The Evolution of Homewood - Place Prompt #3

Thursday, January 9th, 2012 - 2:09 PM - 37 degrees - bright and clear

It seems ridiculous now to say again "I visit Homewood Cemetery." The location becomes much more familiar with each trip, and they are less like visits and more like escapes, returning to a place of solitude and breath. I leave everything else behind.

Today, I am not alone. A friend has generously accompanied me to the cemetery, and we decide just to walk and chat. As we stroll, my eyes are open to what surrounds me. I notice that I become more capable of observation, even while multi-tasking to progress the conversation, every time I allow myself the opportunity to do so. What do I mean? In my daily life, I become so focused on one thing that everything surrounding disappears. Here, I am able to balance my interest in our words with my interest in the place. I am proud and relieved. It feels like returning to a childlike frame of mind, state of sensual experience, but with mature control. I sometimes feel as if I have lost some of the pleasure I had in experience when I was young. Now I realize I just need to create a safe haven, both in time and in location, for it. And it's already enriching my poetry.

D. and I spend two hours in Homewood, moving all the while, and yet we figure we've only covered half of its expanse. Today, the nature does not seem to be my focus. Early in our walk, I look to the bright, clear sky, the blinding hole-punch of the sun, the skeletal trees, the crisp, curled plants. I wonder if I've already written everything I can about the place, and now that it is more familiar, there is less that pops out as unique and new. Somehow, between the snow and the rain of my first two visits, this calm but chilly day seems boring, lackluster. Even so, I briefly remember the heat of South Carolina summer sun on my cheeks as I embrace the rays which are much too fleeting in the Pittsburgh winter. It fills me. I manage to get burnt and I am glad.

I lament to D., "I have no idea what I'm going to write about today." With perfect timing, the answer manifests a hundred feet or so in front of us. I gasp, fumble with the camera D. has let me borrow, and give up, realizing that I would be more satisfied to watch with my own eyes rather than through the lens. Three white-tail deer-- does-- trot over a ridge, startle, and scamper down a hill out of sight. I grin. "Yearlings, perhaps," says D. They are young, one a bit smaller than the others, and gangly. They are alert and, I think, frightened at our presence so near to them. But I am beyond thrilled. Homewood has been preparing me for this. My first visit showed no signs of life. My second hinted at the presence of these animals with tracks and excrement. And now, finally, I see them with my own eyes, in the middle of the day, in the middle of a city.

Deer are common in the South. I tell D. about seeing deer on my newspaper route when I delivered papers each morning before dawn. I remember vacations to my grandparents' house in Knoxville, TN. They would take me to a retreat in the mountains, protected land very close to my heart, called Cades Cove. We would drive the 11-mile loop and count the deer and other animals we inevitably saw. There is a picture of me as a child feeding a doe potato chips out of my hand somewhere (which, by the way, I am torn about, because I know wild animals should not be bothered, but it was exciting to me as a child). I've even seen deer on Chatham's campus as I walked to class one night. Despite all of these experiences, though, I still fill with joy at the sight of these three. I tell D. that it's incredible for me to see they exist outside of the rural and suburban areas I associate them with. And, just as it did when I first glimpsed their traces at my last visit, I am filled with hope for nature's power to survive, even when we humans try (both consciously and subconsciously) to kill it off.

We do not see much more animal life on our tour. There is a hawk which circles low to us, catches the wind, glides backwards with it under its wings. It is under the sun, and we shield our eyes, strain to figure out what kind it is, but only determine it is not a red-tailed hawk. It ascends higher, circles wider, and far off meets up with another. The two are like vultures on each side of a dial, and we wonder if they have picked out a meal. Later I notice another bird flit over our heads. It has sharply angled wings and a streamlined body, but again, I am unable to see much color or pick out other traits to identify it. I think it some sort of swift, but that's just a guess based on an ornithology course I took in elementary school.

I also notice human remains in nature, and I'm not talking about dead bodies. There is a shriveled yellow balloon with a long, dirty string caught in a bush. There are two alcohol bottles strewn in a field where the gravestones are embedded in the ground and the area looks empty. There is a frisbee with a hole in its center tangled in the branches of a tree. I am interested in the way we humans contribute to the decay of a place, and yet, my mind only thinks of those deer, those hawks. I am pleased with the way Homewood has kept itself from me, giving me a little each time, building to today. I wonder what it will allow me to learn of it next time as we become more intimate with each other.