Blog #4 Unintended Tracks

Saturday, February 16^th, 2013, 11:34 a.m. The weather is 26 degrees. The wind chill betrays the numerical value. I know this as I clutch my elbows ascending the lightly dusted slope. Lumbering the slow rise, I, once again, encounter the intractable presence of man. The face of the knoll is inscribed with a paraph to summon man’s perpetual residence. Long engravings of tire marks make their way up the incline. A vehicle has treated the soft, wet and mud torn grass as its own carapace leaving a long autographed scar down its face. I follow it’s trajectory to the top wondering where it will take me today.

I look out searching for something to grasp my attention, my inspiration. Nothing takes hold. I am in some sort of geologic time warp where change is constant but imperceptible. It seems as if nothing has changed in the past two weeks when I came last. It still has a gray, overcast, cheerless and colorless palate. There is somberness in the lack of activity. There is a stillness that invokes solitude amongst my tree friends. The absence of wildlife fills up the blank canvas I try to write. Emptiness is the order of the day.

I am missing the signs of animal life in this place. Where are the finches, jays, cardinals, wrens and chickadees? Some thrushes or woodpeckers would do. Any winter bird that makes its home in Western Pennsylvania would be a welcome reminder that I am not here alone. Instead, I am forced into the surround sound of a continuous rumbling in the distance, above me, and below me. It is an undefinable but menacing reverberation.  Perhaps the sound is that of heaven and hell colliding, for those that believe in that sort of thing. Maybe it is two stars colliding creating life. Could it be Persephone escaping the clutches of Hades preparing us for the spring vegetation she brings? Despite its potential proclamation, it insists on echoing a possibility for destruction.

And so I wait… I abide…What will fill in this blank canvas of invisible beauty, life and process. How do I find it’s imperceptibility on a day like today; plain and empty, barren and austere.  I weather the elements for some suggestion. I retreat into what isn’t in front of me, what isn’t here. I penetrate my memory banks to instinctually fill in this perceived surrounding emptiness and absence. In actuality, it is pregnant with everything I need; I just don’t realize it yet.

Searching for pulchritude to suffuse the drabness, I comb my memories for the salve. The desire for wanting what is not there gives us the antithesis of what we have. Staring out in the midst and on the precipice of lifeless trees, corrugated grass and addled snow, remembrances of astonishment in the desert southwest flood the frame of the new canvas in front of me.  A silver river carving its way through an alley of wind sculpted terraces of red, orange and yellow rock: Divine light cascading in prisms onto the narrows where the voices of coyotes are encased. The vision combines to immobilize me. It casts a magic spell to take over my mind and body, makes it impossible for me to move. I can feel the world disappear. Tomorrow and yesterday fade away. Only this moment, this exquisite moment exists and I want it to go on forever.

I am brought back to presence through physical sensation. It is cold and my toes and fingers curl inward. The image of natural beauty recedes but its geology remains. Time comes into focus while contemplating the processes involved in creating natural perfect beauty. It is happening here as well. Perhaps that is the imperceptible phenomena I was in search of today. The natural cycles of formation is imprinted on the topography, geology and vegetation in this park. The invisible is happening and contributing constantly. It only comes into existence when our minds are placed onto it bringing it to life.

The sandstone rocks of the southwest also reside in our history, forging a distant connection.  Ripples and cross stratification are preserved in sandstone beds that are exposed in Schenley Park. These sandstone layers are fossilized river channels. The landscape I am standing on is the result of 290 million years of geological process. What was once a broad interior sea, who’s constant rise in sea level drowned out the river delta and created a minor marine environment, has now left us an accumulation of deposits from its repeated sea level changes and delta shifts. Oh how the invisible becomes present in the presence of attention.

I come to find that there is much more to this place than what I can see. This is also a watershed that feeds our environment. Water flows through the park in streams, a pond, a lake and wetlands, and is part of the Monongahela River watershed. Water flows in a cycle through this environment. This hydraulic cycle keeps our city and lives healthy. Cloud formations from evaporation of lakes and soil in this park lead to rain clouds that drop its contents back to the ground. It infiltrates the soil and percolates the ground water filling the contents of the bodies of water lying above it completing the give and take. This omnipresent process rebukes my initial feelings and impressions of stillness and emptiness that I imposed on this space so unjustly.

Once again I am moved by what I did not know prior to coming here today. Those ignominious vehicle tracks carved in the lineaments of this fine hill have guided me towards a new understanding of this place: one that is drawn from the maps that are not seen but permanent. I will follow those man made tracks back to where I began and hopefully place myself back into a different kind of natural cycle: one in which I hope I can, like the park, contribute to the health of a city.     

   

A conversation

Saturday, February 2nd, 2013. 11:45 a.m. Grey.  14 degrees.  The coldest day of the year.

Black boots... Check. Black pants... Check. Black sweater... Check. Black overcoat... Check. Black snow hat… Check.  Black hoody from the overcoat…Check. Black gloves given from the Humane Society… Check. Black pen… Check.  Black and white notebook... Check.

Given my outward appearance, it would seem as if there was something funereal about to happen. As I approach Flagstaff Hill in my stygian, atramental colored attire, the soft white dusting of snow descending from the sky falls gently to its resting place. It is not snowing hard…Just enough to know that there may be angels hovering above spreading their white powder from their wings. Perhaps they are waiting in anticipation for some kind of funeral today after all.

Ascending the white frosted incline towards the top of the ridge the contrast of black on white is augmented by the ashen somberness of the sky.  Coupled with the cinerea of my thoughts, the scene seems to have lost all color. I am traversing inside of a black and white movie landscape, a film noir.

The stanchions of leafless and lifeless White Ash trees lined up in rows and columns rimming the top of the crescent shaped incline stand like a battalion waiting for battle. Are they protecting the hill from the encroachment of the civilization below, demarcating where development should cease? Or, are they preparing for a different kind of fight: a Civil War within nature herself?

Although the funeral may be premature, the impending loss of these sublime hardwoods from the introduction of the emerald ash borer beetle (EAB) into this eco system promises to dramatically change the canopy of Schenley Park and Flagstaff Hill. If this beautiful and noble tree loses its fight, the encroachment of a different kind of human intervention will cultivate the flourishing of a nonindigenous species to replace it. The trees in waiting from the rank and files, lurking behind the proud patrician White Ash front, are the Norway Maples. A large and lush tree, it may just overtake it’s brethren without any infestation of pests or disease that portend the White Ash’s future. It is an invasive species, planted here by man. The Pittsburgh Parks Conservatory claims that “It achieves dominance over native plants through its abundant production of seedlings, the deep shade produced by its canopy, and the release of phytotoxic chemicals that inhibit the growth of other plants.  By contributing to the lack of understory plants, Norway maples also help cause erosion and compacted soil.” Perhaps I am dressed for the occasion.

The Arctic wind chills my bones and makes them brittle, difficult to move.  The freezing temperatures are transforming my movements and thoughts from a fluid liquid state to a more rigid solidified one. I can feel my molecules slowing down enough that their attractions cause them to arrange themselves into fixed position just like the trees above me. The wind is blowing hard and fast and no branches are swaying. Perhaps they are saving every bit of energy for the unknown impending spring.

In this stinging piercing cold, I feel sad for the tree. I tell myself “At least it doesn’t feel the frigid light air that blows, like a diaphanous ghost, through anything it contacts. “ But can’t it?  A tree does feel doesn’t it? It certainly registers things and changes when you do things to it. It may not know what it must confront in the future, but I learned somewhere that if I could turn on my alpha waves and sit beside it, it will pick up those alpha waves. We call trees wise for a reason.

Some people might say they don’t have any intelligence because it has none of our civilized structures, technologies, art galleries, concert halls, automobiles, religion, etc… But the trees remind me that it is only us poor uncivilized beings who need to have all of those things around to tell us who we are and what it’s all about. Looking at the trees tells me we are messy and inefficient and are cluttering up everything with our culture. The tree has it all built into itself.  Unlike myself, the tree doesn’t need to go running around to stay warm in this cold. It doesn’t need to be moving to know anything about the world because its sensitivity extends all over the place. They pick up the waves and pulsations of life and death. The trees here have vibrations inside of their fibers that are every bit as sonorous and harmonious as the music played in the Carnegie Music Hall down below.  They are not just standing there, doing nothing, waiting for the emerald ash borer beetle or its rival, the Norway Maple, to overtake them someday. They are living. They are vibrating in ecstasy.  They are humming to the great hum that is going on everywhere. 

 

The sound of a distant locomotive interrupts my brief respite from the burning cold and reminds me of its slashing cruelty. It is remarkable how putting your concentration on something other than yourself can alleviate any feeling or sensation you experience or carry with you.

I give my respect to the squadron of trees and bid them adieu. The striped masks and brown coats of the Carolina Wrens hop along, pecking at the grass, and look at me without trepidation. Their close proximity suggests that there has been a kind of trust formed between us during my visit up here on the hill. Perhaps the trees have spoken to me. Perhaps it’s time to go home to change my clothes and put on something more colorful.