Place Blog 2

I look at my backyard every day, so why is it so hard to walk into it? So many other priorities hold precedent that I keep telling myself, “I’ll do it tomorrow,” “I’ll get up earlier to walk out in the morning instead of evening,” “I’ll walk into the backyard immediately after work instead of walking into the house to put my bag and mug down,” or “I’ll go out tomorrow around noon to see it in the full light of day.” But soon “I’ll do it tomorrow” turns into “I’ll do it tomorrow” again and again as I work my 8-4:30 job, commute the round trip hour and a half, and struggle to get all of my other homework turned in. Suddenly the deadline is looming without anything to show for it. All because I couldn’t push myself to go outside longer than it takes to walk from the front door to the car and back. I could force my broken window open to walk onto the sloping roof above the sunroom and achieve a bird’s eye view of the place, but I face the danger of slipping along the inches of snow and ice and falling off the roof.

But sunny days provide an interesting view. The house’s sunroom is leaking. Three splotches of snow indents are steadily seeping through the shingles, along the beams, to finally drip onto cardboard boxes and storage. Even if I find it difficult to go outside into nature, nature finds a slick way inside to visit me. The splotches usually look like an invisible entity dropped a glop of white paint and smeared it in random directions with their fingers. But today, they’re tracks made from a giant three-legged rabbit.

Another way nature finds its way to me is through my cat. Ember perches on a wooden stool by my window at the right height to watch the birds on nearby trees and gutters and roofs. She’ll make her clicking sounds as her head jerks back and forth, watching the birds fly and land and twitter about. I can hear them from my computer desk and can gauge where she’s looking. After a while, she comes to me and rears up to place her front paws on my chair. She’ll reach out and pat at me on my hip or thigh, meowing like she’s saying, “Mom! Mom! There are birds! There are birds in the back yard!” Then after I give her attention and pet her, she’ll head back to her stool to sit for the afternoon until she gets tired. She’ll then curl up on her stool to sleep, or she’ll come back to curl beneath my swivel chair.

For class this week, we read about the question of whether a nature writer must scour every inch of his or her place in order to write about it, if he or she has have to make it his or her home. Or, are writers required to travel and return in order to recognize it. Last week, we asked the question of whether we have to be in a place in order to write about it.

I ask: Do we have to be physically in a place in order to write about it? When I was inducted into Pi Sigma Tau, the philosophy honor society at my undergrad university, we listened to a speaker talk about the concept of memory. The gist of the paper was that a person is transported back in time to when he or she remembers. It’s a way to be in two places at once. Suddenly we’re back standing where we were, or sitting or laying. We’re seeing whatever it was we saw as we stare into space at a dust mote, a pattern on a wall, a friend’s earlobe. Why, then, can’t we mentally step back into our place as we sit safe at our computers?

In a private back yard that one sees every day, not much would change. But I can’t see from the roof if the cat tracks from before have been covered in at least three inches of fresh snow, or if new ones have been pressed beside the covered indents. But the upturned wheelbarrow and chair are still there, the icicles are still jutting down from gutters, some broken along slanted faults to lay haphazardly in a pile below. The garage door is still hanging open. And soon the bright yellow and white of day turns into vivid oranges and reds, then to duller violets and blues as night settles in, and suddenly another day has passed.