The End (Entry 8)

I can hardly believe this is the last blog entry of the semester. As I look around at the snow on the ground, I remember that when I started blogging the trees in my yard still had leaves. I’ve noticed a lot of connections between nature and the passage of time since starting this blog. Maybe spending time outside just watching, reflecting and thinking instead of doing something has allowed me to stop and notice things about nature that I hadn’t before. Right now, for instance, the sun is setting and it’s almost dark, but the blanket of snow on the ground is making everything brighter than normal, almost like a very dim light is shining down on the Earth. I’ve been outside with snow on the ground probably hundreds of times, but I never once noticed the brightness that comes along with snowy nights.

Despite the brightness the snow has created, I don’t see any stars when I look up. I guess maybe it could be because of clouds blocking my view. When I was in elementary school, I was fascinated by stars and outer space. At one point I even wanted to be an astronaut. For my eighth or ninth birthday, my parents bought me a telescope. Not a serious real-scientist telescope, but a kid-friendly kind. I remember my dad helping me set it up and showing me how to focus it. I used to go into the backyard of my childhood home and look at all the craters on the moon. Eventually my interest in space kind of dissipated, though, and I haven’t taken the time to look at stars in quite a long while.

I think beyond all the practical things like helping me with my skills as a writer and allowing me to practice writing about nature, the best thing this blog has done for me is to allow me to stop and observe things, and to consider how the things I notice outside relate to a bigger picture, to life in general. Throughout this semester, I’ve started to see that there is value in nature because of the way it almost lends itself to free thinking, and knowing that makes nature something I’ll appreciate for the rest of my life. 

Winter

It snowed last night, and the leafless trees look like they’ve been coated with a layer of powdered sugar. As I walk around in the woods, the now is still falling. I didn’t check the temperature, but it’s fairly cold outside. I don’t feel cold, though. I actually feel a little bit overheated in my heavy winter coat, hat, and gloves.

I haven’t encountered any animals today. I think I hear a bird chirping somewhere, but I can’t see it. I didn’t think most birds stuck around southwestern Pennsylvania in the winter, with the cold and the snow and everything. I wonder where the turkeys are. I guess their feathers keep them warm in this chilly weather.

Everything seems very still and quiet. It’s difficult to find much color outside amongst all the white. With the snow still falling, even the sky looks white. It’s the perfect backdrop with Thanksgiving and the holidays right around the corner. Being in the woods behind my house is a stark contrast to walking along the street. The snow there has already begun to turn into slush. The pure white has been tarnished with black and brown dirt from cars driving by, and from the salt trucks put on the roads to make them passable.

The contrast between the way snow looks in the woods, a place that is (as far as I know) untouched by humans and the road that my house is on makes me think about our relationship with nature. I know that we can’t just let snow pile up on roads, but it seems strange to me that as humans we have the ability to completely change the way landscape and nature looks with fairly little effort.

This idea, of course, goes far beyond snow removal. The way we develop and change land is really interesting to me. We cut down trees to make strip malls. We tunnel through mountains to make highways. I wonder about the history of this concept of development, how we first started altering the land to make room for man-made things. What if, instead of destroying woods, we built buildings around or even within the woods? I don’t know how practical that would be, but I think it would be kind of fun to go shopping at Target and take a short walk through the woods on your way to your car. I wonder if in the future buildings will be more immersed in nature rather than separate from it. 

Turkeys Again (Entry Six)

The turkeys are back.  It’s raining, so I’m sitting under my deck, but I can still see them. There are maybe twelve or so this time. They don’t seem fazed by the rain.  They’re gathered under a small pine tree in my yard, in the spot where the grass stops and the woods starts. I really like these birds. They’re almost comical.  One of them lifts his feathers slightly and shakes back and forth, maybe to dry off? They don’t seem to be in much of a hurry to move or to do anything. A few are pecking at the ground, but not much else is happening. They’ve been outside in this spot under the tree for about half an hour. I wonder what it’s like to be a turkey.

I would imagine it would be scary – you never know when someone’s going to shoot you. These turkeys spend a lot of time in my yard and my neighbors’ yards, though, and I don’t think people can hunt this close to houses. Maybe these turkeys are safe. I don’t know where they go when they leave me yard, though.  They go into the woods, usually, but I don’t know where they go from there. I feel like they must roam beyond the small section of forest on my property, but I don’t really know.

I get up to take a picture and they scatter away, off into my neighbor’s yard. I must have startled them. I feel guilty for disturbing them in their habitat. When I see these wild creatures it reminds me of my struggle with eating meat. I recently decided to become a vegetarian, but I already messed up and ate sushi. It wasn’t even a conscious decision. I went to a Chinese restaurant with my family one night and ordered sushi. When I got home later that night, I realized that I ate fish, a once-living thing. I’ve since resumed my vegetarianism, but I didn’t even make it two weeks before screwing up. I’m not sure if this sushi accident is reflective of how strong my meat-eating habits are (or were), or if it means that I’m not that committed to not eating animals. After all, if I was truly resigned to this cause, wouldn’t I have remembered not to eat fish?  Since the turkeys have left, I guess I’ll go inside. I still want to go into the woods at night, so maybe I’ll try to do that this week at some point. 

What is School? (Entry Five)

Today, I don’t want to talk about nature, exactly.  But I do want to talk about what’s natural.  This blog entry is going to be kind of a rant, even though I don’t really think rants are very effective forms of writing.  Lately I’ve been really frustrated by the academic world.  Actually, I’ve been frustrated by it since I started college.  High school was kind of frustrating, too, when I think about it.  It’s a weird kind of frustration because I really enjoy learning, but the restrictions I feel like academia puts on free thought frustrate me.  The message I’ve been getting for a long time is, “Write what you want, as long as you have one space between sentences, a lengthy works cited page; worship MLA.”  This stuff infuriates me.  What happened to the meaning of people’s thoughts superseding punctuation?  I feel like in some ways grad school, college, and the academic world in general are crushing people’s natural ways of thinking, which is why I think it’s okay to post this “rant” on the nature writing blog. 

The dozens – hundreds? – of rules that come along with writing drive me insane.  So do the amount of requirements that are necessary to finish any program and earn a degree.  For example, I want to write creative fiction, yet I spend about 70-85% of my time analyzing other people’s (authors’) writing, and only 15-30% of my time working on my own.  I’m not trying to bash Chatham because I have been learning a lot here, I’ve met a handful of really caring professors, and I think at other schools the ratio of learning what you want versus what’s required is even more extreme.  But it seems to me like there’s a big problem across academia.  People are becoming so wrapped up in requirements and specificities that we aren’t getting anywhere new in education.  People seem to have just accepted these requirements, but I think at one time or another most of us have questioned whether our academic pursuits are really benefitting us, whether they’re benefiting anyone at all. 

So, to relate all this to what is natural… I think learning is something that occurs naturally.  When you’re a young kid and you touch a hot stove, you learn not to do that again because it hurts.  You didn’t need school to learn that.  There isn’t a “don’t touch the hot stove” degree.  By imposing requirements on students, the natural way of learning becomes convoluted.  I can’t offer a solution to this issue.  We need to have requirements in order to award degrees, and we need degrees in order to identify individuals who are qualified to perform various jobs.  I just wonder if there isn’t a more organic approach to higher education.  

Turkeys (Entry Four)

Today I was doing homework in my room when I saw a group of turkeys roaming around in the yard.  I thought turkeys would be a fun topic for this week’s blog, since I hadn’t written one yet.  However when I went outside, the sound of the door opening and closing sent the turkeys trotting off into my neighbor’s yard.  I decided to sit at the table on our patio and watch the turkeys from afar. 

I didn't get to watch them for long.  The turkeys spent a few minutes extending their long necks down into the grass of my neighbor’s yard – I don’t know if they were eating or doing something else.  I don’t even know what turkeys eat.  Maybe they eat grass.  After they finish pecking into the grass, they wander off into the woods.  I watched until I couldn't see them anymore, until they ambled away into a tangled mess of trees, grass, and leaves. 

Turkeys are funny animals, I’ve learned.  There were only three in the group I saw today, but sometimes groups (called “rafters” I found out via Google) of twenty or so turkeys wander through my yard.  They walk in the most hilarious way.  With each step, the turkey sticks his head several inches farther out than it seems like it needs to go.  Then the turkey’s head kind of bobs back toward its body, and the process repeats.  This is called strutting, at least I think.  We’ve all heard of turkeys strutting, but it’s really interesting to see one actually do it in person. 

Sometimes when I’m driving down my street, these turkeys will be trying to cross (usually in a group – I’ve never actually seen a turkey walking around on its own.  Perhaps they’re social animals).  When I stop to let the turkeys cross, they look at my car for a second or two, take two or three normal-paced steps, and then break into a strange sort of trot-run combination.  When they get to the other side of the street, they resume their normal pace.  I like to think the turkeys are being considerate by hurrying across the street, but they might just be trying to avoid getting crushed by my antiquated but reliable Hyundai.  They always remind me of the pedestrians you see running across crosswalks in parking lots and giving a little thank you wave.  I’ve read that turkeys are loyal and dignified animals, and I don’t doubt it.  They’re certainly seem to be the friendliest wild birds I’ve ever encountered.  

Time (Entry 3)

The grass in my yard is so green.  I’m sitting in the yard, right on the edge of the woods.  I don’t know why the grass looks so green today.  Maybe it’s the way the sun is hitting it.  Maybe it’s my new glasses.  Maybe the vibrancy I’m seeing is only in my mind.  Maybe I’m imagining this little detail because I have to start this blog somewhere, and the grass was the first thing that I noticed.  Whatever’s going on, this grass has caught my attention, which is no small feat for grass.  I mean, it’s grass – not exactly the most exciting thing in nature. 

It’s warm out, my phone says 85 degrees, but the leaves on the trees reveal more about time than the deceiving temperature and sunshine.  It’s early October, and I look up at the trees, noticing shades of red, orange, and yellow invading the leaves.  Soon their summer-time green color will be a memory, at least until the spring. 

I think about time a lot.  Every year the leaves change colors, and every year I’m always surprised.  Not completely surprised (after all, I know this change is coming), but surprised by how quickly autumn creeps up on me.  I wonder if a year will ever come when I won’t feel a little bit shocked by what I have thus far always perceived as an abrupt change. 

My cat, Sassy, is outside, stalking around the yard.  I can’t say what she’s looking for, if she’s looking for anything at all.  She doesn’t seem to notice the start of the change in seasons.  I wonder if cats (or animals in general) have any concept of time.  They don’t think in hours and minutes, I suppose – they can’t read clocks, at least I don’t think.  I imagine they can differentiate between night and day, but to what extent?  If the sun didn’t rise one morning, would Sassy notice that something was wrong? 

Sassy walks over and sprawls out on the warm cement of the patio.  I walk over, sit by her, and pet her.  She purrs.  I hope she’ll be this happy in the winter, even if it snows.  

Sassy

Charlene's Web of Lies (Entry two)

While I was wandering around the woods this week, I noticed a spider.  Spiders freak me out a little,  so i kept walking rather than staying to observe the spider for too long.  As i was walking I started day dreaming and came up with this story, inspired by the spider:

Charlene crawled down her web, lifting her long legs with an elegance that flew in the face of most people's opinions of spiders.  She waited in the middle of her web, hoping an insect would come along soon.  She liked crickets the best, but she'd settle for a fly if one came her way; she was starving.  Her famous ancestor grandmother, Charlotte, probably would have already caught an insect by now.  Charlene thought bitterly of the story her sister had told her earlier that morning, and every morning for the past twelve days in a row.

"Our great-great-great..." the list of greats went on for quite some time, "grandmother Charlotte was an amazing spider." Charlene rolled all four of her eyes while her sister droned on.  "The deer who wonder through the forest at night told me all about her."  Charlene resented the annoying deer her sister was speaking of.  Each night, a herd of loud deer came galloping through the woods.  They stirred up such a racket that all the insects in the forest stood still for quite a long while.  If Charlene hadn't caught and insect before the deer came through, she'd often have to wait until the moon moved far across the sky before an insect would stumble into her web.

"The deer say," her sister continued, "Charlotte did great things in her life.  She saved a young pig from certain slaughter."  Her sister went into great detail, gushing over Charlotte's cunning bravery.  "She spent her nights weaving different words into her web.  She wrote, 'Some pig,' and the farmer decided to keep little Wilbur around.  She saved that pig's life.  Later, a man learned Charlotte's story and wrote a book about her.  She's famous!  A true hero, that's what Charlotte was."

I should weave some words of my own into a web, Charlene thought.  I could show them all what I really think.  And why shouldn't she? She had all night, and her sister would no doubt be preoccupied talking with those hoofed friends of hers.  Nobody would have to know that Charlene was the one who weaved the worded web.

Her bitterness building, Charlene set to work at once.  As the night carried on, her energy faltered.  Weaving words into a web was much more exhausting than Charlene could have imagined.  She stopped for a while to snack on a small fly that had gotten stuck in her first web before finishing her new project.  As the sun appeared over the horizon, Charlene admired her work.  Charlotte was NOT great, her web said.  She smiled, satisfied, crawled onto the bark of a nearby tree, and drifted off to sleep.

*****
Charlene woke with a start.
"Charlotte was great," she heard a voice cry.
Charlene looked up to see a young child standing over her, holding a book with a crew of farm animals on the cover.  Oh no, thought Charlene.  She scrambled away from the child as fast as she could, but she simply wasn't fast enough.  A huge, heavy shoe came down on Charlene, and in an instant her whole world went black.

Deer (Entry 1, Week 2)

Lately, I've been trying to pay closer attention to all the different types of animals that spend time in the woods in my back yard.  Early one morning last week, I noticed Sassy and Jade (my cats) staring intently out the window.  I got up from bed and walked over to them, curious to see what they were looking at.  I saw an adult-sized light brown deer who was eating something.  She (or he - the deer didn't appear to have any antlers, but I wasn't completely sure how to tell what gender a deer is) looked very serene, enjoying her early morning snack.

I wanted to get a closer look, so I abandoned the cats and their window view and stepped outside onto my back patio, cell phone in hand - I wanted to appreciate nature without worrying about taking pictures, but I also really wanted to get a picture to include with this blog post.  As soon as I opened the glass-sliding door, the deer's head shot up.  I thought I had opened the door quietly, but I definitely wasn't stealth enough to go unnoticed by this deer.  She stared at me for a relatively long time, maybe a minute or so.  Then, she made a strange, shrill noise I'd never heard before.  I tried in vain to find a video of a deer making a similar sound on Youtube, but I'll try to describe the noise.  It sounded like a cough mixed with a scream.  The deer only made the sound once before she ran off into the woods, leaving only the sound of snapping twigs in her wake.  

When I went back inside, I began thinking about the deer.  Questions flooded my mind.  What kind of deer was it?  A white-tailed deer?  Was it a male or a female?  What was it eating?  Grass?  Do deer eat grass?  What was that odd sound the deer made?  Was it some kind of warning cry to alert other deer of a human invasion of an oasis that was theirs long before I was even born?  Why hadn't I seen other deer nearby?  Didn't they travel in groups?  What were those groups called? And why didn't I know more about deer, anyway?  I have lived in this house for over three years, sharing this land with these beautiful creatures, yet I know next to nothing about them.  

I grabbed my iPad and did what came "naturally":  I Googled deer.  I clicked on the Wikipedia page for White-tailed deer and began scanning it for interesting information.  I'll admit that my failing attention span made it difficult for me to look up answers to all my questions, but I did discover some cool facts.  For instance, according to Wikipedia, 1 in 10,000 female deer have antlers, but it's "usually associated with hermaphroditism."  Under the communication section, I read that deer do in fact make a variety of different sounds.  After reading about the various deer sounds, I'm fairly sure what I heard was a deer "snort," a sound that indicates danger.  I inadvertently scared the poor deer.  I'm hoping to keep my eyes peeled for more deer over the course of the semester.  As I learn about them and the other animals I see, I'll update this blog.

I've included the picture I took below.  It's not professional photography by any means, but I thought it might be cool to give people some idea of what the woods by my yard looks like.  Also, I think deer are kind of cute, so I wanted to include this snapshot.