Before we reach the delta...



After driving through four different states where all I saw was grey, flat expanses of winter-trodden grasses and overcast skies, I started to drive through a different type of country. The hills began to roll a bit higher and the grass was long, green, and swaying in the breeze. The sun came out and was warm for late April and it cast the deep blue waters into sharp contrast with the surrounding green. Little peaks of white appeared in every puddle and pond, hidden in the hollows of the hills that were alive with motion. Cresting a large hill, I expected more of the same wonderfully alive landscape on the other side, but when I reached the top and began my descent, I actually gasped. Flowing before my very eyes was the broad, rushing waters of the Missouri River. I had just driven into South Dakota and I swore at that site that this was my new favorite place on earth.

Being from Pittsburgh it is a river that I am familiar with. Two rivers cradle the city on either side, bringing it to a softened point and creating another river that carries everything away. Sometimes they appear to flow slowly when you watch the barges drift down stream, their deep horns bellowing when approaching one of the many bridges that link the land together, or in the winter when hunks of ice bob forlornly as they drift down stream. At other times, you see the speedboats at the Regatta and watch the spray as the river seems to speed by, hurrying along the Spring and Summer rains. Always, though, these rivers are grey. Grey or brown or some combination of the two. They carry trash and dirt and pollution from the steel mills and river banks strewn with discarded waste from fishing trips and parties. I have known these rivers all my life.



This picture doesn't do it justice, but it's one of the best I took on my trip.

And yet to see a river that is such a rich, deep blue made me realize that I never knew rivers at all. The beauty of it sitting nestled in a valley made everything seem even more alive. The sun flitted in and out of clouds, the colors varying each time is re-appeared. I had been blind before and now that my vision was restored, all of the colors were fresh and brand new, having never been seen before. Crossing that bridge over the Missouri River was nothing like travelling in and out of Pittsburgh over the bridges that connect the city together. It was travelling, instead, into a great unknown full of possibility. It was new and clean and fresh water, just like the opportunities that lay beyond it.

I drove over that bridge and spent my summer working in Yellowstone National Park. While that experience alone changed something inside me, it was the vision of this river that began that transformation. Something about that water, the color or its clean, white peaks frothing as it rushed by, reminded me that there are possibilities. Water represents cleanliness. It’s used in baptisms to cleanse the soul. But, it’s not its religious connotations or the age-old associations that make me love the water. It’s the beauty of it, the things that it sees and encounters as it rushes past so many different shores.

These feelings of possibility are always in the back of my mind. Even though the Pittsburgh rivers may not be clean and blue, they show more readily the evidence of everything they have experienced before they came to me, and hint at everything they will see when they are gone. Having come back to this city after seeing the Missouri River, I can appreciate the rivers now. We should embrace possibilities as we swim through this running stream, this life, experiencing things and gathering them within us before we reach the delta.

Possibilities

The Spring Solstice represents the point in the year where the sun rises exactly in the East and sets exactly in the West. Everyone, everywhere experiences exactly a twelve-hour day, thus equinox, which, from its Latin derivation, means equal night. This happens twice a year, in Spring and Fall. And we can say that yesterday was exactly the same day for everyone.

Of course, what happened during the day might not have been the same for every single person on earth, but it’s the idea of it that matters. We can have a oneness, a sameness, a community experience that unites us.

Sitting in my back yard, I am thinking about the idea of nature as a way of bringing people together. It’s sunny, but cold and snowing, oddly enough. It looks like the trees have dandruff, the little bits of white swirling around lightly, coming from some cloud that I can’t seem to pin point. And yet this is so familiar. Snow. Sun. Cold. Wind. Trees and grass. It’s something that everyone knows. Each person’s idea of these things might be different, but when someone says “forest” we get a picture in our heads. And we associate certain smells and tastes and feelings with that picture. Is there a way for nature to unite us?

I recently found a nature blog by a couple named Kenton and Rebecca (it’s a bit outdated, the last post in 2010), and one of the posts I read started me thinking about this connection to nature and how we can find ways of using nature to bring people together. One post about shelf fungus mentions that nature is full of objects that mimic much of our modern technologies. But, does nature really mimic the modern world, or did we start off by mimicking nature? I think it’s the latter and I think this might be the way to get it together. All of the things that we see in nature are represented in some way in things that we take for granted. Pillows, umbrellas, shelves. How about moss, mushroom caps, or the shelf fungus? Let’s get back to basics here. Obviously, our community of human beings began in nature, the ideas for things and inventions coming from our surroundings. Let’s find those things again and embrace them. Go out and look for what is familiar and you can re-commune with the environment that we sprung from, learning to be one with our surroundings instead of building over and around nature, ignoring it as a fading space that doesn’t offer anything new.

I can’t help thinking that most people, when they think of nature or wilderness, think of something old. True, we have built our cities within these landscapes and have pushed wilderness and nature further away from us, making it seem like a distant dream or something that once was. Almost a fairy tale. But, it’s not old. It’s constantly growing and changing and reclaiming its own, bringing us something new every day. It’s a new challenge to re-consider nature and wilderness as not just old, antiquated, something we don’t interact with anymore, but as new and fresh and exciting. Let’s go out and discover our roots and perhaps discover something new in the process.

Letter to a Friend

Dear Stephanie,

I am sitting on my back porch drinking blueberry tea with honey and watching the sun melt the patches of snow that cling to the grass. As I was making my tea, I smiled and suddenly felt extremely happy, remembering when we would sit on the porch of Laurel [dorm at Yellowstone National Park], drinking our tea and smoking cigarettes and talking to people and not minding one bit that there was snow on the ground and it was still cold because the day was full of possibility.

It's been a long time since I've felt that was, but today the sun is shining and it makes me feel warm and hopeful that Spring is around the corner. Recently, with the dreary skies and ran and snow I've felt like the weight of the grey clouds was so oppresive. I am done with the cold and I wish it would abate so I could enjoy the warmth of Spring and Summer.

I got to see the sunrise this morning. Cody, our new puppy, and I were out in the back yard as the sky through the trees started to turn a pale orange, almost like orange cream. The birds were chirping away and slowly the color began to grow until the whole horizon was on fire with an orange gold. It was so beautiful.

Right now, the crows are cawing away in the Eastern White Pine trees. The trees remind me of the dense pine forests in Oregon and it feels like I finally have the best of the things I love the most - the West and the East. I wish you could be here.

I'm taking a nature writing class this semester and in everything I read I am reminded of you. How you love and respect the land, are part of nature in a way that I wish I could be. I am thankful that I have a home that will allow me to begin this journey again. I hope that I can find a way to be with nature and the wilderness again. I don't want to possess it, I want it to possess me.

I've been thinking of places to take you when you come to visit. I know we won't have a ton of free time because of the wedding, but I'd like to take you to see Falling Water to see the way that human and nature interact there. And to show you some of the beautiful landscapes of the East Coast. While out mountains might not be snow-tipped or have rocky faces that blush red in the sun, the smooth, rolling hills covered with moss and trees and mountain laurel, that are seperated by swift running streams and smell of fresh, damp earth have their own certain charm. I hope they don't disappoint.

There's a woodpecker knocking in a nearby tree, although I can't see him. I think he is confusing the dog who keeps searching for the origin of the noise, thinking someone wants to come in the door, even though we are outside.

I hope that you enjoy the tail end of winter, too, although I expect that you mght have to wait a bit longer for Spring. I can't wait to see you and go exploring together, so I can teach you for a change about this new landscape you'll be visiting.

-Kate