away from grief.

I left the swing, checked out the baby daffodils behind the garden shed, peeked in on the redbud tree my mom and I planted a couple weeks ago, and returned to the house.

An hour later, it started to snow.


:30°F:
:dark and cloudy sky:

Storm Petrels in Portugal

Look what I get to do in June!


These little birds -- Storm Petrels or "Stormies" -- have fascinating migratory routes, and like many sea birds, seldom come to land. A Rocha Portugal, an environmental conservation organization, is tracking these Stormies to learn more about climate change and its impact on marine life.

Now, I should add that I know next to nothing about how to catch, ring, and release wild birds, but I do know how to be quiet and observe what's happening around me. And that's just what I intend to do this June when I spend a week with A Rocha, so that I can write about my experiences when I get home!

Excited? Of course! As much as I love my backyard, it's been four years since I've been to Europe, and ages since I've done much of anything truly exciting. Like the Stormies, it's time for me to follow my migratory route eastward and over the ocean.

Life to Its Fullest

In my opinion, the biggest problem with our society today is that no one stops long enough to notice or appreciate anything. We are in such a hurry to live life to the fullest that we miss out on a lot of things in the process.
- my classmate Amanda, in her post yesterday, which, itself, was in response to Pam's post

Living life to its fullest: what does that really mean? I love that Amanda used this phrase in contrast with the idea of not missing out on things. Typically, the two ideas are synonymous these days, but I agree that maybe they shouldn't be.

For the past week in class, we've discussed Native perspectives on nature, the idea that "wilderness" was a European fantasy and that in Native reality, wilderness was simply here, the same as everywhere else. What we are often tempted to call Childlike Wonder, should simply be the way we see, shouldn't it?

Why, do you think, we call it Acting Like an Adult when we stop noticing the everyday miracles?

I think it's because we're trying to justify actions--ignorance--that we know are wrong. My goals for my life each day include finding time to see, time to simply be here, whether it's among trees or inside my house or on a city street. To work hard and enjoy my work. To notice the everyday miracles.

In depleting our lives of the constant (pointless) demands we somehow think are important, we can free up our lives, slow down the pace, and make the time to fill our lives with the wonder of what we have sadly stopped seeing all around.

Grasping Vapor

When I was a little girl, I used to lie in the grass and stare at the sky, finding faces and animals and entire stories up there in the vaporous clouds. It’s a common childhood pastime, nothing unique, but I still love doing it all the same.

When I was in high school, I took a course on Astronomy, this time focusing on another kind of vaporous body in another kind of sky: the stars at night. Learning constellations and star names based on ancient civilizations’ own words for the shapes and faces and stories of the sky, was almost as exciting as coming up with my own.

What is it about the sky that draws me toward it? Its endless space? Its provision? Its possibilities? True, the mysteries of our own ocean floors outnumber the mysteries of outer space, but to this landlocked Pennsylvanian, the sky is an immediate reminder of all we still don’t know.

The sky, made of gasses and vapors; the clouds, water and dust; the stars, vaporous fire; and the planets and moons, reflections of light.

Although there are solids out there—the terra firma of certain planets, meteors, moons—most of outer space is just that: space. From the vapors of Earth’s atmosphere to the gasses of the Sun, most of what we see in the sky is made up of uncertainties. “How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?” sing Maria’s sisters in The Sound of Music. How do you hold a piece of the sky?

I wonder, if the sky and its clouds and stars and planets, were a character, what would the character be like? I once read a Snohomish story about humans and animals working together to push up the sky. In it, the sky wasn’t a character as much as a problem to be solved. Legends about the night sky call it a place, not a person. But what kind of person would it be?

I think the sky is unknowable, and despite our telescopes and rockets and space stations, the sky will always be a mysterious place, a place outside of us that is as inscrutable as the part of us that’s within. We can label the gaseous elements and trace the planets’ paths, but in the end, even naming something doesn’t mean we’ve figured it out.

Backyard Healing

You might be surprised to learn that, for all I like to preach about the healing properties of nature, I seldom believe them, myself, when I really need them.

Like yesterday. It was a bad day. "Bad," as in (1) I am desperate to find time to go visit the friends in Baltimore whom I terribly miss, (2) I've reached the point in the semester when nothing I write has any future beyond the paper shredder/compost bin, and (3) we received notice from the county yesterday telling us they're changing our house number (... since it hasn't been functioning properly for the past twenty years?).

I took a moment from the Essays That I Wish Would Write Themselves to go to the kitchen and refill my water bottle, when I realized it was 6:00 and almost sunset. I hemmed. I hawed. I reeeeeally needed to work on those essays. I reeeeally didn't feel like taking off my slippers. I reeeeeally wasn't in the mood to put on extra layers to go outside, after the past four or five months of the cold. In the end, I left my water bottle on the counter, my Microsoft Word window open (it was blank anyway, not like it's going anywhere), and pulled on a pair of boots and a jacket.

The black-capped chickadees behind the garden shed welcomed me with chirping, and the hill of neighbors' lawns behind the house are greener by the day. It was cold, so cold, but after moving around the yard for a little bit, I felt warmer, and I thought of the line in Die Lorelei: Der Luft ist kuhl und es dunkelt (the air is cool and it's growing darker).

The wookiee, thrilled to have someone outside with him, popped out of a bush and grabbed my ankle before running across the yard. He's getting older now, and I'm not in very good shape either, so we gave up the game of tag after a few more minutes. I took some veggie peels to the compost bin and watched the clouds puff across the eastern sky like exhaust from a steam engine, tried to find the source of a unique bird call, and eventually returned to the house when it got too dark and too cool to merit remaining outside.

What's more: I felt better. Whether the essays write themselves or not, they'll get written. They may not be any good by finals week, but they'll stick around until I'm ready to revise them in another year or two. My friends will always welcome me in Baltimore, and the end of the semester (and along with it, some free time) is coming nearer so I can afford to see them again. And you know, even if they're changing my house's identity, they can't change the house. The yard is not defined by the number on my mailbox, and this weekend, that is the most important part of this little wedge of land.

:45°:
:partly cloudy skies:

The Sky Is Raining

When I was twelve, I wrote a story, and in it, the main character/narrator says something to the effect of the following (although I don't remember word for word): I began to think about the weather. Not a thrilling topic, I know, but one which has a big effect on all our lives.

Literature, movies, and music have been using weather to their advantage for centuries, probably longer, to the point that groups like Flight of the Conchords spoof weather images:

I'm not crying
It's just been raining
on my face.

No matter how long the weather has been used in art, however, it should never really get old. The weather really does affect our moods, and sometimes, it truly reflects them.

My classmate Amanda wrote about this in a recent blog post, and as she sat in a gloomy evening of a gloomy day, she says, "For once, nature was the rational being."

Sometimes, that's why I like nature so much. It reminds me what reality is, connects me back to the world, gets me out of myself. I commend Amanda's choice to retreat to nature on an undeniably bad day. And I hope she has many more sunny skies on the horizon.

Spirit in the Skye

I am nothing; I see all; . . . I am the lover
of uncontained and immortal beauty.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

A week earlier, I had boarded an airplane with no company but my backpack, entrusted EasyJet to carry me from Cologne to London, and then spent the next week working my way northward to Scotland. American by birth, Scottish by soul, always inexplicably drawn to an area of the world known to me only through Robert Burns and sheet music for my oboe, I stood today on the Isle of Skye, a “thin place” between the seen and the unseen, between people and spirits, between perception and reality.

The next year, my roommate would ask me whether, when I missed Scotland, I was longing for where I had been or who I had been when I was there, but I cannot unravel the one from the other. Here, on the Isle of Skye, I am where I am; we are one and the same. Like the island, I have finally separated from the rest of my kind, independent. I am weightless, flying apart from the mainland, shackled only by gravity to the rest of the world.

I travel alone, the only person I know in the group of ten picking its way across a field speckled with dormant heather and grazing sheep, splashing across a narrow creek, sinking into the mud on the edge of the mountain. It squishes into the tread of my sneakers as I teeter on the edge of a soaring, narrow trail; I dig my fingernails into the peaty wall beside me, regaining my balance, and inhale: an expanding balloon ready for release.

Further in and higher up, I trade the mud for bare rock, scaling a thin land bridge to the pinnacle of the island, the world’s minaret, the first stop on the way to the sky, the gateway to Heaven. I have arrived.

Here I stand, the only living creature on Earth. The ephemeral clouds in the deep blue sky were created only for this moment, only for me. The distant ocean sparkles diamonds. The salty sea air blowing across the moor blends into a perfume intended, from the first, for me, and me only.

This is my land. I am this island; I am this view. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. My spirit sheds its physical constraints and rises into the sky.

Tea and Ten O'Clock

I find it easier to bird watch while seated at my dining room table drinking a mug of tea. It's more comfortable, for one thing, on these 30° mornings, and the birds can't see or smell or hear me while I'm behind the glass panes of my patio door. This morning, while nursing some steaming English Breakfast tea, I watched to see how the avian life has changed in the past two months.

The first bird I saw, of course, was a brazen blue jay, sweeping from the patio roof to drink from the bird bath on the deck railing, his wings and tail feathers spread out like a kite. The robins, newly arrived from some undisclosed southern location, were still more timid, and all week the mockingbirds have been chasing them from every corner of our yard. Their feathers flash like Semaphore flags as they fly.

Grackles then rose past the deck in an Air Force-like formation, and a red-winged blackbird preened his wings in our neighbor's tree, his ruddy shoulders flashing like air traffic control signals. I could hear the doves and a woodpecker, but it took a half-hour for the dove to appear on the garden fence. The woodpecker, however, remained hidden for the morning.

I was surprised to find no goldfinches, pine siskins, or black-capped chickadees, but then I remembered that they like food, and the birdfeeders out my dining room window are empty. A glance through the kitchen window, and I found them congregating on the feeders hanging from the clothesline.

With my tea drained and ten birds identified, I left the warmth of my dining room to walk among the neighbors who live in my backyard. I usually ramble through my yard in the evenings, and this morning walk was quite different. The birds were more active at this time of day, fighting for nesting space in our ash and cedar trees like pioneers in the midwest land rush. English sparrows bother my neighbor's tree and a starling couple bickers over the suet, the female finally winning out and eating first. A red squirrel bustled across the roof of the garden shed, skittish after a close encounter with the wookiee's front paw on Saturday.

But the active members of the garden aren't the only signs of life. The crocuses glowed in the morning sunlight, soon to be hidden again in the shade of the chimney on the north side of our house. The pussywillow buds cracked through the tips of the branches like warm, fuzzy snowflakes. The grass is still bleached from the harsh winter, but green leafy arrows shoot like promises from every flowerbed in the yard.

Two months ago, I dreaded the spring. But today, I think maybe its vibrant embrace will cushion the discomfort of another transition.

:31°F:
:clear and sunny skies:

For Amusement Only

Because most of my readers are either classmates in my Masters of Fine Arts writing program or friends from outside this program who also happen to have studied English at some point in their post-secondary education, I think that we might all find a touch of entertainment from grammatical humor in The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. (Especially for my classmates, this point in the semester tends to call for a bit of extra levity!)

Because this is my nature blog, I have chosen this sign in a tree nursery as the prime post to share. (Or should I say "tree" nursery? It does seem ambiguous.)

And now back to our regularly scheduled coursework.

Urban Birds

I may vacillate between calling my neighborhood rural and suburban, but one thing is unquestionably certain: it is not urban. I'm technically in a township -- not even within "town" limits -- and, as I said earlier this week, I have no sidewalks.

But if I were in an urban setting, I might consider applying for a Celebrate Urban Birds mini-grant to encourage bird watching in urban areas. DNLee at Urban Science Adventures talks about the Celebrate Urban Birds project on her blog, and I hope that the idea takes off.

When I lived in Baltimore, I saw plenty of surprising birds, among them a pileated woodpecker and some kind of owl, plus countless others that I never took the time to identify. I wish I had, however, and had recruited friends and neighbors to join me.

In my nature writing course, we've been talking a lot this week about finding the green spaces in a city, and by "green," we aren't necessarily talking "environmentally-friendly" places, which would include recycling centers and solar panels. Those are great (I'm a big fan), but almost more important are the spots that are literally green. Community gardens, flower boxes, and dandelions growing through the cracks in a sidewalk are all little reminders that the concrete and brick still mix with the naturally-occurring ... nature. And my classmates agree that these green moments have succeeded in restoring our selves (hearts, minds, souls) from the daily drudge.

This Celebrate Urban Birds mini-grant would encourage city-dwellers to look for the natural elements that aren't green, too, by looking up. (I've never seen a green pigeon, woodpecker, or owl!) By interacting with each other and encouraging the neighborhood kids, especially, to look for birds like some kind of treasure hunt, we city- (and former city-) dwellers could start to once again seek out the "green" within the city.

Even here in the 'burbs (or sticks) we often forget to treasure the creatures both great and small that are as much our neighbors as the family in the house next door. With or without a grant, inside or outside city limits, we can all make the effort to notice the natural, appreciate the avians, and pass on our passion so that others can have those green, restorative moments, too.

Walk This Way

I’m a sucker for sidewalks.

When I went to college, it was the first time in my life that I had a sidewalk within several miles of my home. Before, I always had to walk along the gravel shoulder of unlined country roads if I took a walk around my neighborhood. In college, for the first time, I didn’t have to compete with cars and trucks and school buses when I was on foot. I loved it.

Now that I’m back in the same house where I grew up, I miss the sidewalks, but I’m also an old pro at dealing without such luxuries, thanks to 18 years of earlier practice. Besides, there’s not a whole lot to walk to from my house, which might explain the lack of pedestrian paths in the first place. (When my mom used to give directions by telling people, “Go to the end of the world and turn left,” she wasn’t too far off the mark.)

I go back and forth between claiming I live in a rural neighborhood and claiming that it’s a suburban one. I am less than a mile away from several farms, and my house sits on what itself was once farmland. I’m no more than a ten-minute drive from the local mall, movie theaters, restaurants, and a genuine taste of (small) city life. Then again, I’m also seven miles from a woodsy state park and a wind farm.

So, I think it’s the sidewalks that will determine my choice. I am a rural resident. And that’s why I can’t really walk anywhere.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. I can walk anywhere I want, if I don’t mind risking safety on the narrow shoulders of windy country roads or spending at least an hour on travel time just to get to the post office. My time in college on a small campus and in Marburg (that perfectly-sized and manageable town) spoiled me for pedestrian zones. Around here, my nearest grocery store is 3 ½ miles away, and I’m simply not going to walk there. Or ride my bike. (I mean, have you seen the hills in western PA? I’m not facing those with a gallon of milk strapped to my back.)

And this may be the biggest problem with rural and suburban areas. When houses are miles away from shopping areas, and the home is far from the workplace, people need automobiles to get to and from just about everything. When the population density isn’t high enough, public transportation isn’t even a logical option. It’s a shame that to live so in touch with a natural setting, we must also risk environmental damage in order to get to work, school, and any store.

I think I’m a townie at heart. Back in the proverbial day, I loved having the ability to walk to the post office (on a sidewalk), or pick up groceries and carry them in my backpack the quarter mile back to home. And I also loved the manageability of a town. It doesn’t carry the kinds of risks associated with a big city, and it’s possible to become associated with every corner of it. This rurally raised country girl finds it easier to breathe in a town than in a city.

It looks as though town experiments like Kyle, TX, and Celebration, FL, are attempting to provide this kind of town feeling (while also, unfortunately, making it an elite, upper-middle class WASP trap, but that’s a subject for another day). But if existing suburban and rural communities had fewer giant stores and more small and scattered shops, and if those windy country roads were just a little safer for the wary pedestrian, I think even we country mice might stop driving so much. We might prove that it doesn’t take a brand new town experiment to achieve New Urbanism.

And who knows what kind of natural camaraderie with neighbors and connection to the ground we walk and diversity of free market enterprises might sprout from simply placing our homes nearer our markets and offices? I’m sure there’s some way to keep the woodsy and residential feel of my neighborhood while making it a little easier to walk to the store. It could be that all it would take is a good sidewalk.

A Couple Images

The wookiee contemplates a monochromatic backyard.


The thermometer convinces us both to wait a few hours before braving the elements.

Finding Colors

My backyard is all a yellowish gray. The garden fence, the frozen blades of grass, the tree trunks and ivy, even the wookiee all blend together like some kind of old faded photograph. It’s obvious it was all vibrant with different hues once upon a time, but now, it’s all one ghastly, sickly shade.

At this point in the winter, my yard is in a state between dormancy and springtime. Now that the snow is gone, will the spring ever come? When I’m outside, I’m surrounded by yellowish gray, and the color brings on a sense of deepest despair.

I shouldn’t say deepest. Deepest despair came over me when musing similarly about color almost four years ago when I found myself visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in Poland. Among the many (many, many) sights that affected me that day was a room full of shoes that had been taken from the prisoners. They were, like shoes from any era, all different colors; if you looked hard enough, you could see a red shoe, a blue one, a yellow one, but their situation in history and my perceptions standing there on some of the most unholy ground on our planet, turned everything the same dull shade of gray.

So today, while I fought off similar, though lighter, feelings toward my backyard, I sought out something—anything—to give me hope. I peeked into the yellowed flowerbed along the driveway. It was covered with yellowish-gray composting grass clippings that my mom spread there last fall to protect the bed from the winter weather. Some grayish sticks of some dead flower huddled together in the shadow of the arbor. But if I just looked closely enough, maybe …

And there it was. A purple crocus just peeking through the yellowed grass. And suddenly, my backyard was no longer a symbol of deepest despair, but instead the first sign of change to a barren and monochromatic world.

:18° F:
:partly cloudy:

On Bugs

Yesterday I said that no one likes bats. Today, I'll add that no one likes bugs. Even when we talk about bats and all their beneficial contributions that we humans should appreciate, these contributions usually begin and end with, "Well, they eat bugs. And nobody likes bugs."

A week or so ago, my classmate Kristin talked about Stink Bugs on her blog. I was surprised (and a little relieved in a weird sort of way) to know that I wasn't the only one in our class who 1) has been finding stink bugs in her home, or 2) is afraid to kill them because of their unfortunate name. Around the same time Kristin was writing this post, I discovered a stink bug lounging on my laptop when I came downstairs to work on schoolwork. My first line of defense, the indoor cat, was no help at all and just looked at the bug and started playing with my pencil sharpener. I ended up scooping up the bug on a piece of paper and running out to the driveway with it. There may have been some shrieking involved, but it's all a bit of a blur.

In general, I'm one of those weird people who doesn't like to kill anything, even stink bugs, without a really good reason for it. Am I going to eat the bug after I squish it? Good heavens, no. My usual M.O. involves scooping up and throwing out. The one time I ever played camp counselor, the girls in my cabin got a kick out of my extermination method for some cave crickets that had found their way onto one of the girls' beds. (Cover it with the trash can, slip paper between it and the bed, tape the paper to the trash can, run far from the cabin, and release. Process also involves shrieking.) Hey, the rest of the week was cricket-free so something went right.

On top of just not wanting to squish a bug, I also think said bug would have to be more useful outside of my house anyway. Out there are birds and plants (and bats!) who would benefit from an insect's presence in my yard. In the house, all we have are a couple of humans and the indoor cat, none of which need the bugs for our immediate survival. Share the wealth!

And so, I support insect repellents for inside your home. But not just any repellents. As I mentioned yesterday, bugs that have eaten insecticides are probably one of the major reasons for bat decline, and bees and birds aren't faring too well from it, either. There are little plug-in things for electrical outlets that send out a high-frequency wave thing that makes bugs just not want to come near. That's good repellent: no deaths or harmful chemicals involved.

Also, my mom has tried this herb cocktail that she says has helped keep the bugs out of the house. Once our herb garden begins to thrive this spring, I plan to take some cuttings and scatter them around my desk and see how I rate it. But if you want to try it yourself, this is what she uses:

• Pennyroyal
• Painted daisy (pyrethrum)
• Santolina
• Cedar
• Lavendar
• Peppermint
• Rue

All-natural ingredients, shouldn't hurt your housepets or kids, and smells a whole lot better than indoxacarb.

In short, I don't think it's asking too much to want the bugs to stay out of the house. I do think it's wise for bugs to be all over the place outside. But just in case they do get in, I don't want to kill them for the invasion. I just want them to think that, just maybe, it's a little more pleasant on the exterior side of the doorjamb.

The Indiana Bat

Nobody likes bats.

I say this, knowing perfectly well that one of my readers has a Bats from Europe and North America sitting on her shelf, but she and I notwithstanding, raise your hand if you can honestly say this is cute:


This particular bat is myotis sodalis: myotis meaning mouse ear, and sodalis meaning companion. Small and unassuming, eaters of destructive flying insects like alfalfa weevils and gypsy moths, the myotis sodalis, or Indiana Bat, is truly the ideal overhead nighttime companion. It’s endangered, probably due to habitat loss and insecticide, but in some areas, it still thrives.

Bats, like myself, are creatures of the night, and the sounds they make—high-pitched beeps and screeches to assist in echolocation—can only be heard by a select few, rendering them typically silent in human standards, easily forgotten, ultimately ignored.

The Indiana Bat is named for the state where it was first discovered and described, but a colony of them thrives near my home in Pennsylvania. They have found a hospitable spot in the kind of place that I, myself, have consistently found hospitable, especially when I’m far from my home: a church.


This little white church sits on the windy country road to Canoe Creek State Park, casts its shadow over a cemetery where lie several of my ancestors, and literally has bats in the belfry—thousands of them. Home to several thousands of Little Brown Bats, this church, which hasn’t held a human worship service in decades, also plays host to a few hundred Indiana Bats.

My mother used to take my brother and me to Canoe Creek to swim in the lake, and now that I’m older, I enjoy piloting a canoe around the surface of the lake or hiking through the woods along its edge. Its historic limestone kilns are worth a hike to see, and apparently the bats think so, too. Their population around the lake is divided between the church and the kilns.

I used to dislike, maybe even hate, bats, but I find myself feeling a kinship with myotis sodalis. In its displacement from the land it was named for, it still seeks companionship under the eaves of a church, just as I have each time I have found myself living in a new place. And even in the face of adversity, these bats congregate together near lakes and other bodies of water before setting out on their own.

They may be tiny and unassuming, but myotis sodalis carry a message of strength and hope on their little skinny wings.

Unrelated to the Topic at Hand

This is almost entirely unrelated to the topics of my backyard, nature, the environment, and writing (although, if I tried, I'm sure I could make a convincing connection), but as honorary aunt to this child, I feel it is my duty to post a photo of my best friend's adorable little boy, whom I got to meet this past Sunday.

He was a little sleepy that day, but clearly neither of us really minded.

Okay, that's all. Thanks for indulging Tante Becca's need to show off her Neffe. (-:

A Brief Episode of the Afternoon

Huge and sporadic snowflakes speckle the air like static on a soon-outdated analog TV channel. Beyond the static, the twigs and branches from a fallen tree lay scattered on the frozen ground, the casualties on the losing side of last week's battle with the wind. The mockingbird sits still in a bare bush, watching me warily, holding its song until I pass.

Today, the only birds that fly away at my arrival are the doves. Of the several dead tree trunks behind the garden shed which we've left standing for woodpeckers over the past few years, only one has succumbed to the storm. As I pick my way over it, the tree beside me begins to rattle. Am I hearing an echo of the man across the street hammering shingles back onto his children's playhouse? I look up, and a small woodpecker is no more than a meter overhead, finding its lunch under the bark of a tree.

I circle the garden shed and come out by the dormant grapevines. Another several doves rise from the ground, flapping and cooing as they escape a perceived threat (me). But for them, all the birds in the yard seem to have accepted me. It's a nice feeling, to be one of the gang in your own backyard.

I don't expect to ever experience a Snow White-like oneness with nature, with the mockingbird alighting on my head while doves and blue jays feed out of my hand, the red squirrel nibbling on acorns at my feet. What's more, I don't want that. I am a natural predator to these creatures, and I hope that they remain conscious of the fact, just as I am conscious of danger around the natural predators of humans.

More doves explode from the vegetable garden as I pass, and I smile at their wisdom as I rub my frozen hands together and reenter the warmth of the house.

:32°F:
:partly sunny, light flurries:

A Response to Science

Last week, my friend was on her lunch break in a high-rise office building in downtown Philadelphia. From her cubicle, she emailed me this article by Wray Herbert from Newsweek.com. Today, while wrapped in a blanket at my computer, I read two blogs from my classmates: The Turning of Self from Mark Anthony, and A Cold S(easonally) A(ffected) D(isordered) Place from Kristin. All three of these online nuggets got me thinking about science.

John "beauty is truth, truth beauty" Keats probably rolls in his grave each time something is proven true by science. But in the case of the Newsweek article above, it seems that science is proving the truth of beauty, at least as far as natural beauty is concerned. Imagine! A study has proven that overworked and stressed-out jobbers out there in Officeland are calmed and reenergized by a walk in the park.

In Kristin's blog, she writes about the effect a dark, cold winter can have on our emotions. She asks, "Do people who live in a wooded area have lower blood pressure?" And Mark Anthony, while walking off a bit of melancholy, reflects, "Interesting how much control our moods can have over what we see and take notice of." Do our moods control what we see, or does what we see control our moods?

It seems, according to the scientists featured in the Newsweek article, that it might be a little bit of both. Stressed-out workers seemed to calm down with the very image of a natural setting before them. But after a three-mile walk, with time enough to reflect on their surroundings, get their brains to calm down after some busy deskwork, their entire bodies began to calm down. And it wasn't just the exercise, as the control group proves. "Interacting with nature shifts the mind to a more relaxed and passive mode, allowing the more analytical powers to restore themselves," says Herbert.

That's why I'm so thankful for the weekly assignment this semester to spend time outside, no matter the weather. I find that I stroll my backyard and visit local parks more often than I would have otherwise, even when I'm not working on an assignment. When we take our natural, animal selves outside, it's a brief reminder of what we are at the very bottom of things. We are not spreadsheets and editor's marks and state educational standards; we are flesh and bone, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, hearing, seeing, smelling, and feeling. And maybe that added perspective is what really brings us back down to earth.

An Affair to Remember

When I was twenty years old, I had an affair with Marburg.

In a way, it would be great, truly great, if Marburg were actually a man, but Marburg is the town I studied in when I was in Germany my junior year of college. I had no real affairs that year (or any year, actually), but the footprints I left on that town’s cobblestone streets correspond to the footprints the town left on my entire being.

Marburg was mysterious and foreign, and don’t women stereotypically fall for the “strong silent types”? Marburg was strong: the town remained virtually unmolested through two world wars and a few centuries of architectural revolutions because of its silence. It was love at first sight. I wanted to learn every street, every alley, every staircase and passage that I could tread on my daily rambles.

I wandered regularly. I made a habit of it. The town’s pedestrian-friendly setup encouraged me to head out without a destination in mind, or if I had a destination, to find the most circuitous route there. Wandering slowly through the veins and arteries infusing the medieval town, I truly saw where I was. Discovering a fountain behind a forgotten cemetery was like discovering a freckle on your lover’s toe: a delightful surprise that just added to the elements that made the town unique and lovable.

Too many times, now that I’m back in the States, I realize I don’t truly know where I live. Just beyond my backyard, the road I drive every day to get into town is almost completely unfamiliar. I have never walked it slowly, watching for the wildflowers growing from the roadside gravel, noticing the flowerpots sitting above my neighbor’s kitchen door, or delighting in the way the road dips and curves with the valley floor.

Marburg was a temporary affair, as I knew all along. When the summer semester ended, I returned to Pennsylvania, leaving behind the body and soul of a town I knew almost as well as my own. When I consider my future, I wonder if I’ll ever return as a permanent resident to that town, or whether I should establish it in my heart as a deep and abiding fling that can sadly never be repeated.

I believe that, no matter where it ends up being, I’ll know I’ve found home when I can feel the same intimate connection with a place as I had with Marburg. And that one will be an affair to remember.

Ja, Es ist doch windig.

I brought this up in our class discussion today, but it's such a potent part of the day that I feel compelled to post it on my blog, as well. The wind has been hurling through my region today like a freight train, and it's causing about equal destruction.

On Christmas Eve, after my dad's sudden heart attack and our subsequent phone calls to 911, the coroner, and the funeral director, my family went to bed and was surrounded by the same thundering wind that we've been getting today. That night, it ripped apart a trash bag at the end of our driveway and scattered all sorts of junk all over our neighborhood, which I spent Christmas morning walking up and down the hills to gather anew.

Today, the wind is ripping shingles off the roof of our garage, ripping open birdfeeders, sending bird nests from the trees reeling onto our deck, and making my indoor cat even crazier than she already is. (Every time a leaf blows past the window, she hurls herself at the window as though she can catch it. Poor thing; it's a wonder her nose isn't permanently flattened.)

I love wind, as a rule. I'm fascinated by a force made visible only by what it's affecting, made audible only by loose ends. But today, I wish it would be a little softer to me and my family. Dear wind, please try to at least leave half the shingles on our roof. And make sure to spin the windmills on your way down the valley. Thanks.

One Small Step

On Saturday afternoon, my mom and I took a fine and fancy ramble through the yard, bouncing ideas off one another for extending the prettyish sort of little wilderness behind the garden shed, and observing which creatures of the wild have been meeting up on our property. In ankle-deep snow, we discovered, much to our delight, deer tracks! It looked as though a small family had come through, blending in their trails with those of the rabbits, the juncos, and the wookiee.

That night, I wrapped myself in the red and black checkered jacket that hangs by the back door and walked the driveway, examining the shadows of the trees, which lay on the white snow: silent, bold, black lines cast by the bright silver moon.

I woke up Sunday morning to a brown world. As we adjusted our choir robes before the service, we all asked each other what happened to the snow. Several inches had disappeared overnight. I was glad I had taken the time to go explore the trees' shadows against the white canvas of our yard the night before. It's possible that winter has left us until December.

Of course, it's possible that this is a deceptive thaw. In any case, the slight rise in temperature yesterday encouraged me to spend as much of daylight as I could outside. The ankle-deep snow had become ankle-deep mud, the area around the compost bin soggiest of all.

And then last night, I braved whatever wilderness comes out after sundown, and I took a brief, but beautiful stroll around the back of the garden shed, between the vegetable garden and the grapevine, around the deck, and back to the backdoor.

If the neighbors aren't already talking, they will be now. "Well, her mother says she's living at home while she's in grad school," they're saying to one another, "but have you seen the way she wanders the yard at all hours? I think grad school's their little language for something else."

I don't care. The night was too inviting. The moon lit my way better than any flashlight. The mud squashed gratifyingly into the tread of my boots. The weather is still cool enough to keep most animals in hibernation, but a close call with a skunk last summer kept my senses sharpened nevertheless. The rustle of leaves around the strawberry plants encouraged me to hurry a little faster toward the house. Before I began shivering inside my grandpa's old hunting jacket, I stood on the deck, just me and the moonlight, staring into the sky.

:clear night skies:
:31° F:

Steal This, Identity Thieves!

Now this is what I'm talking about.

"Is it?" you're all asking. "I thought you were talking about your backyard. Is this guy writing about your backyard?"

Okay, no, not directly. But he is talking about some very simple ways that everyone can contribute to the beneficial, cyclical nature of ... nature.

It's my friend Emmett Duffy at thenaturalpatriot.org again, and by "friend" I mean "someone whose blog I've read but who doesn't know I exist." Oh, the slipperiness of language! Whatever his relationship to myself, however, Emmett and I both recently thinned out our files and fed the private logs of our lives into a paper shredder. Files downsized. Identities saved. And there was much rejoicing.

Back story! In ye olde days of yore when I worked a temp job at Johns Hopkins University, one of my tasks was to collect the sensitive documents that my higher-ups wanted to trash. I would then take the collected stack of papers downstairs and feed them through a gianormous (no, really, it was) paper shredder, feeling for all the world like Pam Beesley (albeit maybe not quite as beautiful, and tragically without my own Jim Halpert) and simultaneously wondering, "Where does all this shredded paper go?"

One day my question was answered when I saw bags of it heaped onto other bags of trash, all heading toward the same free-for-all dumpster outside.

Flashforward to last week when I cleaned out my filing box. I still haven't emptied the trash can attached to my shredder, because I'm not too sure where to put the confetti that was once my personal documents. I don't want to waste it the way they did at Hopkins, but if I do, I at least have the excuse (as they didn't) that my township doesn't encourage a division of garbage. We have a compost bin in the vegetable garden, but the last time we tried to put any kitchen goodies inside, we discovered the top had frozen shut. (Yesterday's high was 19°.)

But seeing Emmett's success with chilly backyard composting gives me just the incentive I need to hold onto the bin of confetti and wait for a thaw. After all, when bugs and worms have eaten the paper and turned it back into the dirt our plants just love, it will be impossible to trace it all back to me! And that's just the way nature intended.

Sign of Spring

I couldn't wait to leave my hometown until I came back after my first year of college. It was leaving and returning that gave this place roots in my heart. But despite those roots, I still don't think of this area as also being the stem, leaves, and flower. I still don't really know where "home" is for me at this point in my life story, or even at which part of the plant (to stick with the previous metaphor) I am just now.

If home is where you keep your stuff, then this is definitely home. And if home is where you spent your childhood, I’m in the right place. The garden swing by the back fence hangs from the same metal frame that we once called the swing set, but the sliding board and gymnastic rings are long since gone. So is the sandbox, which was overgrown years ago by the tenacious trumpet vine planted by previous owners. I wonder how many little green army men are still buried in that dirt, forever entwined in the roots of the trumpet vine.

Those memories of childhood are asleep now, cuddled under a thick blanket of snow, and I’m glad. In a few months, the snow will melt and water the ground, go up into the roots and trunks and stems of the plants and burst open the buds on the trees and flowers. The grass, crushed by the snow and ice all winter, will suddenly spring up, bright green, vibrant, and ready to be mown.

I dread the spring.

In the past month or so, I’ve sort of gotten used to my dad being gone. His absence from the house is still felt, but it’s getting more normal each day. Each morning, we wake up to a clear driveway thanks to the kindness of neighbors and their snowblowers. We get fewer phone calls for his business on our answering machine each day as more and more clients realize the truth. Not having Dad in the wintertime is starting to be emotionally acceptable.

But when the snow is gone and our wonderful neighbors begin mowing the lawn instead of plowing the snow, when I can sit on the garden swing and look over the verdant lawn toward the sprouts in the vegetable garden, when my mom and I have to waterproof the wooden garden fence and deck that my dad built so many years ago when we first moved in ... when we decide where we want to scatter his ashes ... I wonder if grief will be as compatible with that season as it is with this.

Yet even as I sit on the garden swing, now in shadow from the sun which has just dipped beyond the mountain behind me, I gaze east over our yard, past the vegetable garden, over the neighbor’s yard and over the next valley. My neighborhood is in a brown shadow now, but a thin band of yellow and pink trees glows on the next hill. Beyond them, black tree trunks blend with the white snow to make a crest of gray, and beyond that, an azure mountain, reflecting the full glories of a setting sun I can no longer see.

In this terrain that feeds the roots of my life story, I am given hope. The sun may have set for now on my yard, but it still shines brightly on a distant mountain.

Quo Vadis?

On Thursday, the temperature rose about twenty degrees (making it just a hair above freezing), and the setting sun knocked on the living room window and asked me to come out and play. I bundled up, and my cat and I went out to see what we could see.

A few days earlier, we had gotten another coating of ice, and shortly after that, about a half-inch of snow. The wind had died down for a short time, and the end result was a beautiful splatter of animal footprints, all frozen in time like so many fossils.

Among them, as far as I could identify, were juncos and blue jays, whose prints centered on the patio and under birdfeeders; the wookiee (my cat), whose larger-than-average footprints look like a small dog’s patrolling every corner of our yard; rabbits, who remain fully hidden during the day, but evidently scuttle around the yard when no one’s looking; and squirrels.

The squirrels took me a while to identify, because they were in little clusters of four, each cluster spaced anywhere from 6 to 12 inches apart. I suppose they must have hopped. Or maybe they weren’t squirrel prints after all.

In any case, as the wookiee and I wandered around the yard, following footprints and chasing each other across the smooth drifts of snow, I turned around and traced with my eyes just where I had gone that evening.

I saw my footprints to the mailbox and back to the patio, to the garden swing and around the back of the tool shed, a group of bootprints where I had stooped to examine the squirrel prints under the pussywillow, and a line of footprints smashed through the icy layer parallel to the wookiee’s when I chased him back to the house.

The snow makes it clear where we’ve been. What it doesn’t as effectively reveal is where we’re going.

Quo vadis? Wohin gehst du? Where are you going? In whichever language, it’s a valid question. Our footprints, whether traced in snow, in carbon, or even in emotion, will tell a candid story about us when we’re gone. If we choose carefully the direction we’re heading now, our footprints will leave a valuable path for the ones to follow.

Know Your Dirt

Living in your parents’ house at the ripe old age of 24, while your best friend and her husband have the idyllic newborn, dog, and two-story brick house with a fenced-in backyard (not to mention a Nintendo Wii), gets you thinking about what you really want out of life. This past week, I remembered with renewed energy that I want to raise bees.

Bees aren’t exactly a dog or a newborn, a husband or a house, but they have begun to symbolize in my mind the things I want most, or perhaps better phrased, the lifestyle I want to lead.

Today I read two blog posts online that have similar themes: “Locals Only” (a post on naturalpatriot.org) and “The Garden” (a post from one of my classmates at gentleplanet.blogspot). They both discuss the idea of planting native plants in your yard and discouraging the growth of nonnatives.

Pam at gentleplanet.blogspot lives in El Paso and is xeriscaping with plants that already know how to deal with desert life, as compared to the lawns her neighbors are wasting water to try to keep green. Emmet at naturalpatriot.org takes it a step further and discusses the effect that nonnative plants have on local animals. I might be a German-American who thoroughly enjoys Chinese food, but the rabbit who lives in the thicket behind/under the garden shed doesn’t necessarily share my views on culinary diversity. He prefers to nibble on the native weeds.

Which brings me back to bees. The lifestyle I want to lead involves at least one beehive and at least a small meadow in my backyard. (Ideally, it will involve miles of fields and moors with sheep grazing on them, too, and a windmill, along with the bees and meadow, but let’s not get hasty.) Before doing this, I would research the plants native to my area that local bees like best. I would encourage the growth of native plants to replace the nonnative, and I would make sure that the bees I raise belong to the climate and geographic area that I live in.

And I’m sure I can get help from my mom in choosing plants. Ten years ago, she went through the National Wildlife Federation to make ours a certified Backyard Wildlife Habitat. It may only be ¾ of an acre, and there may be humans living in (gasp!) an unnatural house right smack in the middle of it, but still our yard functions as a sort of nature preserve, because my mom makes sure to encourage native plant life and animal life. (No one can I say I don’t come by this naturally!)

With a backyard like this to enjoy, it’s not too pressing for me to leave home just yet. And until I do graduate and move away and begin my beekeeping dream in my own backyard, it’s important to remember: no matter where you are, encourage what should be there naturally. Whether it’s your yard, your home, or yourself, everyone will be happier if you do.

Westsylvania

In the 1700s, my corner of Pennsylvania, most of what’s now West Virginia, and a slice of modern-era Kentucky, formed a plan to become the fourteenth state: Westsylvania. To those of you impertinent enough to think, “Fancy name for Pennsyltucky,” I must say . . . you’re absolutely right.

A glance at the topography of the region tentatively christened Westsylvania reveals the sense behind such a division.


To the east, the natural barrier of the Appalachians; to the west, the Ohio River Valley. And in between, a unique landscape and a mindset to go with it.

Think back to your American History lessons in eighth grade, and you’ll recall that by the Revolutionary War, the only populated areas of the colonies hugged the coastline: Philadelphia, Boston, New York. In Pennsylvania, when most colonists reached the Allegheny Mountains, they settled at their foot, uninterested in crossing the mountain range and establishing homesteads in the wilds of Fort Pitt or Kittaning. The insert on this map shows that, by the 1770s, the region of Westsylvania still wasn’t considered a proper part of the thirteen colonies.

The Europeans who made their home on the western side of the Alleghenies felt—quite naturally—separated from the rest of the colonies, and a political separation logically followed. However, the interruption of such minor events as the drafting of a certain Declaration and a rather conspicuous bullet shot in Massachusetts put an end to these plans.

But despite northern Westsylvania becoming western Pennsylvania, the inhabitants aligning themselves with the politics of Philadelphia, the landscape of the Alleghenies remained a sharp contrast to the comparatively easy hills in the east.

And the people who chose to live in this rugged and remote environment matched the land they now called home. My ancestors made their living by logging and making moonshine. You may remember that it was the Monongahela Valley where the Whiskey Rebellion originated in the 1790s. The residents simply wanted to be left alone. The rebellion all started because the feds dared to tax the whiskey coming out of the Monongahela region. They didn’t appreciate interference from the Outside World.

To a degree, that mindset still reigns supreme today, at least in the less urban areas outside of the Pittsburgh metropolis. The influences of the Internet are still suspect; immigrants, and even fellow citizens from other parts of the state, are looked on with a wary eye; and social interactions are forced, as though one is thinking, “I don’t know this person’s entire family history because they [or in my case, on of my parents] didn’t grow up here. What can there possibly be to discuss between us?”

But this makes the area where I grew up sound negative, and I’d rather not end on that note. For, as Thoreau wrote, solitude isn’t such a bad thing, and I think my fellow rural western Pennsylvanians have embraced this truth. The Alleghenies surround, compose the topography of my neighborhood, and one must really want to see one’s neighbors to climb a steep grade to reach their home. And even though the nation west of us has since been settled and turned into cities and suburbs quilted with threads of highway, something still feels remote about this region, as though we still might not belong to the rest of the United States.

And, just maybe, this is the truth that the original settlers knew when building their homes (and whiskey stills) in these mountains: we’re all just visitors on this earth, and this is not where we ultimately belong.