Unclaimed.

I laced up my boots this week. That's right, laced up my boots. The winter boots stayed at home today as most of the snow has melted and dripped and flowed down the Pittsburgh hills. I laced and knotted the blue strings of my ankle boots for this week's journey to the bench. 

We left the house irritated, Apacha irritated with me because I kept running back into the house to get something, or check something, or change something. He waited patiently on the front porch as I kept returning inside. I was irritated with myself for too many reasons--sleeping in, forgetting things and just a general self disappointment. I hoped the walk to the bench would change that, bring a resurgence of energy and fulfillment with the self. The past two days have been consistent disapproval for no reason at all. Going. Going. Going. Seems to happen when there is much on the plate, and I keep adding more. Seems to happen when I forget to slow down and pile on anxiety to small tasks. 

When we finally do arrive to the park, I realize I forgot my gloves, and again curse myself. Although the snow has melted, the windchill puts the temperature at 14 degrees. My long boney fingers do not appreciate the winded cold. Apacha is eager in the backseat to get out. 

The park has a whole new composition compared to the past few weeks of snow. The grass looks worn and defeated from the winter. It has a combover from the constant weight of boots on top of snow, the stampede of warriors pushing the once erect blades of grass into limp, sad defeated soldiers. But at least they lay together, fallen into the arms of their comrades. At least they fought winter's war with one another. And there is still a chance the ice and snow will be back for more, round after round, until the noble season of spring declares the treaty of sunbeams and gentle showers. 

From the top of the hill, I admire the simple blending of the yellow-green grass with the blue-big sky, it reminds me of a Rothko painting. The two colors trump everything else, the browns of the trees and the patches of white clouds moving dissipates to the blue and the green. My favorite kind of pictures to snap are of landscapes like these--simple and concise. A lone tree in an Ohio pasture. A swallowed sky by the open sea. Split images of landscape and sky. Simple. Pure. Beautiful. 

Apacha is down in the valley of the hills, sniffing out the treeline. He looks up to me, waiting [seems to be a theme today] for me to catch up, for our adventure to continue. I run down the blades and feel my body move in strides. My arms squared at a ninety degree angle, fists clenched, shoulder blades bouncing, legs extending, then tucking. It feels good to run into the open sky, the brisk air. I meet Apacha at the bottom and he smiles up and runs next to me along the treeline. Together, our bodies extend and tighten and we move in unison.

Our own small wolf pack of two. 

With most of the snow melted, I notice all the trash around the park and make a mental note to bring a bag next week to pick up other people's crap. It pisses me off when people disregard nature, throwing their junk into the woods like it is some kind of landfill. Most of the trash is plastic bottles and plastic bags and aluminum cans. Most of the shit is shit we don't need anyways, but fill our bodies with then trash into the earth. I noticed last week that all the trash cans in the park were overflowing, perhaps because of the snow and lack of city pick-up, and maybe all this trash came from people putting the bottles next to trash cans, then the natural elements of wind and snow rolled it away, down the hills and into the woods. I hope the latter is the case, making us humans less lazy, but still very much so. I have a feeling though, that it is just people throwing their junk into the woods.

Enough ranting. Back to running.

We run about halfway to the bench, until Apacha darts off into the woods in the same spot he did last week. I squint my eyes to see if I see a creature, but scan nothing. Sometimes, I think he just runs wildly for the sake of running wild, something I need to do more of--running for no reason at all.

As I wait for him to run back, I notice a bunch of nutshells collected on a tree stump. I wonder who these belong to. Perhaps a squirrel, or a raccoon or maybe a chipmunk. At first, I think they are black walnuts, and they may very well be. After looking some things up, I decide they are Hickory nuts. Upon investigation I find that Hickory nuts are eaten as a last resort when nothing else can be found. I hope they are not Hickory nuts, I hope the forest animals are not hunting and gathering things of last resorts. 

Apacha reappears and rests his body on a patch of snow and looks up the hill to a black poodle and its owner leaving the dog park. I tell him to stay, and he does, but he can't help his whimpering. His cries for dog companionship. The times I do take him to the dog park, he runs around for a minute, then comes back to me--easily bored and unamused. 

We continue on.

We are nearing the bench when I notice loads and loads of deer scat on the grass--little pebbles of poop in piles a few feet from each other. It all seems relatively fresh. I have to watch my step in this last portion of the walk, but appreciate this is where the deer like to hang, in this little pocket of the treeline, tucked into the woods. Apacha decides to poop here too, amongst his deer friend's shit.

As we approach the bench, I notice a small circle of stones filled with kindling and sticks behind the bench--a nice little fire pit behind the bench. It is late morning, and I walk my boots up to the perimeter of the fire pit and pretend it is providing warmth. I circle my palms into the other over the pit. I wonder who made this. I wonder if they slept back here. I wonder if it is their not so secret spot too--a place to watch cars move back and forth on the interstate. A place to sit still and observe movement. I bend down over the fire and pick through it, hoping to find more clues to when it was lit. There are a few cigarette buds in its realm--the only clue I can find. There is no lingering warmth coming from it. I assume it is a couple days old. I scope out the area for other clues and find more cigarettes in front of the bench, and a fresh litter of beer cans down the hill. Seems, my bench is a good spot to have a smoke and a beer. I wonder how the view is at night. With the city lights and headlights of cars. I wonder how the stars are here. If they are visible, or if the light pollution dwindles them. I'll have to venture here one night soon.

I don't sit on the bench today, it doesn't seem like my own anymore. Instead, I sit a few feet away over the blonde hay that too has been defeated by winter's snow. Apacha comes over and sits to my left. I kick my boots over the edge and scan the horizon. Also to my left, about two hundred feet away, a crumbled royal blue sweatshirt scatters itself amongst the dirt. Who is this person? Who is this owner of a royal blue sweatshirt, some kind of filtered cigarette and drinker of natural light? Or is is a variety of persons, coming from different places, for different reasons. I wonder how my bench services others. For me, it is a getaway, a place to sit still and observe the movement of nature within a city. For someone else, it might be a place to get lost and high. For others a long sturdy structure to sleep at night, amongst a burning fire.

It is nice to think of the bench's purposes. And I realize it is not my bench to claim. It holds many people. Maybe one day Apacha and I will get here and someone else will be occupying it. But for now, at this hour, on this day, it is our spot to sit and listen to the whispers of woods and notice three seasons below my boot--the leaves of fall, the snow of winter and the debut of spring's sharpened blades.

Movement.

I'm about to leave the bench when I see her down the hill about 300 feet. She is slowly stepping the snow with her head hunched and white tail flickering. Her limbs blend with the limbs of the trees and for many moments she is still. 

A few feet behind her is her sibling. I can't tell the sex of either, but deem the first fawn a female because of her presence. She engulfs femininity in her delicate steps, her precise movements - the wiggle of her tail that looks like a feather duster when it shoots upright. She is a showstopper, a headturner -- something that draws you in for no other reason than pure beauty.

From my bench, I watch her movements, her stillness and her power to stop me in time. The other fawn, I automatically assume is a male. His steps are more rushed and seem clumsy -- not as delicate as his sister. 

It's silly of me to catagorize these attributes to the sexes. I have no idea, I just write their story in my head. I picture them running through the woods -- hopping between the branches bare. I picture them without us. I close my eyes and picture this horizon without the homes, without the interstate, without all this humanized rushed movement of going, going, going.

It's hard to picture this land without us. It is all I have ever known. Movement. Going. Sheltered.

It's hard to slow down in the midst of everything. 

But I do now. I close my eyes and listen.

The wind is moving briskly across the landscape, across my face. My cheeks are breeze rosed and exposed to the open air. The wind hits the trees and sends the branches into each other, causing a gentle drum to its song, and the trucks and cars of I-376 add chimes a low, baritone whoooosh, whooosh. The hum from the distant Squirrel Hill tunnel is the undertone to this song. If you listen, you can hear the vehicles exiting the tunnel and shooting into the open air highway. And to top it all off, the wind descends the gathered snow off the crying trees and when it hits the earth -- it sounds like all blink. 

I open my eyes and blink off the snow that gathered on its lashes and wipe my face. I look back to the deer. She is resting her frame on the path, her front legs tucked into her back legs. She is hugging into herself, probably maximizing her body heat and warmth. Her brother stands behind her -- a watch fawn in the day -- scanning the forest for any potential threat. 

Apacha does the same for me, quite lazily, behind the bench. There is a nice shade behind the bench from my shadow and the bench's shadow and his body mimics the fawn. His legs tucked into each other and his head plopped into the snow. His eyes are closed too, and his ears are perked up. It seems as if he is listening to the sound of day as well.

I stand up, and the fawn does too. She looks up to me, and I down to her. A meditative staring contest with no blinks, no smiles, just pure adoration in my part. I see now, that their mother is there with them, and I am surprised I did not see her before. Her frame almost double the frame of her fawns and they all look up to me, and I down to them. Apacha is up and alert now. 

These must be the deer that he chased through the woods on the way to the bench. 

We started out on our usual route to the bench - down the hill and along the treeline. We were about halfway to the bench, when Apacha took off into the woods. I chased after him, but his four legs trumped my two and he was made to prance through the woods. I stopped and watched him move, again a wild man in the wilderness. His coat camoflauged with the trunks of the trees and his limbs mingled with the branches. After a bit, he gave up and ran back to me, tongue hanging loose and a look of satisfaction in the chase. 

Two hikers with two dogs -- Bella and Getty, both poodle mixes -- appeared out the woods, off the path Apacha had just returned from. 

"He was after three deer. Two fawns and a momma," one of the guys said.

"He blends in with the woods. We watched the whole thing," the other said.

I asked about the trail, and they said it was beautiful and they all connect. They set off towards their cars and Apacha and I stepped into the woods. I figured we would do a c - curve around the backside of Frick and then hike up to the bench from the other direction. We followed the trail, and quickly it kept meeting with other trails, and Apacha and I kept taking lefts to attribute to the curve. The snow at some points was almost up to the top of my boot -- a good nine to ten inches. 

We climbed around for a bit, and I stopped on a path to look up, hoping to see the bench, but in reality, there would be no way to see it. The angle was too sharp and the bench sits back a couple of feet off the overlook, so the earth would block the view. So we kept moving and heading west. Apacha was getting tired and followed behind me, which is not a good sign for him. Usually he leads the way, sniffing out the trails and checking out the scene. Usually he has to sit and wait for me to catch up before he runs ahead again. 

But he is tired and he lingers behind. I almost get a little panicky, knowing these woods have miles and miles of trails, and my intuition could be off, and I could be leading us in the wrong direction on empty stomachs and no water (well there was plenty of snow to turn to, and Apacha did, quite often.) 

The minute I started to question myself was the minute we found the bigger path about 300 feet below the bench. I knew we were on the right track because we had hiked these trails in the fall around the first time I found the bench. 

I stopped and Apacha rested in the snow. He tucked his nose into its coldness and lapped some into his mouth. 

Thinking back now, we stopped in almost the same spot where I saw the fawns and the momma deer. We stopped to rest in the same proximity. I wonder if they smelled Apacha. I wonder if they stopped there to sniff us out. To scope out potential threats. Or if it was just the right spot to catch the afternoon sun on their coats and rest while the hunt for food continues.

From the bench, I see them, and they see me. I break our staring contest and walk away. After a couple of steps I stop and look back to her. She is still looking up to me. Wondering about my movements. It seems as if we are all questioning the movements. The breeze blows again, tangling the loose hair across my face where it gets stuck on my cheeks. I brush it off. The cars move on. The wind keeps going.

We all keep going. 

Stopping from time to time to feel the nice flirtation of the wind on the cheek. 

Josephine.

A mustard scarf wraps around Josephine's neck. A red coat the color of cherries adorns her frame. Its hood covers her hair - the color of straw under the sun. My black ski pants are a bit too big for her waist and keep falling down a bit as she runs through the snow. My boots warm her feet as she moves. She is laughing and running with Apacha.

I stop to watch them run. My dog and my best friend visiting from North Carolina. My best friend who got off a plane Saturday morning and couldn't quite catch her breath because of the crisp Pittsburgh winter air. She said the air was like ice cream - too cold but felt and tasted good.

Josephine, Josie for short, lives in Wilmington, North Carolina. An old little city on the Atlantic coast with cobblestone streets. A city that is quiet in the winter and bustling in the summer. It is 59 degrees in Wilmington today. It is 21 degrees in Pittsburgh.

Yesterday, Josie, had me stop my car so she could take a picture of the snow covered streets and the trees with patches of white on their topside. Yesterday, she looked out the window of my second story room and observed the rooftops of the Pittsburgh homes and the cars that lined the street - they all were topped with a soft down comforter. Her friends from back home warned her of the cold. I'm sure people questioned why she was traveling to Pittsburgh in the midst of winter, in the midst of snow, in the midst of cold air that is hard to swallow.

Sun or snow - we are bonded in a way that the elements can't quite combat. It's been two years since we last saw each other. Two long years. Our lives have moved us in different directions. We met in Asheville, North Carolina four years ago for Americorps Project Conserve. I remember the first time I met her. She pulled up for Americorps orientation in Brevard, North Carolina. She rolled down her window and asked if she was in the right place. I told her she was not. Confused, she started to drive off. Then, I stopped her. I told her I was kidding. She didn't think it was too funny.

Josie was a little unsure about me at first. But, that quickly changed. We bonded over music and food and hikes. After awhile, we were a bit inseparable.

It's been two years. Two long years.

Josie was there when I got Apacha from the Humane Society. They were going to put him down because he was so timid. He was so timid because he was badly abused by his previous owner. He was scared of bearded men. He was scared of long sticks and brooms. He was scared of being struck in the face. Apacha was 78 pounds when I got him. He barely ate. He hid behind me when my guy friends with beards (which was almost every guy in Asheville) came over. He was boney thin. He was frightened. He followed me around with weary eyes.

When Josie saw Apacha this time around, she was amazed. He's gained about twenty pounds since then. His winter coat was strong and he came right up to her. He trusted her and howled into the air. He wasn't scared anymore.

Now, they are running in the snow. Josie stops to wait for me to catch up. She is amazed at how active and excited Apacha is.

"He is meant for this weather," she exclaims.

"I know. It breaks my heart a bit."

We watch him run around the snow by himself. We watch him kick it up with his nose and freeze into his whiskers. He runs back to us. Josie dips herself into the snow and hugs her two arms around his mane. He is happy and panting.

Josie asks about the bench.

"Where is it?" she wonders.

"Right around this bend here." I point up the hill.

Minutes later we get there. Josie asks what is under the humps of white snow. I tell her it's gravel. Gravel for the park. Gravel to sprinkle in the spring over the paths, when we don't need to sprinkle the beads of salt over ice anymore.

Josie takes a picture of the view from the bench and says her camera doesn't do it justice. And she is right, every picture I have taken from the bench doesn't quite capture what the eye sees. But, I guess that is true for any picture we take. We are just getting a segment of what we see. We are taking a picture to remember, a picture to look back to, a picture to store that moment in time because we cannot rely on memory all the time. Pictures fill the gaps. So does writing. It fills those little holes in the mind, the moments you can't quite recall every specific detail, which happens all the time with writing about place.

She bundles some snow into her glove and attempts to compact it into a ball. It doesn't mold a shape, instead it just crumbles into a thousand little pieces. She throws it overhead, and it sprinkles down, back to where it came from.

The last time I saw Josie was in Asheville. It was my birthday. I was leaving the city for a road trip. I needed to get out. I had been there for almost four years. I was stuck. I needed to travel. I needed to find myself in another place. Josie came from Raleigh (where she was living at the time) to say goodbye. It was the tail-end of May. We went swimming in the the creek and drank PBRs and sunbathed on long flat rocks. Apacha was there, too. He dipped his warm body into the water and rested in the shade.

It's been two years. The wind pushed us in many directions. She had quit her job in Raleigh and moved to Wilmington to be with her boyfriend and started another job. Her dog passed away. Her brother got married. I had fallen in love with a man. We had traveled to Mexico. I got into grad school. I moved to Pittsburgh. All this happened in the change of eight seasons. It was sunny in Wilmington. It was snowy here.

I look to the bare branches and wonder what they represent. Winter is naked. We are clothed. We cover ourselves with layers and layers. Nature strips itself to bare bones. It doesn't need to be covered. It stands alone. Winter is a fierce moment in time.

Josie and I talk about the cold. How it makes us tired. Inside my house, the heat exhausts us. Outside our door is winter knocking. It creeps into the cracks of the windows, underneath doorways, through outlets. We can't escape it until it escapes us.

Outside, we huddle ourselves together and look out to the horizon. My right arm over her shoulder, her left arm around my waist, our two red coats blending into one.

We stand and watch time move. We wonder how long it will be until we see each other again. How many seasons will pass. What will this view look like the next time she is around? Will the eye be able to travel as far? Or will green leaves block the views? Will we be wearing shorts and tank tops? Will she still be traveling from Wilmington? Will her hair be long or short? Will we still fit into each other's clothes? Will Apacha still be around?

There is no telling in time. Only the seasons know what's coming. We can only move gently and step slowly and hope the next time around it will be better than this time around. Or it will be the same. Or it will be different.

It better not be two years. Two long years.

Two years too long.

Cycle.

Apacha has a keen sense of direction. When we are about two blocks from the park, he perks up in the backseat and starts whimpering, knowing that we are approaching our destination. I watch him in my rearview mirror as his eyes sharpen and they look out the window to his right. His tongue -  in times of heat and excitement - becomes too big for his mouth and it drops out of him. It’s the color of a number two pencil’s eraser.

He whimpers again as I pull into an easy parking spot right in front of the entrance – a good sign. Frick will be sparse with people again. I like it when he and I take over the hills and explore the park’s territory as if it was our own. I put the car in park and gather up my things. Apacha’s cries crack me up and I taunt him a bit with a howl. He joins me and tilts his head back – his underjaw perpendicular to the roof of the car and creates a beautiful, low howl. It is my favorite sound. 

We hop out. The clouds drift into one and hang low on the horizon. The sun peeks a bit – sending warm rays overhead. Throughout the day it will tease us with its presence. On the way to our bench, we pass another bench near the entrance with a key chain hanging from its end with what looks like two house keys. It dangles from the wood, curled into the snow. It’s always nice to see lost and found in a park. Last week, I noticed someone propped a glove into a tree’s branch, extending the branch as a waving arm. I thought about giving it a high five, but decided against it.  I wonder what the protocol for finding things in the park is. Put it near the closest available thing? Do parks have lost and founds? 

An entourage of dogs is heading our way. Six dogs and two dog-walkers. The dogs somehow aligned themselves from smallest to largest, with the smallest being what looked to be a beagle and the largest a golden doodle. Apacha was eager to get to them, barking and pulling his leach taut. The ladies escorting the dog parade did not want Apacha near their dogs. It’s always interesting when dog owners do not want their dogs to meet mine. I wonder if it is because of his appearance – how his head dips like a hunter and shifts back and forth with each step. How his hackles pop up and his fur fans out. He is an intimidating sight, and I think often scares people away - even when I assure them he is friendly.

They wait for us to pass.

Apacha doesn’t dwell on it for long as we get to the tip of the hill, and the leash unhooks and we run – fly down its spine. He is ahead of me and his body becomes long and lean as his front paws extend as his back paws tuck. When he runs, he unites his back legs as one because of his hips. He knows not to put too much body weight on his back left leg or he will be hurting later. He has been using this technique for a while now, especially as he hops up the stairs at night, a task that has become harder and harder as the winter cold and age weigh in. But now, here, he forgets about the pain that shoots throughout his body throughout the day, and runs into his blanket of white. He kicks up the snow, as do my boots, and this week the consistency of the snow is more compact than last week’s powdered sugar. This week the snow rolls itself into little balls as we walk. They remind me of Ping-Pong balls.

 

I continue to kick them up until we get to the base of the hill. We stop. Apacha sits his bum on the earth and into the snow and I hear another beautiful sound coming from above. It’s the wind hitting the dead leaves whispering- a crinkled old folk song. Apacha hears it too and looks up to the leaves – which look like Maple leaves – as they dance to their own whisper, gently tapping one another on the shoulder with the help of the wind to create this winter melody of something dead meeting something ever-present and alive. I stand and Apacha rests underneath the tree and close my eyes and absorb this sound, this simple sound of the breeze gently moving across the day. 

We carry on after a few minutes, and Apacha is hot on a scent. He digs his nose into the snow, and inhales the smell. He does this again and again, creating a series of polka dots in the snow and I now I am curious. I kick up the snow around his search, but find nothing. He descends into a twig forest and I follow. But we find nothing but lonely branches mangled into the sky. He runs back to me with a grin.

Finally, we approach our bench, and I don’t go directly towards it. Instead, I circle its backside, and explore the territory behind it. Apacha goes straight towards it. All the gravel is covered with drips of snow. I find evidence of a good time had in a couple empty cans of Natural Light. The image of the can almost makes me gag. Too many of those in undergrad. Too many until, I realized that my body couldn’t handle the cheap beer, that after just a few, the beer would momentarily cripple my stomach into knots until my body expelled it from my mouth in a liquid the color of the original highlighter. It’s interesting how the sight of an empty beer can haunt you and even after years, send the stomach warning signals. The body, the mind, always complementing each other, warning each other and encouraging each other. It is good to listen to what it has to say. No more Natural Lights. Ever. Again. 

There is a huge pile of dirt in diagonal to the bench and it keeps dropping itself onto itself. It keeps giving out and collecting itself in lower levels. This is how rock formations are made. This is how nature stacks itself. The weight of the snow pushes the dirt down, compresses it into something more solid. When the sun comes around – as it will while we are here – it will change this pattern. All the elements contribute to nature’s pattern. I walk to Apacha and look down the hill and notice the same thing with the trees. The weight of the snow from the past couple of weeks caused the branches to snap and sway downwards into the earth. As far as my eyes could see, the earth was falling forward, falling into itself. When spring comes along – they should spring back up – hence the season’s name. 

The bench again is full of snow, so I continue to pace around it and explore its surroundings. I walk to the bench’s left and the compact earth becomes soft, almost bouncy. I wonder what is underneath this layer of snow, so I kick it up. Sure enough, I am walking on leaves, little hills of leaves. I continue kicking them up. They are damp with winter. I pick some up and bring them to my nose. There is no smell to describe them but the smell of the wet earth.  Dirt. They smell wonderful. I think about how they contribute to the coming spring, a natural fertilizer for the next round of sprouting. Within their dead, fallen souls a new season awaits. And we wait for it, one looking forward and the other wishing to stay here, in this moment, in this bouncy, comfort of snow.  

Apacha is relaxed, his body sprawled and resting upon the cold, his head down, eyes closed. The sun shoots down on his coat, and as I pet him, I feel its heat. It warms my palm. Here he is. 

And here we are - between the sun and the snow.