Nature Blog Post 8

            It's appropriate that the end of this semester, the end of these blog posts, demarcates the beginning of winter. The snow and cold hide the hillside's life, making observation difficult.

            Now is a good time for reflection. Thanksgiving passed a few days ago; it didn't pass without recognition of this course. I'm thankful for the following things which this class gifted me:

1. First and foremost, I'm thankful for the opportunity to pay close attention to the other lives around me. Though I have a lot to learn about nature's complexities manifested in the flora and fauna of this neighborhood, the first few fumbling steps have been taken, and I feel like I can walk on my own.

2.  I'm thankful there's much, much more to learn. Writing has always been attractive to me because it embodies a challenge that benefits me holistically. I've come to learn that for nature writing, this is especially true. I've never been inspired more to travel, to explore. While poetry has changed my life, it has mostly changed my thought life, which in turn has affected the way I occupy my body; nature writing has affected my body first, then my mind. This past week I was deeply moved by my peers pieces in a way I haven't been moved by writing in a long time. They made me want to get up off my ass and see something new. This is the power of the genre.  

3. I'm grateful that I was able to craft some new tools for my writer's utility belt. I feel more comfortable using scientific data in my writing, largely thanks to Haskell and the artful way he combined data and prose. From Price's piece "Thirteen Ways," I learned a few new avenues to explore nature writing: by the resources I use and by the sociopolitical place I occupy.

4. Finally, I'm thankful for everyone else in this course. Our discussions were downright enlightening. Thank you for reading my work, for worskhopping, for sharing your own work. I hope to see you all become well-known writers.

               During winter break I intend to keep my senses sharp to what life expresses itself around me. I also intend to keep writing. I can't say I'll return to this blog, but I will keep writing in this genre. It's been fun trying out new styles and forms, and I feel like a better writer for it. Again, thank you all for reading, and keep writing!

Nature Blog Post 7

Here Comes the Night Time

            You notice it first by the stasis—movement stills. Dimension fades—only the surface of a tree, a rock. These are the dimming lights at the movie theatre. Now the show—twenty minute spectacle of sun, in fantastic Technicolor.

            Tonight, the sun has a soundtrack—from my iPod, percussion thumps. A celebration. Thank you, sun. And she lays down the red carpet to thunderous applause. Good night, sun.

            I begin to walk. From street light to street light, I begin to grin. I no longer have to see—what a relief.

              This is the world as it is without human eyes observing it.

            If I let the nighttime fear dissipate, close my eyes, the world comes alive again; I hear the sound of insects rustling, feel the chill of late autumn air creeping under my hat, smell the rain-soaked earth.

            The moon and stars begin their ballet. I walk toward the gas station, down the hill. All foliage drops away so that the bare curvature of the land is visible, moonlight shyly showing only the surface of things, flash of the country's elbow, thigh.

            Jenna and I want beer. There is no other way to say this. West Virginia is different from Pennsylvania in that the liquor laws are much less stringent; West Virginia is wonderful. If I want beer on, say, a Sunday at 7PM, well, all I need to do is walk a half mile to the gas station.

            I hand the cashier ten dollars, receive change, walk out. The weight of the bottles up the hill—their own challenge and reward.


            Share a walk and then a drink with me, would you? 

Nature Blog Post 6

Today, in the drizzle, outside my apartment door, a maple erupts in birdsong. Fifty birds shoot out,--a spore puff--then fifty more. The maple is still as stocked with birds in its crowning branches as it appeared to be at first.

*

          This week, I wanted to be able to narrate my own story from Price's question, "who encounters what nature where?" How can I, stepping from the threshold of my door, encounter the spectacle in the previous section? Why can I, looking past that tree, see the whole of downtown Morgantown spread below me? Who am I in the context of what nature I experience?

*

          The first segment of this story I will call My Life. This segment includes my own history, and how it is I  ended up on this particular hillside, this plot of land.

          For brevity's sake, I will begin from the end of my undergraduate career, with this brief informational aside: I am a white heterosexual male, adopted on my step-mother's side, an only child, brought up in a middle class home (though my parents are now upper-middle class), son of a transsexual mother (post-op).

          After completing my undergraduate degree in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, I moved from my dorm room into town, where I continued to work at the pizza place I worked at during school, Scotty's Pizza, as a delivery driver. My apartment-house in Waynesburg had three apartments, each one floor of a home. My apartment was at the top. This studio apartment was very run down. The window fixtures were crumbling, the carpet was stained, linoleum tarnished. I paid $300 a month for it, and I loved it, because it was the first place I paid for and maintained on my own.

          A year after I graduated, my girlfriend, who I met during college, completed her nursing degree. It was also upon her graduation that I was accepted into Chatham for my graduate degree. We both lived in my apartment for the summer, while she studied for her West Virginia nursing license test, and I prepared for school.

          When Jenna became licensed, began working at Ruby Memorial in Morgantown, and I started school, we decided it would be better to live somewhere nicer, and closer to Jenna's job. We decided upon the apartment we live in now, in Morgantown's South Park Village, because not only is it priced competitively (splitting the bill, it is the same as what I was paying in Waynesburg), but it also feels more like a home than any of the other apartments in Morgantown that we could find.

*

          The next segment of this story will be called The History of South Hills Village. This segment begins at the beginning of the 20th century.

          Originally farmland, South Hills Village was kept by a few brave, adept farmers. This hillside is steep.

          It was one of the first neighborhoods in Morgantown to become a suburb. The homes built onto the hillside were built for upper-middle class, in the Post-Victorian architectural style. Homes were built close together, one above the next, running from south to north up the hillside. To enter South Park, you must cross Decker's Creek, a dividing mark used as the neighborhoods border.

          South Park today continues to attract families in the upper-middle class, though homes have been rented out, largely to meet the huge need of West Virginia University students.

*

          The final segment I'll call Intersection. In this segment, I explore how my history and South Park's history coincide, and how it is that I can walk outside to an oak full of birdsong.

          I don't have to have grown up here to feel it--when I look out over the hillside, it engenders in me a respect for the natural habitat I occupy. How could I not feel this, when to get anywhere, I must put on hiking shoes? Or when driving, my car struggles, my ears pop, breaths shorten.

          Coming to this hillside has been nothing but a blessing in my life. I hope that my occupation has somehow been a blessing to the life on this hillside also. Though I've killed my share of stinkbugs, I hope that my gentle attentiveness has promoted life more than it has squandered. I come from a background of privilege, which makes me more prone to overlooking what ways I am privileged; however, through my close observation of nature, my writing, and my scholarship, I have begun a life in step with the nature around me, begun to think about my history, and how it affects the nature around me.  

       

Nature Blog Post 5

Monotropa uniflora, ghost plant, Indian pipe, corpse plant

No real ghost plants exist on the hillside cul-de-sac. But what about all the plant life I have no name for? I've decided to name these the true ghost plants. An unseen thing cannot be seen until the mind has a context for that thing. The act of searching, then, turns up ghosts.

Along the curve of the bluff our apartment is on, a wildflower with peanut-shaped seed pods.

 This semester has been an unveiling and a covering. While nature moves in seasons, a student's life moves in semesters. A semester is full of its own unique flowers, its own frosts, its own animals.

I have spent the past few months focusing on a quarter mile stretch of hillside. Of course, I have missed much.

Like the ghost plant, I am colorless, transparent. Yes, this is a better metaphor. I am restored to life, to color, as I discover more on this hillside. It is like discovering a piece of myself I left behind so long ago I have forgotten, when I learn about a plant, flower, or animal. A piece of my history is remembered as I remember the hillside's history.

Nature Blog Post 4

           Today, Nikki and I left the cul-de-sac. As we made our way around the circle, Nikki tugged on the leash to go off down the bluff. Instead of resisting, I followed his pull, careful to not slip on the steep embankment. He decided to lift his leg and pee as I gained some momentum, heavy step by step. He proved to be an inefficient anchor, having lost some balance from his lifted leg, and as I went bounding down the hill the swift yank of the leash flopped him over. He quickly spun to his feet and ran down the rest of the hill barking at my thundering feet.

            I expected to stumble to the edge of a woods. As Nikki and I avalanched down the hillside, I never looked past my own step. Nikki and I found ourselves again on pavement, another road, slopes of sod on either side, stretching almost out of sight. A blue house was barely visible, looking to be about a mile ahead. The road was a steady incline, slowly revealing more of the blue home. A quarter mile, adjacent windows. A half mile, the beginnings of a doorway. The single home split into a whole row of homes. I could now see the street sign—Yale Street. I realize where we are; I've been meaning to return.

            In the yard of one of these homes is an ancient maple. It would take three of me to wrap around it, arms stretched to their widest. Its roots cut through the pavement at the end of the yard. Thick moss covers its sagging gray bark. A few yards away, in the front of the garage, a circular hole in the pavement reveals a flush of green.

            When we return home, Nikki won't stop scratching himself. I call him, and he hops up onto the coach. I pull him to my chest and look at where he's been gnawing. I see the scurry of three fleas. One flea jumps from out of sight, and I can hear the pop of its springy legs. I jump as it rockets past my nose. I take out the vacuum and sweep the apartment—fleas are tough little critters, and I'm stocked to the teeth, ready to do battle. As I vacuum, I let the tub fill. Nikki's moppy hair deflates in the bath.

            How strange it is to experience the boundaries disappear. Our domesticities cannot block out nature. Lately, no new stinkbugs have come into the apartment. However, from time to time, I hear a shriek—Jenna has found one in a sock. Neither can nature keep us out. We fringe its borders with our pavement, weigh it down with homes. We encounter bits of each other, always surprised. You can see it in the wounded deer, the broken water pipe, the birds nesting in the chimney, the green eking its way through cement. This is the promise: not that we will seek each other out, but that we will always crash into one another.  

Nature Blog Post 3

"Wild Cotton-Like Plant with Thorns"

         

           The past few weeks on the Morgantown Ave. cul-de-sac have been a study in disappearances. Take, for instances, the cotton-like wildflower appearing then disappearing in a flash beneath my nose. As has become a habit, on walks around the circle like these, I write down what I want to research later. This time however, when I return indoors and search the internet, I find nothing. Well, almost nothing. I find a photo of the exact wildflower I saw, but it is a portrait being sold titled "Wild Cotton-Like Plant with Thorns," which functions like a sonnet titled "Sonnet."

            When I return the next day to study the flower again, it is gone. In fact, all the brush at the base of the landlocked island is gone. I ask a neighbor. She tells me the landscaper is paid a few dollars extra to sweep away the brush. I am surprised by the sinking feeling in my gut.

            Or what of the deer I see early in the morning, grazing in the raised earth center of the cul-de-sac's circle, when I let Nikki out to go potty? A heavy fog conceals them, showing only a neck here, a flurry of legs there. This morning fog an exhaled drag on a cigarette, blown away the next time I look.

            In an attempt to doctor up the porch for fall, Jenna and I bought magnificent red and yellow daisies to sit on the porch-side table, about a week ago. They look like yellow daisies that a painter pained over, applying maroon brushstrokes to every petal. But when I walked out the door yesterday, the strikes had been erased. It was as if the red coursing through them were electricity, and someone had unplugged the power.

                                                                        *

            All this begs the question What is here to stay?

            Well, for one thing, the stinkbugs. As the fall season begins, the stinkbugs attack. Every window, every crevice is filled with them. As I take a book from my bookshelf, I jump – a stinkbug is clutched to the spine.

            In class last week, three origami swans lay on the table, each one smaller than the one before it. I have been struggling to write a poem about stinkbugs, to alleviate my frustration with them somehow. It strikes me that I can shrink them like the origami-artist has. I scribble in my notebook: origami stinkbugs in descending order.

            The cowlick I see in the trees through the dishwashing window.

                                                                        *

            When I leave my hilltop parking spot this morning, the sudden rush of movement throws leaves from my car. It is still somewhat dark. The play of brake lights on the leaves falling from the back of the car like fluttering ambulance beacons. I feel it is inextricably autumn. 

Nature Blog Post 2

           Jenna and I are avid eaters; we simply love to try new food. During college, for date nights, we would travel toward the rumor of new restaurants. We landed in Morgantown more than a few times, it being only twenty-or-so minutes from our school in Waynesburg. Once we crossed the PA/WV state line, we knew we were leaving behind our super-small town for a night in the biggest city in the area (outside of Pittsburgh), a place with more than just one restaurant, one super market, one gas station.

            We love pizza (who doesn't?). Trying to pick the pizza aroma out of the air, one date night we caught the scent of Mountain State Brewing Company, a brick oven pizza joint not five miles from where we live today. Mountain State could do no wrong: everything we tried, we loved. As can be inferred from their name, they also craft beer. That night, Jenna and I tried the beer sampler, sampling five different beers in small, beaker-like tubes.

            Sitting at Mountain State today, I catch the name of one the beers: Almost Heaven Ale. Like the lyrics of the Denver song: "Almost heaven, West Virginia." These are the imperceptible ties I am out for – craft beer, folk songs, and all the interplay and intersection between the land and its people.