Nature Blog #10: City Creatures

Saturday, November 14, 2009
12:30pm

I came out onto my balcony to get warm. It’s mid-November, but I find myself warmer outside than in my apartment. The sun glares at the empty trees, coating their bare branches and twigs in a weekend glow. Below the ground is a carpet of dead leaves. I can hear every step and move of two squirrels, scurrying and scampering about beneath the flora. It sounds like deer trekking through the woods, but it is just squirrels in a clump of city trees.

A cool air still blows against my cheek, chilling the right side of my face while the sun warms my left. Opposite sensations against the same skin, like dipping cold toes in a warm bath. The birds are loud today. They woke me up early this morning, disorienting my body into thinking it was spring. A blue jay lands on the branch of my honey locust. I can see the black streak under his eye, darting as fast as his eye does at movement. He doesn’t stay there long. A noise, the flick of a branch, and he is off to a new destination.

A motorcycle chugs on Penn Ave. Its throttle blends in with an airplane high above. The sound of metal banging against a rusty barrel echoes through the open trees. All sounds cave in around me, speaking monosyllabic sounds of city language, busy words. Sitting out here on my balcony, so in touch with the trees and leaves and birds that surround me, I feel teased by their natural serenity. I want to go away from all the other distracting noise, away from my railing shadows and the telephone wire that hangs to my right. I’ve been writing like this is my past few blogs, wanting to escape to a quiet wooden den. I realize that I need that regularly. I need the chance to hear nothing but birds calling in the sunlight, trees rustling ever so gently in the afternoon’s breeze, creatures wrestling in the forest floor’s leaves. When I sit and observe the natural world that surrounds me, I slow down enough to want more. I remember the calming effect it has on my mind, the lackadaisical and meditative encouragement.

It’s like finding another world within a world, one that is at time the complete opposite of schedules and clocks, cars and the evening news. It is always there, though. Whether hiding behind a dark cloudy day, or coming out full force like today in the sun.

A family of birds, I cannot see them, sits in the top of my pine. The pine has lost all of its leaves except for at the very top; it looks like a small Christmas tree hanging in the clear blue sky. It sounds like there are hundreds of them up there, chitchatting like women at a coffee shop. One flies out and one flies in, hiding their bodies completely from me. All I can tell of their movement is from the shake and shuffles of the pine needles’ edges. It seems as though they are quite aware of this abnormally warm November day. They are fine just chirping in the branches, having found a place to hide from the city ruckus. I’m encouraged to follow their lead.