Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam....

I feel completely uninspired today. In fact, this entire week I have wanted to do absolutely nothing but lay in bed under the covers and wait for it to be over. And by it, I mean this constant greyness in the skies. It’s starting to feel heavy, weighing me down so much it’s hard to just take a step. And with the rain the past few days, and now the snow, I feel like I’m drowning in precipitation. I hate the cold. And the wet.

In the mornings, sitting outside on the porch, I can at least feel the hope of Spring. I can see the rabbits, who were all but invisible in the Winter, flitting through the darkness. And the birds have begun to sing their early morning songs. The small twitters and warblings have replaced the haunting, rough and throaty call of the crows. I can hear the mourning dove, in her slow, plaintive sobs. That is the only call I can identify with any certainty. The other sounds are a mix of swift chirps and longer whistles. They blend together at times, making it difficult to pick one out from the others.

Eventually they will quiet. And the hopeful early morning Spring smells of clean-washed earth will fade into the uninviting smell of snow. And it will begin to get cold again. And I will have to raise myself against this overwhelming feeling that Spring will never come. I wait for it impatiently, but I’m starting to get intensely frustrated and it’s exhausting.

It makes me consider why animals hibernate. Do they, too, get frustrated waiting for the warmth of the sun, angry when it remains cold and cloudy and snowy? I wish I could be more like them. I wish I was able to eat and eat and eat until I was so fat and exhausted that I would just curl up in a ball with all my friends and sleep the winter away. It seems like a pretty care free life.

Did we, as humans, ever live that way? Did we ever lay down with our fellow animals, call a truce, a time out, in the world of the hunter-gatherers, just so we could lay down and sleep to await the coming of Spring? Probably not. I’m pretty sure that humans would just migrate to where the animals didn’t sleep all winter in order for them to survive.

Picture from the dorm in Yellowstone

It’s interesting, in a sad way, to think of how our relationship with “nature” has changed. In this week’s readings, I was struck by the introduction to the Louis Owens reading. The U.S. Forest Service defines wilderness: “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth itself and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man is a visitor who does not remain.” I think this is an interesting definition of wilderness. What happened to us that we are no longer part of this wilderness? We used to live in such a way that we were so similar to non-human animals – traveling where the food sources were, battling the elements, making choices based on the earth – and now we have conquered a major part of this wilderness with our shelters and transportation systems. How can we get back to our roots if wilderness, as the Forest Service defines it, is where we are only visitors? A place where we can not remain? And can we reconnect with nature in the bits and pieces of wilderness that we can find in the man-centric “non-wilderness?” Will I be able to find a connection with wilderness and nature in my own back yard, or is it something that I have to find where man has not yet had any interference.

Buffalo grazing outside the dorm

I think of my time in Yellowstone National Park. Was that wilderness? I thought it was. So many animals and natural features of the landscapes, hot springs and geysers and acres upon acres of pine forests, mountains and rivers and waterfalls. It seemed to unrestrained to me, and yet with this definition of wilderness, I don’t think it can be classified as such. Road snake their way through the park and hotels are constructed. Cars and buses and trucks and vans drive slowly up and down the roads and everywhere you go there are people, people, people. 

Buffalo strolling down the road, causing a traffic jam as usual

While the animals didn't seem to mind, I'm sure that when humans first came to the area to make it into America's first National Park, they weren't too pleased.

I want to figure out how to get in touch with this thing we call nature. I was to be immersed in this thing we call wilderness. And yet, where can we find it? How do we get back?

"Maybe that's what life is...the wink of an eye and winking stars."*

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How often do you look up? I have to admit that yesterday was the first time in a while that I had truly looked up and for more time than to just note the weather. And I was happily, pleasantly surprised to discover that I have the perfect back yard for stargazing.

The warmth of the day was fading away by evening yesterday. I was stuck in the office for most of the day and didn’t get to enjoy the sixty degree almost Spring weather we were having. I left a bit early, but by the time I got home the wind had picked up, which always signifies a temperature change. And I knew it was coming. I tried to not let the beautiful day get my hopes up. But, of course, it always does. I miss the sun. And seeing it out yesterday made me miss it even more. There was an aching in my chest for the friend I had long missed and the knowing that it would be gone in a few hours to stay away again for a while was disheartening. I made it home too late to feel the warmth of it on my face. It had already dropped too low to shine over the trees that surround the yard. But, the puppy and I ventured out anyway as the last of the warmth was being blown slowly away from us by the wind. It was a beautiful sunset, the golden rays peeking through the bare branches.

Later that evening, wrapped up against the growing cold, we ventured out again. It was dark by that time, around seven thirty, and I looked up to glare at the offending clouds that were forecasted to bring more snow. And yet, when I looked up, there were only a few whisps in the sky, which were blown away quickly to reveal a deep, deep blue-black. My heart gave a tight squeeze of surprise. There are no streetlights in my neighborhood and the neighboring houses are surrounded with trees. The only light that came to us was from our own back porch light and the stars. Settled into the blackness above me, so comfortable and clear, were Orion the Hunter, poised to strike with his sword in his belt, Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters, clustered in their star dust, Taurus the Bull and Aries the Ram, Corona Borealis, the northern crown, and following them east to see Cepheus and his wife, Cassiopia, who floats upside down as punishment for her vanity. Each of the stars shown clear and familiar. Bright little points in a nothing but dark sky. There was no interrupting light to make them appear dim and they shone brightly, shimmering slightly in their burning. And the sky was fringed with the swaying tops of the trees, which made it look like a theatre. I wanted so badly to lay in the yard and stare at the sky all night. I felt as though I hadn’t seen the sky in years. They were so new in this landscape. But the yard was a swamp from the just-melted snow and the wind was starting to bite and I had other things to finish.

The newness of these stars made the loss of the Spring day not so hard to bear. It gave me something to look forward to. And with the grey sky menacing and oppressive today, it gives me hope that I will be able to see the sun soon and watch it melt away behind the horizon as I anxiously await the appearance of the stars. 

*title quote by Jack Kerouac