Another Blog in the Dark (Blog Post #2)

Friday 1/25/13, 9 pm

Today, I fully noticed (though not for the first time) the way the snow here in Pittsburgh glitters as it falls. Some of it falls into drifts, while other flakes lay gently on top of the rest, sunlight or moonlight shimmering against their delicate edges.  Each one of these glittering forms appears star-like in shape and in its sheen. 

 Is this Pittsburgh thing?

These tiny points of natural light showed themselves in the most man-made of places (the bus stop at the Waterfront, an outdoor shopping center, which is located adjacent to the Loews multiplex).  I spent at least 30 minutes, perhaps closer to an hour, outside waiting today, and plucked a handful of snow off the top portion of a fire hydrant, to see whether this shimmering effect was merely my imagination, a beautiful mirage on a snowy day.  It wasn’t.  On my dark blue glove, the flakes shone and sparkled, and I marveled.  Then I swept off the remaining snow and boarded the bus, which had come at last.

I am thinking of this now, while observing my backyard, because although the snow has stopped finally, I want to see whether this everyday space has captured the same magical quality.  First, I observe it in the darkness with no help from any streetlights—nothing but moonlight and a few lit windows in the neighbors’ yards.  (I know, I know, I promised to deliver a blog about my yard in the sunlight—maybe next week!)  To be honest, I don’t notice anything magical, just a quiet yard with little to no movement.

Eventually, I move inside, to observe it from our picture window and also to turn on the light. (You may recall from my previous blog entry our faulty backyard light, which likes to shut off all by itself, after only a brief time.)  This strategic move indoors is due mainly to the way the cold has turned my toes red (I am convinced I might have Raynaud’s disease, or a case of the “red, white, and blue” as a friend with a similar discomfort with the cold likes to call it.)  But it is also due to the fact that I want to observe whether this place looks any different through the window in our dining room.  Without the cold to distract my frozen limbs, and the light shining down in fits and starts, the yard seems more still than before, without the effect of my own tiny movements (an adjustment of a scarf, a motion of a finger in a too-tight glove, for example).

 I notice that indeed, there is a shimmering quality to the snow that appears under the glare of this man-made light, and I marvel at how sometimes it takes something “unnatural” to reveal the most astounding beauty in our physical world.   The snow falls away between the wooden slats of our deck, a void appearing in each spot between these snow-covered boards that could extend an inch to the ground, or down into the center of the earth, for all I can see, as the ground a few inches below is obscured by the snow.  The white I see here is freshly fallen, and has an entirely different quality than the stuff I’ve been trudging through all day—that stuff on sidewalks and walkways was trampled-on, gray or darkened by pedestrians’ boots, slushy and slick, a nuisance.  It had been transformed by a series of feet into something to be avoided, or watched carefully.

But here, the snow lies in the crevices between the bricks of our terrace, forms itself against the trunks of our trees, reaching upward toward the sky with the branches it inhabits and painting them with a white stripe (and here’s where I start singing a little Jack White to myself).  It lays across the tops of bushes, it fades away into red on the portion of our deck that’s covered by an awning.  A dusting of frost rests atop our grill, finds a home on the roof above my head, fills in the fountain and the tops of all the rocks there.  It frosts the tips of the fence posts along one edge of the yard like a stylish woman’s French manicure. 

I have to keep flipping the light switch, and during these intervals I am reminded of my constant interaction with nature from day to day.  Though I rarely make too much of this, life is filled with these little moments.  Today alone, as I spent time waiting in a public place out of doors, I took in the feel of snow in my eyes, in my hair, atop the handles of the bag I’d brought with my writing tools and papers in it.  Now that the snow has stopped falling on me, or forcing itself into my consciousness, am I interacting any less with it?  Maybe it is just easier to ignore nature, when it is not literally “in my face.”  But if I can ignore this world so readily, what does this mean for my life?

 Can I be happy, without engaging with it on a conscious level?  If I rarely connect with my surroundings, instead waiting impatiently for a bus to arrive so that I can step aboard and leave it all “out there,” what will I be missing without realizing it?  If I remain disconnected, forgetting to notice the shining stars scattered on the path before me, what is at stake for me?  Who else will point them out to me, if I am walking alone?  It seems I have a responsibility to myself, to think about these questions.  I don’t have answers just yet, but it feels important to ask them, regardless. 

Blog 1: A distinctive lack of wildlife (A Night Blog)

This is Brigette, signing on.  Readers, meet my backyard.  Backyard, meet my readers. I live in a neighborhood just outside border of the Pittsburgh city limits, a quiet and friendly sort of place.  But you will learn all that, I suppose, if you keep reading, so I'll get right to the observations I made a few nights ago, as I sat out there for 35 minutes or so on a chilly January evening:   

Maybe writing this blog in the dark was not the best idea.  I must admit, my roommate and I have a most temperamental porch light in our backyard.  It stays on for about twenty seconds, then shuts itself back off without my commanding it to do so. Also, we have no idea how to fix this glitch.

The reason I am worrying about a light in my backyard at the start of a nature blog is that I've selected my own backyard in Swissvale, PA as the site where all of the blogging magic will happen for the next several months.  I am hoping to make this neighborhood feel more like home, and to learn to pay close attention to the little things around me that I usually miss out on.  If blogging fulfills any of these goals, I'll be in business!

As for the yard itself, it is dark right now,, so mostly I am experiencing where I am through my auditory senses.  Meaning, traffic noises, and plenty of them, from the nearby parkway.  But can I hear anything beneath these man-made noises?  I keep straining to hear something else beneath it all, but my ears are of no use at the moment in this quest.  And so it is the distinct lack of "natural" noises that is bothering me at the moment--usually, I require some peace and quiet, maybe a little breeze through the trees or some rustling from nearby squirrels to reach a state of meditation, but there is none of that tonight.  I am beginning to realize that my choice of neighborhoods to live in--and from which to blog--come with built-in challenges, meaning I will possibly have to become more comfortable with the mixture of "urban" and "wild" during the next few months, instead of insisting upon complete silence from humanity in order to appreciate the rest of what is around me.

Perhaps the wildness around me is quiet tonight because it is cold outside, or because they sense me here.  Or maybe it's because the ground here is still partly covered by a sheen of sparkled snow from last night's storm.  This might be enough to keep the animals tucked away in their hidey-holes.  It is a still night, a calm night, as though the world out here is still recovering from the storm--not even a single branch from one of the many trees is swaying nearby.

A few words about the trees in my yard: Or tree, I should say, as there is precisely one, located at the far back edge of the yard, sitting adjacent to the stump of another tree, which rotted and had to be cut down a few years back.  My neighbors' trees, however, rise tall around me. Most of them are rooted high above me, on the hill that adjoins their property to mine.  A fence separates me from the excitement of whatever is going on in the backyards on either side of my house and behind it, effectively shielding their trees' roots from me, but I can see clearly several thick masses of branches rising above, seeming to crowd in towards me in the dark.  Behind them loom a row of tall houses on a hill, and behind those and all around, a darkened, cloudy sky.  The whole thing is reminiscent of a Halloween scene, if not for the snow on the ground.  If only we had a full moon, with the silhouette of a witch on a broomstick flying past, the scene would be complete!

And so I sit, with the intermittent light flickering on and off, on and off; the bell around my cat's neck ringing from time to time in the kitchen located behind my back.  I try to tune it all out, ignoring too the barbecue grill and patio furniture to my left, and focus on the small piece of the world that lies in front of me.  The colors, I notice, are green and brown and white.  (Grass and leaves and snow.)  The gray of the flagstone path cuts right through the middle of the yard, leading to a stone fountain that I've yet to see running, though I've lived here since August.  The fountain in turn leads up into what actual architects (my roommate happens to be one, herself) call a terrace.  It is made up of three tiers of brick-like blocks, paved with dirt on top of each, where my roommate keeps her garden.  At the highest point, perched just above the fountain made of stones and the garden (which I cannot yet see, in the dark, but have only been told about) is the single tree.  Its trunk splits in two at the top, and one of these trunks itself splits into two dead-end branches, while the other is three-headed like a smaller version of a Hydra.  Each of these heads spawns its own smaller branches.  And here behind it comes the moon, poking out from the clouds at last, a barely visible sheen in an otherwise clouded sky. 

Set against this backdrop of garden, fountain, moon, and clouds, the tree commands my attention suddenly.  On either side of the fountain are a series of bushes spanning from one edge of the yard to the other, these only serve to highlight even more the central position of the tree.  I cannot tell what kind of tree it is, though now that I am noticing for the first time its relationship to the fountain, and to the yard as a whole, and to me at this moment, it reminds me of the figure of Jesus on the cross that one sees the moment she steps into a church--central, commanding, towering above you, hard to ignore.  Slightly imposing, yet somehow mysterious, too.  I've hardly noticed this tree before--in fact, I've noticed only the much taller, broader trees that are a part of the neighbors' property.  But when I narrow my focus to just this space, to just this yard, I am surprised to find that I missed out of the rugged authority of this tree until now, seeming to stand alone even while in such close proximity to its brothers. 

Next time, I will peek in on this scene in the daylight of January, eager to see what else might be seen and heard in the daylight!