Cold Nature

A dense blanket of snow covers the cemetery grounds. The paths are covered in ice and slush. Today, no crows are present to create noise and chaos. The only sign of human life is a parked car near the entrance, two people within it bundled up in the air conditioner’s warmth. No people walk the paths apart from myself. Stillness fills the air. Yet the cold strips away this ideal I seek, this calm receptivity. External stillness cannot calm the chaos of my mind, so dissatisfied with the brutal winter.

Immediately upon entering the cemetery, I feel the snot begin to freeze to the hair on my upper lip. I cannot take this cold with positivity. I want to take photos of snow-covered gravestones, of the iced-over pond, but standing still sounds too painful. I must remain in motion. I must maximize warmth.

         Today, I see little life here. I see dead trees. I visualize dead bodies. No squirrels or deer remind me of life’s unfolding. If I had no shelter, I’d join these bodies beneath the cold earth very soon. It’s comical how ill-equipped I am—twenty minutes in sub-ten degree weather and I am miserable, throwing a pity party for myself.

         I round a bend and stand upon a ridge overlooking a brick building, a shelter I crave. Beyond the building, a barren lawn stretches toward the road. Here, I stop. I’m not sure if I consciously paused or if my body did the stopping for me. I’m not sure what caused the pause. I think it had to do with the cars rushing along Forbes down and across the snowy field, two hundred yards ahead. Something about their whishing noise and the forest of leafless craggy trees behind them summoned me to stop. Perhaps it had to do with the strange name on the gravestone before me: "Crymble." But in stopping, I hear my mind clearly: “You will never find clarity so long as you keep fleeing. Pause. Become receptive.”

         The sun peeks through the clouds. Its light reflects off the snow, making it appear like chrome fabric. I appreciate the warmth it bestows; I had nearly forgotten how it felt.

         I inhale deeply; bitter air freezes my nostrils. The sun has retreated. How do I become receptive to this goddamn polar vortex? Yeah, I know nature helps my mind’s state, but I am a wimp, and I am realizing that for me, “helpful” nature exists within a very limited threshold of climate zones. The cold depresses me. I do not want to leave my bed. I do not want to smell the snow.

         What am I searching for? I have no idea. But the way I am going about looking, I am never going to find it.

         I arrive home, de-numb my body by the radiator, set up my meditation cushion, light a candle and incense, lay out stones and a clear glass half full of water, sit, and breathe. I become receptive to this moment. To this warmth. For this shelter exists within my limited threshold. In this place, I can forget I’m in cold, bitter nature. 

Seeking Solace and Sycamores

I enter the snow-covered Homewood Cemetery, my face already numb. In the open space past the iron entrance gate, the wind increases in sound and sensation, numbing my hands as well. I've just come from an hour of heated yoga; body and mind are finding the transition difficult. 

I seek an ideal sycamore, thinking that my first essay will meditate upon it and penetrate its surface. I slush down the path along the stone fence to a sycamore I once pondered. I place my gloved hands on its fortified bark, admiring its patiently cultivated power. Above, hundreds of crows squawk in their flight from tree to tree, their conversation as loud as those of humans crammed into crowded coffee shops.

Crows fly overhead

I begin to wonder: is such loudness the natural state of these birds? Or have their vocal cords (do crows have vocal cords?) adapted to compensate for the loudness we humans have cultivated?

I seek silence today, silence and space. The crows thwart my goal. I leave the sycamore in frustration.

Like Joyce Carol Oates in her essay “Against Nature,” I’m becoming frustrated with my habit toward idealizing “nature.” I want to see nature as a pure landscape that reminds us of our natural state of blissful unity with the Cosmos. I want to recognize crows as beautiful manifestations of God-given life and flight. But today, I see ugly annoying black creatures that won’t shut the hell up.

Cold and annoyed, I continue in search of a new tree, a tree to represent my presence amidst the dissatisfaction I feel. I’m stopped along the way at the slight of a squirrel perched on a tree’s protrusion. The squirrel sits calmly in the foreground, staring at me, while in the background hundreds of squawking crows fly from treetop to treetop. I stare back admiring his stillness. Then he leaps to another branch and departs.

My pal the squirrel

I descend a slope and find a row of sycamores. Their trunks are dense and covered in tumor-like protrusions. They don’t feel correct. Still, searching for something, I approach them. But my gaze is pulled to the side, and deeper into the cemetery, I see my tree, my sycamore.

It rises isolated in the distance, beside an oak, before a pine cradled within a willow’s bosom. As I settle before it, the crows shriek in unison and collectively depart to their next destination.

The sycamore appears almost as if glimmering. Beige dominates its reptilian camouflaged bark, standing in stark contrast to the green and brown trees surrounding it. I approach to consider it from close proximity. The bark’s dark Rorschachian patterns look and feel like rough felt. I gently press my ear to the tree, hoping to receive a message that does not come.

Past several rows of headstones, leafless brush surrounds an ice-covered pond. In front of the pond, four deer graze in the snow. One of them appears adolescent. I pause once more and stare at the deer for several minutes. The largest one stares back, its ears pointed high. I’m not sure why I keep staring—I see deer most times I enter this space. Something about its presence instills in me a desire to breathe. And as I breathe, I recognize the scene I am experiencing as space, great space.

Gretel Ehrlich concludes her essay “The Solace of Open Spaces” with the assertion that we like to fill spaces; openness disturbs us, as does silence. But amidst my cold dissatisfaction, this squirrel, this sycamore, and this deer remind me the importance of openness, lest the mind, like our coffee shops, become cluttered with noise.

Maybe, in our idealization of the cleansing properties of “nature,” we have confused two concepts: nature and space. Nature is everything, including that cluttered coffee shop. But space is openness. While Ehrlich is correct, I believe we also crave moments that remind us of this openness, precisely because we have made our lives so cluttered. But nature is the clutteredness as much as it is the space. There’s no “going back” to some pure place. There’s just breathing into the moment. I enjoy open spaces, this graveyard, for its space is sufficient for peaceful animals, and the animals’ peace reminds me to be still, even as the shrieking crows return, offering no sign of their departure. 

A fat squirrel that said goodbye

Week 1 - Impermanence

*This blog will be composed of reflections spawning from my weekly visits to Pittsburgh's Homewood Cemetery.

Before today, I had not visited the Homewood Cemetery this winter. Fear of the cold kept me inside. Upon entering the iron gate today, January 12th, 2013, I was immediately struck by the changes. The weeping willow had turned beige, and its dense branches had thinned. The pond beneath it, always my favorite spot to search for frogs and turtles, had frozen over. I walked to the edge and pressed the ice, causing it to crack.

The snow that had covered the Pittsburgh ground this past week had at last melted. I wondered what the lake would look like beneath a gentle snowfall, and I regretted my habit of remaining indoors during cold days. Yet these initial visions, a direct result of my extended absence, brought to mind a concept of universal significance: impermanence.

All is impermanent, said the Buddha. We suffer in our clinging, for that which we cling inevitably fades away. Why, I began to wonder, do I so often forget this reality? I become obsessed with my daily routine, with the novel I'm working on, desperately striving to complete it. I began to think - is this not simply my reaction against impermanence, my attempt to create something that lasts through time? Was my clinging to this novel as eternal and everlasting not unlike the gravestones I now passed through? For we see stones as among the most permanent of all substances, and thus our utilization of them as memorials offset the sad impermanence of human life. The gravestones, I thought, are meant to be emblematic of each buried person's eternal existence, their triumph over impermanence.

Take, for instance, Mary Herron, 1922-1924. I don't know who Mary was. She lived before my grandparents were born and never saw the age of three. How did she die? Where did she live? How did her early death affect her parents? I will never know. But her stone caught my eye, and thus I know she once existed. The stone is the permanent reminder of her impermanence.

Yet stones, as all other things, will fade away. Carved on the face of one remarkable gravestone was the Virgin Mary with arms outstretched. Her left hand had crumbled, leaving only a stump.

We must remind ourselves of our impermanent nature, lest we succumb to hubris. We are part of this organic process we call life, symbolized by the wind chilling my face and sending fallen leaves tumbling across the path, never to rest again in the spot from which they came. Universal energy carries us forth, and we too shall pass.

Still, amidst these reflections, I want to leave something lasting. I want something to survive my death, my burial, and I want that something to be more than a stone. I want that something to be a source of joy and inspiration. I want it to help people realize that they are understood by someone, even if that someone has been gone for many years. I want something permanent to come of my life. And in this want, I see how very human I am.