Blog #7 Hunting for the Rite of Spring

Friday, March 22^nd, 2013…

1:36 p.m… 30 degrees… windy…

cutting-cold…bitter…

The promise of Spring disappoints. She betrays my trust. She had better be resting for an unprecedented fireworks display of life. Can’t come a day too soon.The always propitious and gilded sun seems insouciant today teasing us from above.  She smiles her incandescent glow for short luminous intervals then creeps back behind preteritious clouds.  Today is not a day for meditations on life and beauty nor contemplations of nature and experience. Today, I will participate and move within the park. I will not sit and wait for things to reveal themselves to me or arrive for my observational necessities. No, today I look back on our previous readings on hunting because today I am going to hunt that little bastard, Punxsutawney Phil, and wring his little varmint neck. I’ll show him a shadow: a huge, looming, ominous and inauspicious one. Short winter my ass; there is another imminent approaching snow fall arriving Sunday.

I take a few breaths; regain my philosophical passivism, my composure and acceptance.  I move on peaceably through the park. I haven’t explored or scrutinized other parts of Schenley Park since starting these blogs.  I have sighted only a paltry number of wildlife species from atop Flagstaff Hill. There have been a few wrens, a cardinal, and some grey tree squirrels, but not much else.  I would have thought the park would be teaming with wildlife and mammals, but it turns out that Schenely Park is really an account of humans and their activity in the park.

 There is no nook or cranny within this great area that hasn’t been explored, disturbed, utilized or vandalized by humans in some fashion.  Everywhere I go, the signs are unmistakable. Empty bottles, cans of beer and soda, yesterday’s newspapers, rags, wrappers, boxes, napkins, plastic knives, paper cups, plastic containers and other unmentionable debris defy the best efforts of the City cleaning department.

 A hillside looks “woody” and wild to the casual observer, but closer inspection reveals a ground cover of man’s making. What appears to be an impenetrable thicket turns out to be a jungle for the youngsters, crisscrossed by the paths of their youthful explorations. A seemingly sheer bluff takes on the aspect of a haven for mountain goats, but as I come closer, I see man’s footprints.  Narrow shelf-like paths zigzag back and forth, where the ardent wanna-be mountaineers have made their first timid climbs. 

 

Every open meadow is an ideal spot for picnics, sunbathing, throwing footballs, tossing Frisbees and at the highest point in the park is a green velvet haven for golfers; great for all of us city dwellers, but not so much for the wildlife. The roads and bridges are many. They are the arteries that allow us to reach the over 426 acres throughout the park, but they cut and slice and divide it into partitions. We, nor the wildlife within the park, can walk for any considerable distance without being interrupted by one of these concrete passage impediments.

It is hard to visualize the area as it was over a hundred and twenty-four years ago: a rich farmland, studded with pastures, fields and woodlands. Wildlife must have been abundant then, especially when considering that it was only one hundred years ago that the otter still played and thrived in Homestead, where  the great factories, steel mills and vast housing schemes have wiped out their last chances of survival.

 As I walk down the path towards Panther Hollow, the handsome bronze panthers that adorn Panther Hollow Bridge give mute testimony to the existence of those graceful and noble felines from the not too distant past. They are gone now; a growing city spreads rapidly, under the pressure of expansion, and engulfs the richest farmlands as its restless population grows and seeks haven from the hub of activity. City parks, like Schenley, are the answer to an urgent desire for outdoor recreation. They provide a veneer of cultivated wilderness, and an escape from confinement. The park is a place for the children to run, over green meadows, unrestrained by the fear of traffic, (as long as it is far enough away from the myriad of thoroughfares that run throughout the park) and where their parents may lounge in leisure, enjoying the sun or walking quietly along the path gazing into space or examining the ground for flora and fauna and wildlife, always listening and hoping that their children will wear themselves out before bedtime. This is a place for people to enjoy themselves, and for them, the park becomes a little world all of its own.

 

I share in this feeling as I continue my search for wildlife. My hunt has been distracted by my enjoyment and awareness of the scene around me.  Nothing is too small or too ignoble to lack meaning; there is always something to examine, and so, I continue my quest.

I reach the bottom of the path to Panther Hollow Lake. It has been known as “acid lake” by  

generations of Pitt students due to recreational activities which often include taking a “trip” to the lake. I thought it was because of the rancid smell the lake gives off. The lake isn’t just fed by streams and ground water; it is supplied heavily by storm sewers within its watershed. Leaky sewers are a huge problem that continuously contaminates this body of water and surrounding area. 

Before retreating back up the path, I finally spot something; there is movement in the bushes. I follow the movement of the grasses and get closer thinking it is a squirrel or possibly a rabbit. It reaches the open daylight and scurries across the path. It is a furtive, sly brown form slinking from rock to rock about the edges. I recognize its long, thick, naked-skinned tail; it is a Norway rat, as they are called here in Schenley Park. Most people just refer to them as alley rats.  They are the most abundant mammal within the park; not surprising considering they follow closely the pathways of man.  They have followed man in all his travels, shared his ships and means of transportation, and lived in shelters while they pillaged his food.  Although they are true wild animals, they have become almost domesticated in its dependence on man. It is a dangerous animal however. It spreads disease and can be vicious. It is bold, cunning and aggressive. When it is cornered it will jump to attack, biting with fury anything in its path. Here, in the park, he seems wary but wanders freely not worrying about its enemies. Its hair is coarse, rather long and lax, and its ears are prominent and almost naked. It has big black eyes that seem alert, but cold in appearance. It darts away before I can get any closer. There is very little good that I can say about this villainous rat stealing away with garbage we have fortuitously offered; I have always been weary of them; however, I am reminded that their presence invokes, once again, the imposition of man. Our garbage that feeds, and the pollution we cultivate, always gives a hand written invitation to this wild/domesticated mammal prompting me to remember the urban intrusion on our natural places.

 

Whether it is we that absorb, build and bend nature into the tiny bits of island green oases within our oceanic sized concrete and metal deserts or that it is nature that is absorbing our technology-driven modernity and social expanse, it is redefining what nature is today. Either way, it is clear that we are inextricably linked with one another for better and for worse. If only non-human nature would need and could enjoy our part of the equation as much as we need and enjoy hers,  our unison would really set off  a new kind of Spring resplendent with an unprecedented  fireworks display of life; a Spring truly worth waiting for.