Blog Post #2: The Only Tracks Are My Own

January 26, 2013
1:00 p.m.
27 ℉ (feels like 17 ℉)

View from my living room

Yesterday, the snow starting falling in Pittsburgh around mid-morning and kept coming throughout the day. Today, my Swissvale backyard is draped in a pristine blanket of white. I love looking at the snow. I will gaze out my living room window for a few minutes here and there, just to appreciate the clean, bright frozen precipitation. I look forward to watching snowflakes fall from low gray clouds, especially when the flakes form so large that I imagine I can see their unique crystalline shapes as they float towards the ground. 

Charlie Brown tree

In my house, we call these fat snowflakes "Charlie Brown flakes" after the popular cartoon that comes on around Christmas time. This is how I, as an adult living in the city, enjoy the snow: from inside my house, from inside my imagination. The snow, the cold, the winter in general, is something I try to avoid by staying inside. Jokingly I say I'm hibernating, but really I'm hiding, waiting for spring. In the winter, my sense of home retracts all of its appendages inside its shell of my climate-controlled house. Home and house become synonymous. However, this was not always the case. 

Growing up in central Ohio, we often got snow in the winter. Even more often we got gray, bitter-cold days with no snow to soften the dismal scene. The oppressive landscape of bald tree limbs silhouetted against a lavender sky that refused to change color throughout the shortened day greeted us for days, sometimes weeks at a time. But despite that, I would bundle up in a rainbow of layers of "barn clothes" (clothes that were no longer suited for school or church due to wear and tear, but were machine washable and still fit) and head outside. Whether or not I felt like it had no bearing on my need to go outside. The dogs needed to be let out and the horses needed to be fed, watered, and their stall bedding changed. Everyday. No exceptions. My mom would take the morning shift, I would take the late afternoon / early evening shift. It was hard work, but it was what we signed up for as responsible pet owners in a temperate climate. 

Sometimes, the sliding barn door would be frozen shut and I'd have to shovel out a track so that I could enter the barn. Once inside, before we had purchased heated water buckets for each of the three horses, I'd unhook their water buckets one by one, take them back up to the house to thaw, and trade them out for buckets of hot water I'd filled up inside. Although I was pretty good at carrying a bucket of hot water, occasionally I'd slosh some on my pant-leg or sleeve, which, though uncomfortable, was no reason to go back inside. The barn was always inviting; it always felt like home. The horses were always glad to see me, probably because they knew they were about to be fed, but also because they are social animals and like company. If it wasn't icy outside, I'd take my mare, Goose, out of her stall, remove her blanket, brush her out, tack her up, and we'd go for a ride somewhere on our property. Nothing too strenuous, because I didn't want her to break a sweat if it was around or below freezing. Together, we'd traverse the landscape, stopping to watch the Canada geese on the pond or the Labradors goofing off. When there was snow, I loved finding evidence of different animals by their tracks through the snow: deer, raccoons, cats, geese, dogs. I'd often ride to create elaborate designs in the untouched snow with Goose's hoof prints. Once I'd put her back in her stall and gave some attention to the other two horses, their stalls clean, their hay grates full, and the hot water in their buckets still steaming but cooling quickly, I'd take in a deep breath, feeling comforted by the smell of warm horse and hay and crisp air. I was enjoying "A good job done well" as my mom liked to say.  I'd call the dogs and we'd head back inside. My sense of home was all of this. This whole process gave my home a larger scope and me a purpose within that scope.

It's been almost 14 years since I've live that life. Somewhere along the way, I have lost my sense of home beyond my house. Although this is the case year-round, it's never so obvious as in the coldest days of winter. So, today I am evoking the spirit of my childhood home and going out to my city backyard to stomp around in the snow. My only pets now are two indoor cats, so I'm heading out alone. But I'm going out, no matter what, even if the only tracks out here are my own.  

  

The only tracks are my own

  (I did not find any other tracks in my yard. Apparently, even the squirrels are staying inside their houses. Maybe it's a city thing.)