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.