As part of my Nature Writing course I had to choose a location to sit and journal for the duration of the semester. This journal project made me aware of the isolation I have fallen into within the confines of my home. I complain often of not having a place to embrace nature fully and yet I haven’t even tried. When searching for a location for this project I thought about the local cemetery with its dark, gray stones; its deadly secrets; and its ghosts all vying for my attention with their own stories to tell, but I wasn’t sure I could make it there consistently. I thought about the park, usually my favorite place to escape, but then read in the newspaper that a woman’s body had just been found in the lake among the newly sprouted greenery, winter sludge, and hungry geese. I thought about my front porch and my back patio, neither seeming quite appropriate. And so I stalled, with no place to go.
It was the looming deadline that forced my decision and for convenience I chose my front porch. I cleared away debris – five-year-old dried leaves along with the petrified spider webs – and bought two Adirondack chairs, a wooden, rocking chair wind chime, and created my own haven on my tiny front porch.
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Today my bare feet root to the cool concrete floor of my front porch as I watch two robins in a lover’s spiral dance. The wind plays music with the chimes as I silently cheer on the budding grass and tiny, white flowers emerging from the barren ground. The sun is solid today displaying angles of dark and light as if rearranging the earth in an act of spring cleaning. I want to sit here forever and listen to the notes of the wind, watch the animation of the invisible – tangible proof of things unseen.
A fly lands on my page warning me that there are more to come, that the warmth my body so desperately craves will bring them in droves and I will be unable to sit here listening to the wind’s symphony without the interruption of their vibrating wings.
