The Premenstrual Nature Writer

I went to the woods because I wished to kill my husband, to front his head into a glove compartment and kick it closed a few times, to see if I could not learn to push him down a hill, and not, when it came time to smack him upside the head with a heavy shoe, discover that I had not smacked hard enough. 

Three or four inches of fresh snow

I brought a little bit of baggage with me to Piedmont Lake today. We take our baggage everywhere, don't we? Just because we're traipsing through the wilds of Eastern Ohio doesn't mean we get to leave it behind. Unfortunately, the baggage I brought along really bogged me down and I viewed my experience through the lens of my own emotions. That's true of every experience, but the negative lenses are so noticeable.

It was a rough morning and I needed to escape.

All week I've been grouchily kicking myself for choosing a place 50 minutes away from home, a place which cannot just be popped into and out of. This time has to be scheduled, and weather is a factor, particularly this week, with all of my schoolwork. What kind of buffoon chooses a location that requires a half-day of travel?

I hit the road, only to realize I'd forgotten my gloves. (Last time it was my hat.) Today was 16 degrees. Son of a.... I got off the interstate. I found a Dollar Store. I spent too long at the checkout line staring at a magazine about America's worst serial killers and four people jumped in line ahead of me. In the car I realized I had to do some smart phone banking to cover the check I floated this morning. My nose began to bleed and I'll be the first to admit I stuck my finger up there to see where the blood was coming from, only to be spotted doing so at an intersection.

That's a federal offense, by the way. Check floating, not nasal inspection. Both, however, are terribly gauche. 

So much work. So much stress.

Quaking shepherd

I was not a sojourner today. Nor was I enjoying the travel. Every red light glared crimson at me. Every slow driver wedged into my lane. How desperately I sought to make it out into nature and how angry I was that I couldn't reach my nature and begin to be a nature writer. Blue sky is so rare in the winter that I worried I'd lose it before I reached the lake, or that somehow the cabin would evaporate if I didn't get out there in time. The shepherd heard the radio buttons make a frightening beep and began to quake with fear. She climbed into Benjamin's car seat and I lost my temper and tried to spear her with an ice scraper at 70mph.

I was a real jerk.

Today, I epitomized our problem. Our instant-gratification nature-on-demand society holds an umbrella over me, too. Did Thoreau ever just want to get to the damn woods already? I don't know if I wanted to get out there so I could do my required nature thing and get home or if I wanted to get out there so I could drop my "baggage" down in the driveway and breathe. Perhaps both.

I really blew the first half of the experience, proving myself inescapably human. The difference is that I'm writing about it, rather than glossing over the ugly parts.

Excuse me ma'am, your transcendentalism seems questionable. We'll need to do a Thoreau examination of your methods.

The scene in the country was very Bob Ross - white snow and the blue sky that only comes on the first day of a high pressure system. All week I'd been hoping for a snow paddle in my kayak (an adventure my husband and father weren't wild about) but the lake was frozen again. I tried to find Emerson's ice harp, but a thick layer of snow blanketed the surface and it made no sounds today whatsoever. Everywhere I looked I saw diamonds; the quality of the snow for the past few days has been fluffy, and I arrived at the right hour of the day to see it twinkle. The diamonds relaxed me a bit, and I was drawn into a calmer state, and began to feel a bit of appreciation.

Buried under the snow, I couldn't see the ice or determine its thickness, but it was not to be trusted. Since Frick and Frack the canine stooges were with me, a hike in the woods made far more sense. I had a Doberman once, and a Corgi, and when the Corgi fell through the ice and was subsequently plucked to safety, the Dobie had to go investigate the hole and fell in herself.

Diamonds in the snow

Hiking in the dead of winter feels effortless. No brambles snag your clothing; no bushwhacking required. I hiked where I wanted, in circles and curves, through the deserted church camp and on to the 4H camp. Nugget, who is fleecy and soft, quickly developed ice balls in her paws, and stopped every hundred yards to tear at them. At the 4H camp I found a bench and sat in the sunshine and listened.

Sparkles, everwhere

Last time the hum of air traffic and fracking machinery volleyed around the lake. Today, perhaps due to the cold, the frackers uttered nothing whatsoever. As I walked I heard chickadees and crows, and several times a yipping sound that could have been anything from bird to coyote to shnauzer. Step by step I thought about my rotten attitude this morning, and how it didn't matter one hoot whether I arrived with a scowl or a smile; the lake didn't care. I thought about this blog entry, and how it would invariably be colored by sarcasm and grump if I didn't get my head out of my posterior. And most of all, I felt as though I'd failed to be a nature writer today, suddenly considering that the lens of human emotion is the most vital ingredient in a piece, whether positive or negative. What we do to nature may not be natural, but we are natural, and my craptastic mood was too.

The remnants of the Magnificent
Beech Tree

Beech trees pepper the woods at the lake. I love beech trees, but they seem too fragile for their own good, and church campers target their trunks for carvings. It seems to be the beech tree's bad luck to have such smooth skin. For decades one large beech tree has been a favorite of ours, and my father used to tell me it was Piglet's "magnificent beech tree". Dad loves A.A. Milne, and the author is really quite funny. Dad's always called it The Magnificent Beech Tree, and when I was little I'd sit in a hollowed out spot and pretend to be Piglet. In the last 20 years I've rather forgotten about the tree. Perspectives change as we grow, and things that caught our eyes as children may no longer do so.

I saw the Magnificent Beech Tree today. It's dead. I know the tree lived its life and toppled in a storm, very naturally. The trunk snapped and the remaining spear is 15 feet tall. Carvings--why do you little bastards do that?--are all over the trunk. I circled the tree today and touched it, and then I noticed dozens and dozens of woodpecker holes. The tree died, the bugs moved in, and so did the peckers.

Evidence of pecker activity

I love a good pecker.

And if the Magnificent Beech Tree can take its place in the forest web, I can ask no more of Nature. The tree continues to serve and support, and only my silly tendency to anthromorphize it tears at my heart. It's The Giving Tree, but this tree gave to the forest, not to some greedy man. Oops. Anthropomorphizing again.

I began to think about children and nature, and the importance of establishing a connection as young as possible. When I was a child, the tree truly was magnificent to me; now, though I see a stump I can still picture the tree in its glory and always will. But if I brought an outsider with me, an adult, they'd see a stump. Nothing more. We must create sacred spaces for our children so that they will always have a Magnificent Beech Tree, and a connection to the space around it. I don't expect anyone to look at my photo and see what I see. I would not expect you to feel anything for the stump. We cannot forge connections that do not exist. Weave your childrens' story with that of a specific place, as Barbara Kingsolver does in "The Memory Place". It will root in their soul and flourish, and neither pollution nor degradation can wipe the memory of their own Magnificent Beech Tree. I hope, when I'm an old gray goat, that my kids will fight for Piedmont.

As if on cue, as I dictated these thoughts into my phone I came upon the equally-magnificent frog pond in the woods, which in reality is just a depression in the forest, a vernal pool that remains naught but muck over the summer. And behind the cabin I stumbled into the remnants of my old swingset. They seemed like echoes, and they seemed as fresh as this morning.

My very, very old swingset, a la 1979.

Back in the house I had to call my dad to ask about putting antifreeze in the toilets, and the spell cast by the memories of the beech tree was broken. I drove home listening to Sirius XM 80's on 8 (continuing to revisit my formative years), and the moon hovered in front of my windshield the entire way.

I refused to call my husband to tell him I was alive.

Beautiful geometry

The trail

The church camp

Snowbeard

Of Ice and Dogs

I came out here thinking, for whatever reason, that today would be a hike in the woods. I suppose all this talk of “wilderness” has me in a woodsy frame of mind, because I’ve always associated that term with a forest. There’s plenty of forest out here, and I look forward to watching winter progress and hope that spring will arrive early enough for me to see it unfold here, too.

Nugget and the humble cabin

Frost on the door, and the frozen lake in the background

I knitted the infinity scarf. The hat is atrocious.

I wasn’t thinking about the temperature, either. (Insert picture of utterly ridiculous hat I had to dig out of the closet because I forgot a beanie…where did we get this hat anyway? None of us hunt and we all despise camo. Whose hat is this? I look like Ma Kettle. )

If I had been thinking about temperature, I’d have remembered that this is the week for the annual ice walk. Granted, the temperatures have to cooperate, but in January the temps almost always drop below freezing for at least a week, and if it’s cold for 10 days, the lake is frozen over. I’m delighted to see it when I turn onto the lane, and moreover, it has that rare, glassy look. This is ice you can skate on, which requires a perfect concoction of weather; the lake froze last week in bitterly cold temps, and then on Sunday we had rain and the air warmed up just enough for the top half-inch of ice to melt, and then it froze again when the sun went down. The result is Zamboni-quality ice. I can see it reflecting back the blue sky.

So I decide that today should be devoted to an ice walk, because it’s an infrequent phenomenon, and because it’s so beautiful and so meditative. And hell, why pass up the opportunity to risk my life all by myself in place with no other people and no cell service?

 

I brought the girls, Maya and Nugget, with me. How could I not? They’ve taught me as much as anyone about nature. The entire way out I saw nothing in the rear view mirror but the shepherd’s hulking form, her goofy smile almost making up for breath that could knock out a steer. Nugget jumped up to the front, and then to the back, over and over. They knew where they were going, and they recognized when I stepped on the brake to get off on our exit. That’s always their cue to get stupid-excited and begin to pace and pant.

The thing about being a dog—or at least, being one of my dogs—is that there’s nothing in the world that isn’t great. Everything is an opportunity for exploration. Every tree must be sniffed to see who went before them, and whether they’re investigating a log or a pile of leaves, everything is of equal interest. There’s nothing, outside of an unguarded turkey carcass, that is of any more value than anything else. That tin can? Sniff it. That crow? Bark at it. That raccoon carcass? Jackpot! They see the world as an open door, and there’s naught but wonder in it.

Perhaps that’s today’s lesson. I came out here wanting to see the landscape with the eyes of a single, solitary person in the quiet. But I brought the moron twins with me, and instead spent more time watching them than I did thinking deep thoughts. Hint taken, Universe. I shall watch the dogs, today, along with the ice.

(I also notice, when we hike, that there’s no end to the contents of a dog’s digestive and urinary systems. It’s like they’ve saved it up. How many poops can one animal take in the span of 10 minutes? I’ll tell you. It’s 7. Bombs away!)

I make my way down to the lake and the snow is crunchy. The Conservancy lets the lake drop in November, and it rises again at the end of March. The docks are high and dry, and they look ridiculous, hovering in midair. At its deepest point Piedmont Lake is 38 feet, I believe. Our cove, which is shown in my photographs, is probably no more than 25, and that would be way out in the original stream bed.

Piedmont was created in 1938 when the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District dammed Stillwater Creek. The MWCD created about a dozen other flood control lakes at the time. My grandparents started coming out here when they were young and the lake was brand new. My dad and uncle spent weekends fishing and swimming on the family boat. In 1974, my parents were taking a drive one winter around Piedmont and stumbled down Goodrich Road. There was a For Sale sign on the very last house, the one so quietly tucked into the woods, surrounded on three sides by forest. They paid $27k for it. The previous owners had lived there full-time, and the school bus had journeyed all the way out there every morning to pick up the kids.

It’s quiet here, but it’s not silent. There’s a big difference. The lake lies under an air traffic corridor, and planes heading for Pittsburgh are always overhead. In addition to noise from above, in the stillness I can hear a low hum of reverberation. There is machinery on the move this morning. It’s 9am and it’s 16 degrees and civilization isn’t far away. The echo-y nature of the hills makes it impossible to determine the source of the activity, but I know it’s the bad guys, the frackers, driving on the roads and moving dirt. The noise that carries down to the ice reminds me of the thunder we hear in the distance in the summers, rolling in. Unlike summer thunder, this roar isn’t going to pass off to the east any time soon; it’s like living in the shadow of Mordor and Frodo sold the oil and gas rights under the Shire to Sauron. Shit. 

This is the field being considered for an oil and gas well. The cabin lies on the other side.

Ice heaving up onto the beach

I walk along the shoreline and the ice sings to me. Ice sings songs—did you know that? We think of ice as a solid, steadfast barrier between us and the water below, but ice is alive. (That’s a cliché but for a reason.) When it gets thick, it shifts. Water molecules, upon freezing, naturally form tetrahedral configurations, meaning that frozen water expands. (I learned this the hard way when I took my father’s German wine glass, filled it with orange juice and put it in the freezer overnight. Seemed like a good idea at the time.) Along the shoreline the ice is cracked and heaved up on the beach. Out on the surface I can hear the ice’s heartbeat, a random but unending wump wump. It sounds sort of like bubbles, but I think it’s the various pieces of ice rubbing against one another as it shifts and sighs. I try to record it, but I’m not sure such a subtle noise will be picked up by a smart phone. In reality, it sounds like digestion.

I haven’t the cojones to walk out on the ice yet, so I throw a rock and listen to it crash down and skid along. Years and years here have given me the aged ability to judge the thickness of the ice by sound. Emerson, in the reading, mentioned playing the ice-harp, and I know exactly what he’s talking about: 

“A thin coat of ice covered the pond, but melted around the edge of the shore. I threw a stone upon the ice, which rebounded with a shrill sound, and falling again and again, repeated the note with modulation. I thought at first it was the ‘peep peep’ of a bird I had scared. I was so taken with the music that I threw down my stick and spent twenty minutes in throwing stones single or in handfuls on this crystal drum.”

There’s a video going around right now of a young guy in Alaska who throws a rock onto a frozen lake and it reverberates with a wonky alto boi-oi-oing. (Start at 3:35 mark.) This is the ice harp, and it indicates the ice is thick but not trustworthy. Never walk on ice that pings. Today, however, the rock makes a dull thud when it hits, and there is no vibration at all. It can bear the weight of a man and a fishing hut (if anyone were so inclined to waste their time ice fishing…only once have I ever seen a hut out here, and once I saw a car on the ice…that can only happen after 3+ weeks of temps steadily below freezing). Nevertheless, I keep to the shore after a crack hundreds of yards long bursts forth right between my legs. I’m safe—it’s very thick—but it’s unnerving and I’m so alone.

And these rules are my own, gleaned from years of Januaries, not the word of ice professionals. Walk at your own risk, kids. 

Grab that rock!

Maya, however, is an idiot, and immediately runs out to fetch the rock I’ve chucked. Maya loves rocks. Her teeth are worn and sawed-off from the bricks she carries around the backyard. Rocks make her crazy; she whines and yammers at them as she gnaws. It once cost me $2300 to have a lava rock surgically removed from her stomach. The vet took pity on me and gave me a $300 discount because we’d just repaired her torn ACL six months earlier to a similar financial tune. Damn dog. She fetches every rock I throw, proving for certain that the ice is strong enough way out there to support a blubbery 83 pounds of stupid.

Happy buffoon gnaws rock

I love her. 

She and Nugget are the only animals I have seen today, save for the red-tailed hawk on the wire on the drive in, and the bird I believe to be a swift lurking around the shoreline. Every creature has gone away or to sleep.

Acres and acres of ice to the south

I walk along the shoreline until I reach the bend in the lake. I peer around it and see the channel leading off to the south; everything is frozen. I’m talking manically in a Scottish accent to my dogs, about the nature of ice and cracks and wondering why I feel the need to fill up the silence when I get an unmistakable whiff of skunk. I can’t see any critters around, and the stink does tend to carry for hundreds of yards. He’s probably way up in the woods. I was wrong--not every creature has gone. Nevertheless, it’s a good time to turn around. When I do, I look back towards our lane on the hillside and see the cabins, roughly 25 of them, squatting in the woods above the lake. They’re all deserted except for our neighbor Frank, who lives here full time with his two yappy shelties. Twenty-five families who have summer homes, who have to schedule their time with nature between 5pm Friday and 8pm Sunday.

We have to work so hard to relax.

I think my parents kept the curtains
and rug from the 1970's.

I sit in the cabin to enjoy silence with a cup of tea, but the heat is slow to crank up, and my digits are too cold to type. Moreover, I'm in a lake frame of mind. Writing will happen at home, reflectively, in fleece pants. 

Today’s lessons:

1. A dog is a fine role model. Everything is nature to her. Everything is equal in her eyes, worthy of her time and energy. Whether or not it brings her pleasure, she inspects it all the same. The things that do bring her pleasure are reveled in. She’s joyful. She’s happy to be alive.

2. Ice has an audible heartbeat. It sings. It's not to be trusted and takes 35 years, at the least, to learn.

3. I get a kick out of the same simian rock-throwing behavior that amused Ralph Waldo Emerson.

4. Change is coming to Piedmont. It remains to be seen how much change, and how noticeable that change may be. It’s not silent out there. Humans are on the move, and no matter what Rogers says, there is nothing natural about what is about to happen here.

Bonus lesson: Pee before I lock up the cabin. Those were some frozen, alabaster hams.

Look at this freshwater clam! He's hauling buns. That's probably 7 hours worth of movement. 

Here is a 5-minute video from my morning Piedmont Lake ice walk. You can hear the ice talking around the 20-second mark, 30-second mark, and as an occasional wump wump in the background. The dogs had a great hike.

As I was packing to leave, the sun blessed me and the ice by showing it's face and the clouds blew away. I noticed that the ice was less reflective with direct light upon it, or perhaps the magic of the early morning was gone for another 24 hours. 

Best rock ever, suitable for teaching young ones to jump.

It was good to see the sun.

The dock, suspended by Dad's weird rope contraption. Notice it's still crooked.

That's quite a claim to fame, buddy.

Finding Piedmont Peace: A Brief Introduction

It takes about an hour to get here. Of course as a child I hopped into the car with little more than sneakers on my feet and a vague notion that I was supposed to have brought pajamas and clean underoos, and my concerns were limited only to the size and capacity of my bladder. When the lake came into view we bounced around and eventually tumbled out of the car, dizzy with travel vertigo and sweat and excitement. My dad's stupid Irish Setter, Barney, paced and drooled and farted all over the station wagon, but even this couldn't dampen our spirits.

Piedmont Lake

Wheeling is located along I-70 southwest of Pittsburgh. 

Aerial photo of the dam at Piedmont

In this lifetime, this adult lifetime, the travel hour is the easiest. The early part of the day will have seen me shopping for the weekend, and packing the food and the kids' clothing, worrying about poison ivy cream and diarrhea medicine (the great blowout of June 2014), becoming more sour and more dour and hoping only to make it to the cabin without cursing at the children and Shawn (who, between the three of them, do more than their share of drooling and farting in the car). I'm the mom now, and it's work to get back to nature. It's an effort to create this childhood for Ben and Andy. So much so that I've lost touch with Piedmont Lake in recent years, so much so that I need to reconnect with something that's as familiar as my own hands, as my own reflection. I've spent my lifetime in this cabin, summers and summers, and so it is with both ease and effort that I choose it for the location of this journal. Another location, a spot of old-growth forest to the south or a waterfall close to home would be simpler, and more foreign, and in so choosing this place I make more work for myself, because to know this place, this cabin in the woods, I'm going to have to do some real work, peel back the onion layers of my life here, forget the fights with that damn 9.9 horsepower motor, and the sunburns, and the spot on the couch where the dog fell so deeply asleep that she lost all bladder control. In a literal sense, I have to actually see the forest for the trees, to bring that wretched cliche to life.


For thirty-five years I've been coming to Piedmont Lake. I've never once come alone. I've never driven out in silence with only the excited pant of expectant dogs (how could I leave them behind?), and I've never walked to Dad's frog pond by myself, or sat by The Magnificent Beech Tree (he borrowed a bit of A.A. Milne when I was 5) in silence. Always there have been parents, or partners, or children at my heels, in my ears. Always there have been conversations and thoughts and chatter and sighs and someone taking a leak on a tree.

It's time to find the quiet part of Piedmont, by myself. It's time to see it with eyes that aren't peering out from the body of a child, or a mother.

This time, I find nature for myself. This time, I take the leaks.

Our first date in 2002, walking on the ice at Piedmont. My dad took the photo. Yeah, he was there on our first date. I figured, what the hell. If he doesn't like my father and he doesn't like my lake, he's out. He ended up falling through the ice and spilling hot tea on his crotch.

The Y-chromosomes

Teaching Benjamin to fish when he was 2

Somebody tell the dog that it's not polite to sit on the breakfast table.