The Ice Skater

When we left Scranton for a whirlwind holiday drive-a-thon, I was looking forward to wilder lands - deeper forest, taller trees, more birds... the smell of ice and bark and thaw, instead of the stink of city.

We returned home a few days ago, and I felt the mountain calling. We walked up the hill, past where the guinea hens live, past the projects and the oyster mushroom log and the muddy path. Matt stopped to see if the (possibly useful) gas tank had been stripped out of the recently-bonfired, upside-down Jeep in the creek. We walked up to the ridgeline, where there are oaks and hawks and wild blueberries, and I sighed an "oh, is it good to be home" sort of sigh.

Every place I've ever lived, I've connected with the nature there. I can close my eyes and call it all up: train trestles and cherry trees, bone piles and bear scat, boreal bogs and seaweed beaches.

Here in Scranton, I've spent too much time pining for countryside, and not appreciating that I have come to love the two wild mountains that flank route 81. They are far from unspoiled, even further from quiet, but they are home, nonetheless.

Occasionally, we run into a hunter or a scrap metal collector out there. Less often, some kids. (The last ones gleefully greeted us with "we fell through the ice into the lake!" They held out their arms to display the entirely soaked state of their clothes, and the relieving fact that they were alive, and ambulatory. I expect their adrenaline-induced glee subsided when their mothers got a load of all this.) But usually, it's just us, the roar from above (the wind) and the roar from below (the highway).

Today there was an ice skater. He was sitting on a rock, tugging on a pair of battered old skates. He had gray hair and a snow shovel, and just enough light left in the day to clear off the tiny frozen swamp, which is swaddled in greenbriar. He was surprised to see us, but seemed pleased to match the people to the footprints.

He told us the wild highlights of a whole life spent observing this slim strip of woods. Foxes, fishers, bears. A young bobcat that he feels remorse over: He brought chicken wings left over from the Saint Joe's picnic out here and put them in a pile. The next day the pile was gone, but in its place was blood, and the bobcat's tail.

the skating rink, a day later

What I'd assumed were just deer trails are actually maintained by the ice skater: worn ruts through the lowbush blueberries to overlooks atop the boulders. He once saw a smoke ring in the air, near the cave. He attributes it to god.

I didn't know anyone else was out there. I have seen his footprints, too, but what I mean is... I didn't know anyone else cared. I am so happy I know, now.

Rest in Peace, South Irving Street

This month marks two years since a triple homicide happened around the corner and down the alley. Our daily dog walk passes this lot, and in July, I wish the family that lived here could witness this calm after their storm: since the house burned and was demolished, a meadow has grown up, encouraged by a fertile birth of apples - a great weight of them that heaps up under the trees and melts into cidery September puddles.

South Side Scranton's World of Birds

It is a soggy wet morning, so I am typing and drinking coffee at 9 am, and the mockingbird is singing outside my window. When I woke up at midnight, he was mimicking the robin, who was likely sleeping. When I woke up at 2am, he was performing his twenty minute car alarm rendition. Maybe if I could learn to scream bloody murder a little more prettily when the baby squirrels use my delphiniums to pole vault into the pear tree, he would imitate me.

Every once in awhile, he makes a little loop-de-loop in the air above his elm, without pausing in song. What is he doing?


But who is even noisier than the mockingbird? This gang of four, South Side Scranton's very own roving guinea hens - in this picture, threatening to attack my poor old dog.