Prompt Entry #2: A Trail of Homes

Why do I feel at home at Syracuse? That has been a question on my mind this past week. When I first arrived here, I spent the summer (what was left of it) and autumn weekends on hiking trips. I found creeks full of pebbles and calm lakes. The gray squirrels scampered across the grassy fields. I attempted to sneak up on the first black squirrel I saw. I didn't know they existed. Because I had some time before Chatham classes started, I spent several days at Onondaga Park. The grass bathed in sunlight and glowed green. A few fisherman sat in chairs by the lake's edge with wide-brimmed hats shading their eyes. The trees shimmered in the humid heat. Those early days spent in the park brought a question to my mind: Do you feel at home yet? The weekend hikes spent in the state parks confirmed my answer: Yes.

Onondaga Park in Summer

When I think of a worry-free childhood, I remember wading through creeks with my brother. We placed water shoes on our feet and carefully maneuvered around crumbling rock piles to rile up the minnows. I remember running out into our flooded street after a rainstorm to look for the rainbow and splash in the water. And of course, there are the regular walks I took with my brother and cousins from the library to our grandma's house. One day, we were explorers, attempting to catch a wild rabbit. Another day, we were treasure hunters pretending our little slice of nature was a jungle, filled with poisonous snakes and quicksand. Those days remind me of my family when it was knit together like a warm blanket.  

When my husband I lived in Sacramento before moving to Syracuse, our apartment rested across the freeway from Lake Natoma.  We tried to spend parts of our weekends (and some weeknights) crossing the bridge across the freeway and entering the wooded area that held walking and bike trails. Deer, Canadian Geese, and turkey flocked the area. When I was there, attempting to drown out the steady hum of the cars from the freeway, I felt that sense of home that had faded over the years. We walked the trails, and memories of my mom leading us through those same dirt pathways came to me. 

My demands aren't high when it comes to feeling at home in a place. I don't feel the need to return to Sacramento; rather, I feel as if I can make connections wherever I go, as long as I can find those little slices of nature tucked away. The memories of my relationship with nature as a child remain strong, yet I love the opportunity to find exciting, new things to explore, such as black squirrels and a real winter. Even if I never again live in Sacramento, I know that if I learned the areas I spent my youth, including the paths around Lake Natoma, were paved or uprooted, a little piece of me would crumble away with the land. So, though I am excited to spend my life in no specific place, I can't deny pieces of me will left behind in each city or town that holds place in my memories. I'm making a trail of homes, connected by nature. I'll see where it leads me next. 

Place Entry #2: Finding Life in Winter

Saturday, January 29th
11:03 AM
25°

In between my last trip to Clark Reservation and today's trip, I did some research on Glacier Lake. The lake is meromictic, which means the bottom layers don't mix with the surface layers. I discovered from an information board at the park that it is one of the few such lakes in the United States. To learn more about the properties of meromictic lakes, you can go to this link (I liked Wikipedia's layout of information):  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meromictic_lake

I decided to head down to the frozen lake. When I carved my own path through the snow to reach the stone steps that lead down to the lake, I found a discouraging sight.

The stairs leading to the lake had transformed into one slick sheet of icy snow, so I headed back to the spot I visited last week. When I reached the trail that wrapped around the cliff, I realized how different this trip was going to be from my last. Instead of facing a landscape full of virgin snow, I found paths trampled by feet and dog prints. On Monday, Syracuse experienced negative thirteen degree weather, so the rise in temperature clearly sent people outdoors. Instead of the icy silence I encountered last week, I heard kids laughing, people talking, and dogs barking. I could hear footsteps stomping and dragging through the thick snow. 

A footpath led left from the cliff trail. I decided to go follow it. I passed by bare trees poking out of the snow like dead weeds. I've heard of seasonal affective disorder, a depression that typically stems from the winter months, and as I walked, I wondered if people felt their cheeriness slip away because of the lack of color. After a season of orange and red, winter can seem cruel and long. I haven't felt depressed at all, yet I do miss seeing green in the trees and hearing the sound of wildlife communities. I heard a crow caw, and I looked up to see the black bird fly like a silhouette against the white sky. 

I heard some sharp laughter, and I turned to my left to find some cliffs draped in ice. Two kids picked up long, broken tree limbs and slapped the ice pillars. They bashed the wood against the ice, and I wanted to run over there and ask them to stop. The ice was beautiful, and I didn't want them to ruin it. The ice won. The kids couldn't even crack the formations, so they moved on, and I headed that way. 

I heard the stream before I saw it. After staring out over the frozen lake, I didn't expect to see water, gurgling and alive. 

The water bubbled over the rocks, and I stopped to simply listen. The water beneath the snow sounded like it flowed faster, as if rushing to reach the open air again. The water drifted through the open sections, as it dribbled over rocks and branches. The sound of movement, of swirling liquid, created sweet music. I tried to capture the sounds in my memory as I headed to the ice pillars.  

Behind the thick ice, the ground revealed itself. Dried leaves, still faint with color, piled on the dirt, and I remembered autumn. I walked behind the ice pillars to crouch on the ground, and it felt nice to see my boots in dirt. I looked out at the world from my winter-free patch, and again, the snow captivated me.

It temporarily cloaks the earth, and as a result, it makes us appreciate the warmer seasons when the white starts to melt away. It hides the color, so that when we see it again, we love it more. I trailed along the cliffs and bent down to observe smaller ice mounds.

They looked like miniature, frozen cities clumped together under a fortress of stone. I gazed around me for any sign of wildlife, but I didn't hear any sound beyond the human voices carrying loudly through the air. Right as I left the wall of stone, I found myself confronted with green.

I found a few crumpled spider webs dangling from branches and tucked in cracks. The moss felt bright. As I enjoyed the sight of life, I thought that people, if depressed, should find the spots I had seen: a lively creek, rushing to live under layers of snow, wispy spider webs, leaves still adorned in faded colors, and green moss spreading across the rock. It's nature's promise that life is surviving through the winter months, thriving under the quilt of snow and waiting until the right moment to reveal itself in its full glory. While winter freezes water, shakes leaves from branches, and carpets the earth, the patches remain that give hope and proof that spring will come. 

I pondered these thoughts as I walked back to my car. As if in response to my musings, two birds started singing. One bird sent forth shrill cries in sets of three. The other bird responded with a deeper, longer call. I looked through the bent branches, but I couldn't see them. They didn't stop singing, and their sounds stayed with me on the drive home. 

Prompt Entry #1: Growing Up in the City of Trees

I was born in Sacramento, California. I grew up in Citrus Heights, a suburb in Sacramento County. When I think of the landscape that nurtured me, I think of my Grandma's house, my mom's backyard, and Folsom Lake. Behind my Grandma's house, a creek gurgled over rocks, and my cousins and I spent hours searching for rabbits, frogs, and ducks. The memories bring back feelings of simplicity and unity. 

My mom would drag a lawn chair into the middle of our backyard and sunbathe while my brother and I gathered the fruit under the fig tree and mashed them together to make "fig soup." My cousins and neighbors came over to play "Sweeper." My dad would roll around on the grass while we ran from our designated checkpoints- a lawn chair, a loose board in the fence, the trunk of a large Oak. While we were in between checkpoints, my dad would try and "sweep" our feet from beneath us, and we would tumble in the grass. Folsom Lake's northwest side neared my mom's house, and we would visit with towels, sunscreen, and picnic baskets. When my family was whole, everybody seemed to enjoy one another's company outdoors. After my parents' divorce, life seemed to increasingly move inside. 

My brother, family friend, and I eating fresh plums

My parents were both raised in Sacramento. My whole family (except for a few distant relatives) remains there. In California's capital city, the suburbs are surrounded by trees. In fact, Sacramento is known as the "City of Trees." The American River and Sacramento River meet and offer swimming spots, wildlife areas, and hiking trails. I took several school trips to Sutter's Fort, where I learned about the Gold Rush. In childhood, Sacramento carried prosperity and familial unity in a city that still clung to its trees and rivers. 

As time passed, the housing developments started to sprout in any open land. The huge houses all matched one another; they fit as many as they could in a designated space. One person could easily climb from their window to their neighbor's. The yards shrunk until they could barely hold a small garden. As my family fractured, I felt the city start to fracture its identity. The city started to join a uniformity that lacked individuality. I still try to visit the nature spots I spent time in as a child when I'm in Sacramento. The areas where my parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents live bring back a taste of that unity and simplicity I felt as I child. The houses in their neighborhoods have flavor; each house is unique and holds thousands of memories in their imperfections. When I'm in those spots, I remember what it felt like as a kid—at home in a place that cherished family prosperity while hanging on to its trees and roots. The outdoors gave me a wholeness, a sense of peace, when I spent my youth among the creeks, lakes, and trees. Even though Sacramento has broken from the unity I felt as a kid, the nature there and everywhere still holds it, and every time I'm surrounded by nature's beauty, I feel the peace and freedom wrap around me once again. 

Place Entry #1: Reintroducing Myself to Clark Reservation

Friday, January, 21st
2:53 PM
19° (according to weather.com, it felt like 2° with the wind)

I dressed in several layers in preparation for heading out to Clark Reservation, a spot I visited once in September. I had found myself acquainted with bustling critters, orange and red leaves, and calm, lapping lake waters. Winter transformed the park, and it was time to reintroduce myself. After pushing my pants into my snow boots, I stepped out of my car and onto the trail. My car was the only vehicle in the parking lot, which had been recently cleared by a plow. The hiking trail I picked sent me up the rocky terrain to a cliff that overlooked the lake. I looked down upon a white, sleek disc. 

Despite my layers, the wind had me shivering quickly. I didn't see any shoe prints from other hikers as I tried to guess where the trail led. The terrain is full of boulders; the trail consists of large rocks with deep cracks. As I climbed over boulders, I hoped I wouldn't slip in a crack hidden under the blanket of snow. The wind cracked and groaned through the leafless trees. A few leaves, crispy and curled, hung on and rattled as the wind swirled through the crooked branches. The pines, a touch of green in a white and brown world, swayed. While the wind blew, I only heard the gusts and rattles. My nose stung from the freezing wind, and when I tried to catch a scent, I only breathed in icy air. The air seemed to freeze my senses until everything was one: frozen, numbing, stinging. 

I decided to keep moving to stay warm. I carefully found footing up another set of boulders. 

At the top, I found some animal tracks and several little burrows, deep holes dug into the earth. I crouched down and wondered what small creature was struggling to survive through the winter. Perhaps it wasn't struggling at all. I was struggling. My fingers throbbed under my mittens. As I followed the tracks, I found a whole network of burrows. I guessed the prints were left by rabbits, since the prints fell in a straight line; the creature must have been hopping from one spot to the next. 

I looked behind me at the rows of prints. Though I had walked carefully, my bulky footsteps had marred the scene. The snow looked chopped where I had walked between the burrows. In front of me, the white landscape gleamed pure, nature without a trace of human. The snow seemed to forgive the years of trampling and ruination humans had given the land, even this land, a state park more preserved than most. I decided to halt my forward progress. My boots had already turned up the ground around the "rabbit" community. Their prints left soft trails that barely pressed into the snow. Their prints were soft. 

I turned back and felt the ground give away under my boot. My entire leg slipped through a crack between two rocks. While one leg dangled in air, my other leg lay submerged in snow. The white fluff found its way into my gloves and coated my fingers. By the time I stopped laughing and pulled myself out of the crack, nature had defeated me. I retreated faster as my wet skin helped the numbness spread through my jaw and cheeks. I left the rabbit holes and saw snowflakes, soft and round, drifting lazily toward the ground. A snowstorm is expected tonight, and I know my boot marks will get covered, frosted in yet another forgiving layer of white.