Snow Day: Jolting Back to Nature

**Flickr Creative Commons photo by Alex, in South Lansing, New York

The first lightness entered the air last night, the crystalline feeling of snow as it forms and sends its soft little arrows from the higher atmosphere.

It was near midnight, an inconvenient time to feel the giddy exhilaration of new snow, but I could sense it lifting me into 3 p.m. alertness and a rising joy. From the neighborhood came the sound of children calling out, making their snow greetings.

Since that moment last night, it has snowed steadily. More than 13 inches have fallen and it is 5 p.m. the next day. The air still swirls.

Lately I’ve been thinking about nature, about wanting it to seize the air around me. I read books about natural sciences, making plans to research and study animals larger than myself: orcas, humpback whales, bears. I wouldn’t mind running into a bear or the thin curiosity of a moose. Not to romanticize--because, probably I wouldn’t truly want to meet a Grizzly. But I’d like to take a break from the mental responsibility of being a major predator and maybe interacting with so many -- a megacity full -- of other predators. When I lived briefly in Missoula, MT, a neighbor who rode his bike and wore a hat that was a piece of art he had made, which looked like a screw through his head, said that he had lived in Brooklyn but returned to Montana because he needed to know that he was not beyond conquering. He wanted to see larger forms in the landscape, and not just human ones.

**Flickr Creative Commons photo by Pedrik

Snow is a relief in winter. It brings light to the landscape, and an incentive to step over large drifts, sink into them, think of taking up snowshoeing or cross-country skiing to skim over the land. I think all that lightness of feeling, all that activity, saves me from the slope toward S.A.D. that I feel in November and December and on short days.

In Yellowstone, where I worked from September to November 8 several years ago, snow fell nearly every day. The sky was nearly always either mulling over its plans to form snow, or dropping it. I’ll go so far as to say that, then, I got tired of snow. Herds of elk ranged over the snowy trails to my workplace in the mornings, raising their heads to look at me as I detoured around them.

Today after breakfast, I headed out past no elk, but beyond enormous plow trucks and through many drifted streets, toward the large park up the hill. Reaching the park via five blocks clogged with knee-high snow at the street edges was not easy. But I was able to walk in the car paths. Every so often, a bright shower of snow would shock into the air, tossed over some shoveler's shoulder.

No one was in the park. It resembled a place into which snow had been poured, a sandbox of snow with heaped edges. Bare trees stood starkly, on hills that sloped to the reservoir. I’ve been there on other snow days and seen the long stream of children and parents armed with plastic saucers and other sledding materials. But today the wind swirled, bits of snow bit at the air, and it wasn’t an encouraging environment for sledding.

Fog hovered over the reservoir, its surface bumpy like old glass or a place where ice was forming. From it came the sound of enthusiastic ducks a few feet from shore. It was a happy sound, birds proceeding easily amid the unpredictable changes of nature.

Backtracking home was easier than I had expected. Neighbors were clearing driveways and sidewalks. It was nice to look into the hooded faces of people, to see that they too were dazzled by the full force of a large snow having descended on us. Some of them seemed a little surprised by the streets filled with snow and the few cars that tried to motor awkwardly past and park.

It has been a good day of exhilaration, nature, and humility. Or, just nature.

##

Winter Nature and the Shock of Flowers

     

 **photo of New York Bay by Robert Johnson, Flickr Creative Commons**

    Months have passed since my last update on November 30--all of winter, in fact.

    While my writing fell off partly because winter is a darker time with short days and less Vitamin D for me--it's also a fiercely lovely season. Cold and the snow are wonderful, though I can pass on dark and rainy November and December. 

    When winter hit, though, it held us as awed hostages, never sure what we'd see next. On the daily Staten Island Ferry, we rode facing a sea of ice floes and krill-like particles--our new reality, New York Bay as polar-research location. We floated in deep fog, seeing only a few anchored freighters and buoys in the bay. Each arrival, unscathed, at the ferry landing felt a bit miraculous--a return to landed shores. A return to snow-clearing trucks.

    Those ferry rides were the closest I've come to Antarctica work, and I’d like more. Ah, adventure! Ah, husky-dog and polar-bear frolicking weather.

    Fortunately, a few friends are skiers and snow enthusiasts and readers of deep, dark, nature narratives, because snow-enthusiasm isn’t popular in many an office here, heh.

    But sitting on the ferry’s outside side decks, which I sometimes did while wrapped carefully in down and hoods and scarves and boots--was all part of the adventure.

    It was all so exciting, at times, especially when snow fell in great, feathery flakes, even in March--that I wasn’t sure I wanted it to end.

    That said, now we are in spring. We have a dazzlement of crocuses in brownstone front gardens and house yards. First there were just the green tips of slender leaves. Each was remarkable and single, the only green thing. But now there are more and more: They are lavender, and purple, and white with tiny red veins, and yellow. They are touched, each day, ever more by the sun. 

 **photo of crocuses by Bernard Friess, Flickr Creative Commons**

    In the trees are fuzzed buds of what might be magnolias or decorative pears or other trees. So much potential, every day. So much bursting forth.

    From this I can see that I was sitting still for much of the winter, waiting and feeling cabin fever. Invigorated by cold weather in my lungs, I wanted to race about, or cross-country ski. I wanted to cover snowy parks in great strides and leave visible tracks.

    In the city, though, it was necessary to pick trails carefully, to walk in yak-trax and maintain footing on icy, hilly sidewalks. Did I like the city? I enjoy dusty bookstores, interiors, talking with others. But it is nice to go outside now.

    It's excellent to be freer, to walk in golden light that makes us look like screen stars on East Village streets, or pedaling the blue and cumbersome Citi Bikes--till we reach the destinations where we meet friends and sit outside.

    Each season, so glorious. I will walk more, and work more, and be open and honest. And we’ll have more seasons. This will all happen. 

    Also, right now I’m having a little spring whiskey, which might be influencing the tenor of this post. But it’s necessary to celebrate a little. I’m looking forward to the other green plants that will grow, and all that can be gathered and eaten. Happy spring.

Back from Maine

          
          The short season of adding ice to tall glasses of water has ended, it seems.  We are in mid-September, and my recent trip to southern Maine has punched up the view toward fall.

**Photo of Saco River, by Carter Brown, Flickr Creative Commons.

            Of my four days there, two were gray, two were glowing. They included pancakes, a house tour by a charismatic six-year-old, and dark, tannic river swimming. Also a meeting; local cheese and beer in an Edwardian neighborhood; and a Saturday farmers’ market that is everything organic-farm and progressive and LGBT and collective in culture in southern Maine, at an Olmsted-ian downtown park.These crunchy views are less visible where I live, in Staten Island. 

**Photo of carrots at Deering Oaks Farmers' Market by Mebrett, Flickr Creative Commons. 

         That said, Portland’s overlay of organic and tech and foodie culture is only an overlay, it seems. For a city of 40,000 to have a Whole Foods and a Trader Joe’s is surprising--but it clearly has a hard-bitten side as well. It might be part Burlington, part Boston working-class suburb in a natural setting.

My last afternoon in Portland was spent near the bus station, hearing about a non-working EBT machine at the convenience store across the street, about coffee house offerings being too expensive and too strong in flavor, about how much money is left on food-stamp cards this month, and a long bus trip to Corpus Christi, Texas for a job and a return to Maine after finding only overnight heat and contaminated beach water.

**Hilltop Superette, Munjoy Hill, Portland, by Kate, Flickr Creative Commons. 

People are friendly. At the bus-station convenience store, the counter-women at the pizza/Italian sandwich counter peer toward me as I choose a drink and call, “How are ya?” in a kind, harsh-voiced way that sounds close to a Boston accent to me, but different. I hear that only tourists eat lobster rolls, although I can’t tell, because they seem only to be sold on the coast and in rural areas, not in Portland.

At a coffee shop, people smile to be in one another’s company in the line for espresso. In some regions, smiling appears to be more of an obligation—but here, people seem glad to be with one another, happy to be in a natural place.

**Photo toward Mackworth Island, from Portland, Maine, by Jeff Dunn, Flickr Creative Commons. 

            Outside of town, the rural roads have a kinship with small-town anywhere: mountain-side burgs in Washington state; wooded East Texas. 

Leaving Portland, my bus passes pine woods and rocky areas blasted for the highway.Two retired women behind me are discussing Mount Holyoke and whether Devil in the White City is indeed based on a true story.

As we near Boston, we cross from woods and a certain amount of dereliction into the Northeast Metropolitan Complex--there is a palpable feeling of emerging into the swift click of the cities. With surprise, I realize that I have spent four days outside of the metro area between Boston and Baltimore, which seems to be pulling us in. Now we're in the Tip O’Neill Memorial Tunnel, then passing a farmer’s market on a busy square. City dwellers in business suits shop for dinner, not looking up to make eye contact--they can't show a reaction to every passing Greyhound bus, after all.

At Boston’s South Street Station, a young man asks me to watch his trail backpack while he fetches food. Noticing an Appalachian Trail patch ironed onto his pack, I mention it when he returns. 

He completed the trail the day before, he says—he and others drank champagne and made toasts after fog cleared at the Katahdin summit. It seems magnificent and unusual and world-breaking--I have the urge to give him five, but I refrain from some sense of big-city decorum that I’m not sure is even necessary. He is a laid-back trail kid, a recent NYU graduate with a green-careers degree. I grin and say it’s amazing, how exciting that he did the trail.

After Boston, we drive in darkness past conifers and across waterways. The passengers who boarded in Boston are visibly more diverse and more prosperous: Back in the urban areas, middle-class people use public-transit, and ride long-distance buses between metro centers. In Portland, Somalian and other African refugees were most of the non-white residents, but middle-class African-Americans live near and south of Boston. The passengers around me seem buoyed by suburban security and education. Because only a few of the electrical outlets are working, people allow others to plug smartphones into their outlets. They assure each other that this is fine:“Thank you very much!” and “You’re welcome." This feels like kindness, but also like the urban politeness of strangers.

**Photo of woods in Maine, by Bryan Alexander, Flickr Creative Commons. 

In the four hours between Boston and New York, we pass land, land, the insurance buildings of Hartford, rivers, then more land. I drowse, then wake to realize that buildings are on all sides, and this must be the Bronx. On one side, a stacked garage like a cruise-ship has an outlet mall's name in Roman letters that shine into the night. We whoosh past innumerable buildings, glimpse the tiny red spire of the Empire State Building far ahead, cross a river, then land on Amsterdam or Lexington and head south past the small shops and cafes of Harlem.

Near Times Square, we turn down an alley and find what seems unlikely: a two-story, yawning opening into a garage, our secret entrance into Port Authority. Our bus tucks in with dozens of other buses. I ask the hiker, who is across the aisle, what it’s like to be in the woods for days and days, then here.

He grins, bending to pick up his large knapsack, and says, “It’s—scary, that’s what.” He pauses, then says with decision: “I’m not sure I like it here anymore.”

For the next couple of weeks, he’ll hide out in New Jersey. “Hopefully, I can ease back in,” he says. He plans to work as a bike mechanic in the city, then seek work in sustainability.

I wonder to myself whether I still like New York, either. I’m sure I’d dislike it if I were returning from months on a trail. I’d react against it. I reflect on how it felt to be in a smaller city, with nature not so far beyond it. 

Admittedly, there’s a security in the Mid-Atlantic that I like—it’s an established place, with jobs and culture and milder weather. The temperature is 12 degrees higher here than it was in Portland, and the air is less freighted with chilly moisture. 

As it happens, I have returned to the mega-metropolis at an optimal time, 11 p.m. on a weekday. In the 42^nd Street subway station, people move about but there's room to drag my roller bag behind me. The platform is relatively quiet until a man starts singing, his voice like James Brown with a busted voice. He wheezes and shouts, “I *need* you!” in a way that’s a little disturbing. Many performers here seem like naturals, but I wonder how long he's been at it—it’s more that we’re doing him a favor by listening. A man glances over in bemusement when I move further down the tracks, toward the front of where the R train will stop.

The Staten Island ferry, which I’ll ride to go home, stands quiet as a ghost ship. It is like a dream I might have had but didn't realize could materialize: The doors stand wide open to let a trickling stream of people onto the boat, not the usual shopping-mall size crowd. 

**Photo of Staten Island Ferry (daylight), by Rev Stan, Flickr Creative Commons.

I rest on the orange benches on the ship’s side, 10 or so seats from the next person, and gaze into clear night toward Brooklyn and Governor’s Island. 

         I have never seen the boat or the city this peaceful, and I think of the articles I've read about night workers here. Perhaps I can only go forth after 11, I think. How would that feel?

On Staten Island, I board a bus with many others, people returning in a business-like manner to their homes. It is midnight, but the evening feels benign. At my stop I debark with three others, and we walk quickly along the streets. It seems well-lit, as if the streets are quiet but alive. 

        The city is large, its boundaries unseen from here, and I reflect on how that feels around me. I'd been staying in a house with a roommate for a few days, and I wonder if I'll miss the companionship in this city. 

On the way up my block, I pass a woman walking a small dog. I don’t know her. Still, filled with Maine largesse, I wave. She calls out hello, then she continues singing a song in a strong voice. Her dog is scrappy, a Tramp-like terrier.

I don’t know whether I’ll be glad to be away from Portland's easy nature, or easy-smiling Mainers. It's possible that I will miss it. Still, I feel a certain goodwill toward New York as I walk the last incline up my street, and climb the rocky stairs to my house. 

##

Early Heat

**photo of lower Manhattan from the Staten Island Ferry, by DieselDemon, Flickr Creative Commons.

Today’s high is 82 degrees. It is bunched and muggy and mostly euphoric on the sidewalks. The temperature has set the city into a different tone today, one of skirt-awareness, bare-arm awareness, warmth-on-skin awareness.

My route to the ferry landing passes a bus stop that is a long, peopled alcove, like Venus’ half shell. People there seem bored, waiting, like they could be prone to catcalls or sneering. They haven’t, so far, and I’ve needed to grant (reluctantly, sometimes, and the reluctance is with good reason) points to Staten Island. 

This morning I passed the bus stop without incident, but next went by two teenage boys, one of whom was speaking to the air in front of me as I walked past.  I was surprised by the anatomical specificity of what he was saying. The other boy said to him, “Are you talking to her?” The first boy spun away and said, “Hell No!” It was one of those teenage things. I have no idea to whom he was talking. He was a good-looking kid, which might help him--and I do think our culture tells him it’s fine to be that direct. Maybe this will last a year or two, his way of talking.  In a way I felt sympathetic for his raw teenage struggle, his awkwardness.  I wondered how far this would get him. (On the other hand, ick, boundaries.)

But it was just part of the heat-wave morning, and I breezed onto the ferry, where the front and back doors of the ship were left ajar for air to waft in from the bay, and we multitudes sat on long, multi-colored benches, trying not to crib body heat in our proximity. The sun was low and a heated yellow in the sky, the Statue of Liberty glinting in its light. The water had a muggy, blurred edge.

**photo by Lindsey Turner, Flickr Creative Commons. 

Later, at a Midtown elevator, a man in a suit said to me, “I was waiting for you." I said, “Ah. Well, thanks,” meaning for not letting the door shut too fast. I remarked about the weather. “Hot day!” he declared. I observed that we were expecting rain, and that it might get cooler. “Yes, but HOT rain!” he said. We laughed, though I was a little uncertain. “You will not be satisfied!” he said. “By this rain,” he continued after a pause.

Heat waves bring out strange things, yes. It is an electric day.