24 February 2017, midday
75ºF (!), mostly sunny, strong breeze
Warm, warm, warm. And maybe—in the moments absent of wind, bathed in sunlight—hot. At least for me. But most of the time there's a persistent wind from the southwest ruffling conifer boughs and loose leaves across the park's lawn. The wind, I think, is the beginning fringes of the cold front expected to slide cool and gray into Pittsburgh tomorrow. Earlier this morning the sky spread above in a great cloudless blue plane, but now watercolor clouds stack across the horizon, uniform and blue-bellied. The heat of this high pressure system, mid-seventies in late February, is loosing its grip already. Low pressure opens the air, carves room for water vapor to expand to billows of white.
Still, what's the norm to return to? I heard on the radio this morning that today is supposed to break a record held in place since 1906. Though a number on a graph is only one of a sky-bound trend, the culprit seems obvious, heavy and hot and thick with carbon dioxide beneath the warm sunshine.
I'd considered doing my best to ignore the beautiful weather. Stick to shoes and socks and long pants, pretend it's not really mid-seventies in February. Ignoring the outliers is one form of a coping mechanism. I'd be hot and miserable, but at least I'd be hot and miserable like the pikas high in the mountains of my home state, or like the residents of Mumbai roasting in an unrelenting heat wave, or like the clay-cracked beds of lakes and reservoirs in the Desert Southwest. Like the polar bears, always the polar bears. I'd be hot and miserable to remind myself that I actually have that choice, that I have an ample wardrobe and central heating and air conditioning and the mobility to get to a cooler place.
But I caved. This morning I donned shorts and my beloved Chaco sandals, which I swore I wouldn't slip on until March at the earliest. Now they rest among last fall's dead leaves, and my bare toes weave into sun-warmed grass. A couple with a baby reclines on a soft white blanket behind me, and their Australian shepherd is keen on chewing on chestnuts. "Drop it!" they yell at her every so often, and I think, as always, there's something metaphorical about that response, the ridiculousness of keeping a dog from gnawing on chestnut husks. Just let her be, I think.
I have to let myself enjoy this weather. Or else I'll be miserable on both fronts: sweating under long pants, simmering at the news headlines every day. I'm not enjoying anthropogenic climate change, not wishing for this outlier to stack up to normalcy. I'll still fight for places and people bearing the brunt of these warm fronts and floods and droughts and inconceivable dumps of snowfall. For our terrifying future. But I still enjoy this moment, this half green park rattling with last fall's leaves, exhaling the smooth scent of humus, flaring in sunshine between shadows of increasing clouds as they skim past. Because, for now, it's still here.
Saturday, February 25, 2017
Sunday, February 12, 2017
Entry 3: Color
6 February 2017, 1130
43ºF—sunny, slight wind
The birds and I agree—the air is tinged too strongly of spring. A rare blue sky opens above Mellon Park, sharpening the bare branches of the hardwoods. A dozen robins skirt and flutter on the grass, puffing dull red breasts, and nuthatches spin and hop upside down on the trunks of the trees. I watch a red-bellied woodpecker cling to a tree's higher limbs. He has a light gray body speckled by black spears, a vibrant red head with sharp black eyes that follow my earthbound wander. The robins chirp; the woodpecker pivots around a branch and flutters to the next tree over.
I settle down on the crest of the hill among soft grass seeping the smell of spring. I know damp mud is pushing through the blades, already blotching brown into my jeans, but at this moment the earth feels more comforting than the softest matress. A soft wind fingers my hair and reminds all of us—the robins, nuthatches, woodpecker, hardwoods, and grass—that it's still February, that it might just snow again in a few days. But the sun drips down warmth, and that blue blue sky above stretches above like a long sigh. On the horizon, it is a grainy, whitish smudge, tinted by pollution, but brightens out of haze to that brilliant blue, sharpest in the north plane of sky opposite the glinting sun.
How do I describe the color of sky? Sky blue falls to redundancy. Not robin egg blue, not azure or cobalt, not royal or ice blue. Just the blue of clear sky, more of an impression than hue or tone. Textured, it would be flat and hard as slate. I would press my palm and fingertips against it and feel no give, no deviation, just bright blue resolve.
I haven't had a moment like this to just sit and think about words to describe the sky. I feel as if I'm lunging to catch up on life, scrambling from one place to the next, sides heaving when I get there, only to leap ahead to the next. I'm caught beneath well-muscled questions with no soothing answers, and in this moment my body loosens to the simplicity of open sky, how shards of smooth sunlight can lift that anxiety away for a moment. I don't want to leave. I don't want to move on with my day cut into buildings away from this airy ceiling which is no ceiling at all. I would like, I think, to settle a little more into the grass and damp earth, then feel myself lifted by that warm sun into the sky's haunt of spring. Trill among the robins, sing my chipped voice with the nuthatches. Drill for good grubs with the red-bellied woodpecker. Not forever, but a moment longer, a sun-stretched hour longer. I'd like to breathe in this wet whisper of spring knowing full well it is not permanent, and for that loving it that much more.
I stand and feel the mud bled into my jeans, smudged against my knees like I'm back in grade school. But I shrug the care away. If anyone asks, I'll tell them: I had to sit and think a long while about the color of the sky.
43ºF—sunny, slight wind
The birds and I agree—the air is tinged too strongly of spring. A rare blue sky opens above Mellon Park, sharpening the bare branches of the hardwoods. A dozen robins skirt and flutter on the grass, puffing dull red breasts, and nuthatches spin and hop upside down on the trunks of the trees. I watch a red-bellied woodpecker cling to a tree's higher limbs. He has a light gray body speckled by black spears, a vibrant red head with sharp black eyes that follow my earthbound wander. The robins chirp; the woodpecker pivots around a branch and flutters to the next tree over.
I settle down on the crest of the hill among soft grass seeping the smell of spring. I know damp mud is pushing through the blades, already blotching brown into my jeans, but at this moment the earth feels more comforting than the softest matress. A soft wind fingers my hair and reminds all of us—the robins, nuthatches, woodpecker, hardwoods, and grass—that it's still February, that it might just snow again in a few days. But the sun drips down warmth, and that blue blue sky above stretches above like a long sigh. On the horizon, it is a grainy, whitish smudge, tinted by pollution, but brightens out of haze to that brilliant blue, sharpest in the north plane of sky opposite the glinting sun.
How do I describe the color of sky? Sky blue falls to redundancy. Not robin egg blue, not azure or cobalt, not royal or ice blue. Just the blue of clear sky, more of an impression than hue or tone. Textured, it would be flat and hard as slate. I would press my palm and fingertips against it and feel no give, no deviation, just bright blue resolve.
I haven't had a moment like this to just sit and think about words to describe the sky. I feel as if I'm lunging to catch up on life, scrambling from one place to the next, sides heaving when I get there, only to leap ahead to the next. I'm caught beneath well-muscled questions with no soothing answers, and in this moment my body loosens to the simplicity of open sky, how shards of smooth sunlight can lift that anxiety away for a moment. I don't want to leave. I don't want to move on with my day cut into buildings away from this airy ceiling which is no ceiling at all. I would like, I think, to settle a little more into the grass and damp earth, then feel myself lifted by that warm sun into the sky's haunt of spring. Trill among the robins, sing my chipped voice with the nuthatches. Drill for good grubs with the red-bellied woodpecker. Not forever, but a moment longer, a sun-stretched hour longer. I'd like to breathe in this wet whisper of spring knowing full well it is not permanent, and for that loving it that much more.
I stand and feel the mud bled into my jeans, smudged against my knees like I'm back in grade school. But I shrug the care away. If anyone asks, I'll tell them: I had to sit and think a long while about the color of the sky.
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