My concept of home is a bit of a conundrum. That is if I interpret home as somewhere where I feel truly comfortable and at ease with myself. I'm not putting on a performance, but I am playing. I have friends and people who make me feel welcome although I'm not very talkative and I'm not a people person.
I say it's not a home because nobody lives there, unless you count the the club secretary who is always in the same seat at the bar waiting to tell me that I could be a scratch golfer if only I'd get my putting under control. My home or at least where I feel the home connection the most is at the Summit Country Club in Cresson, PA. This is where my mountain people are. For those of you not familiar with this town, it's about 20 miles "up the mountain" from my physical house.
From the first time I pull into the parking lot each spring and yank my bag from the trunk, I look forward to what is ahead of me. I know each roll hillock and neatly trimmed fairway. I know what sounds I'll hear once the birds return to the trees and the people who inhabit these 18 holes are genuine. They're just as interested and friendly to play with as I am in my desire to spend time with them.
It's on the fifth hole where I hit my tee shot and dip down into the little valley or artery that leads to the very heart of my home. It leads me the furthest away from the road, away from civilization and it's here that I'm free to absorb the trees on either side of the fairways and the little openings where I've found so many lost balls, but more importantly it's here as I'm searching for an errant shot that I can do most of my thinking. Aside from my frustration at the last shot, this is where I really plan out stories I want to write or I imagine where the world will take me because in that time I can get away with that. On the course, there are no consequences just potential.
I find my ball and do my best to hack it out of the woods and save a good score on that hole, but it doesn't matter I know by the time I make the turn and go into the bar to buy a powerade and a granola bar, I'll be met with hearty greetings, a few pats on the back and questions about my game that are thinly veiled inquiries about how I'm doing as a person. Up there, there seems to be a bit of a code, but it makes the caring any less genuine.
By the time I climb the last mountain on the 18th hole, I'll be able to wave and be welcomed by the guys on the first tee or who ever's working out on the range and I'll be sad to leave in November when the leaves get so bad that you don't want to bother looking for your ball. Every winter I leave this landscape and these people that I know so well and I go into hibernation until I can do it all over again. I'm already anxious to get back there. To hop over the creek and listening the clacking of my clubs echo through the trees. This is where I really belong.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Place Post #2 Snow, Snow and More S-No
I feel that I've drained all descriptions of cold, snow and miserablism from my wary fingers. It snowed again yesterday, in a way that made most school kids cheer until they realized, as my brother did, that it wouldn't last long enough for any kind of delay or closing. As I mentioned, I'm sick of snow, both in describing it and my experiences interacting with it in my backyard. I'm going to write from a carved out little patch in my memory that not too far from the rectangular bathroom zone that my brother and I dug out for our dog (the one that she completely disregards and comes back inside completely covered with snow).
It's weird, the things you think about when your all alone scuffing through a place you've been so many times before, especially when you're wishing that you could be in that place five or six months from now. It would be June then, and I've had many great Junes in my backyard. I've built and a few years later tore down a wooden swingset, I've pushed the lawnmower back and forth, creating perfectly straight (almost sports field worthy) lines and patterns, I taught my brother how to hit a baseball, golf ball and throw both a baseball and a football. What I came to realize is that this isn't just a yard simply stepping out here is like passing through a gateway into memories and experiences that I didn't know I'd even had, or at least at the time I didn't think they were significant.
As flakes fall around me, sporadic and lifeless like nuclear fallout, The white blanketed ground reminds me of setting up the large white tent for my bon voyage party. The concept of a bon voyage party in itself is ridiculous, but the extent to which my parents carried it out prior to my departing for Scotland was equally asinine, and for some reason I always end up doing the work for parties that are thrown for me, but that neither here nor there.
It's the day before the party and this enormous tent has been delivered to our backyard as a pile of disconnected aluminum poles, a few yellow ropes, so ground stakes and what looked like a folded white tarp. May I just mention that there weren't any directions, my dad has a doctorate and little common sense and my brother a scathing tongue without a filter. It was not prime work conditions by any means and we were crunched for time with a thunderstorm scheduled to role in before dinner.
My dad tried to make sense of the unmarked poles and refused to listen to my advice even though I'd set this tent up the week before as a part of working for Penn State Altoona's maintenance and operations staff. Each time he incorrectly assembled a certain combination of poles, my brother made a smart-assed comment and I wiped the sweat from my brow with the back of my forearm.
I figured it was better to leave my dad and brother to annoy each other. It was really a matter of who would reach the tantrum stage first and storm inside so that I could actually get some work done. I unfolded the tarp and laid it out. I put together the frame and tried to ignore my brother making another jab at my dad about how many degrees does it take to put together a couple pieces of metal. I had almost the entire skeletal system put together when the first bit of lightning flashed across the sky. That was all the cue my dad and brother needed to high-tail it inside, but I'm a little more stubborn than I should be when it comes to adverse weather. I wrestled with the poles my dad and brother had been arguing over and just as I assembled the last leg, the white tarp took off with the wind.
It rolled like a tumbleweed across my yard and into the neighbor's yard. I dropped the poles and chased it down to the accompaniment of my brother's laughter and my dad yelling at me to get out of the storm. When I finally wrangled the tarp, and let me say this was no small feat because I literally had to use my entire body to ball in back up into something less parachute like, the storm was raging. The skies had opened up and the thunder rumbled, but our tenting would have to wait.
I think about this now as the snow looks vaguely reminiscent of that tarp, but I can't wrestle this blanket. I can't get it back in order. This is another thing I guess I'll just have to ride out.
It's weird, the things you think about when your all alone scuffing through a place you've been so many times before, especially when you're wishing that you could be in that place five or six months from now. It would be June then, and I've had many great Junes in my backyard. I've built and a few years later tore down a wooden swingset, I've pushed the lawnmower back and forth, creating perfectly straight (almost sports field worthy) lines and patterns, I taught my brother how to hit a baseball, golf ball and throw both a baseball and a football. What I came to realize is that this isn't just a yard simply stepping out here is like passing through a gateway into memories and experiences that I didn't know I'd even had, or at least at the time I didn't think they were significant.
As flakes fall around me, sporadic and lifeless like nuclear fallout, The white blanketed ground reminds me of setting up the large white tent for my bon voyage party. The concept of a bon voyage party in itself is ridiculous, but the extent to which my parents carried it out prior to my departing for Scotland was equally asinine, and for some reason I always end up doing the work for parties that are thrown for me, but that neither here nor there.
It's the day before the party and this enormous tent has been delivered to our backyard as a pile of disconnected aluminum poles, a few yellow ropes, so ground stakes and what looked like a folded white tarp. May I just mention that there weren't any directions, my dad has a doctorate and little common sense and my brother a scathing tongue without a filter. It was not prime work conditions by any means and we were crunched for time with a thunderstorm scheduled to role in before dinner.
My dad tried to make sense of the unmarked poles and refused to listen to my advice even though I'd set this tent up the week before as a part of working for Penn State Altoona's maintenance and operations staff. Each time he incorrectly assembled a certain combination of poles, my brother made a smart-assed comment and I wiped the sweat from my brow with the back of my forearm.
I figured it was better to leave my dad and brother to annoy each other. It was really a matter of who would reach the tantrum stage first and storm inside so that I could actually get some work done. I unfolded the tarp and laid it out. I put together the frame and tried to ignore my brother making another jab at my dad about how many degrees does it take to put together a couple pieces of metal. I had almost the entire skeletal system put together when the first bit of lightning flashed across the sky. That was all the cue my dad and brother needed to high-tail it inside, but I'm a little more stubborn than I should be when it comes to adverse weather. I wrestled with the poles my dad and brother had been arguing over and just as I assembled the last leg, the white tarp took off with the wind.
It rolled like a tumbleweed across my yard and into the neighbor's yard. I dropped the poles and chased it down to the accompaniment of my brother's laughter and my dad yelling at me to get out of the storm. When I finally wrangled the tarp, and let me say this was no small feat because I literally had to use my entire body to ball in back up into something less parachute like, the storm was raging. The skies had opened up and the thunder rumbled, but our tenting would have to wait.
I think about this now as the snow looks vaguely reminiscent of that tarp, but I can't wrestle this blanket. I can't get it back in order. This is another thing I guess I'll just have to ride out.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Place post 1-Fingertips
Another morning, another cold. This is a new kind of cold, not that I haven't felt four degrees before, but it's new for this year. How soon we forget the bitterness, whether its from a past relationship or from a kind of food, or, in this case, from the natural world. It's a blinding kind of cold that stings you into existence and then makes you wish you weren't alive to know the sting. It's the kind of cold that cuts through your gloves and leaves for fingertips with a numbness that will return the sting and then the ache if you warm them to quickly.
This is the morning I choose to sit in my backyard. The is reflecting painfully of the fresh powder from the recent snow fall and the winds from last night have hidden all traces of life. They've even swept away my dog's foot prints. I notice the way the snow has drifted by our bank and it reminds me of the wispy dunes when my parents took us out west to White Sands. It reminds me of that until the wind shifts throwing grains of snow about like an hourglass, grains blowing every which way. The house behind me groans and the dampness in my nose freezes and cracks, then freezes again.
It's a deceptive morning. Were I not sitting out in my backyard, waiting for the living world to wake up or at least make its appearance, I might think that it was a beautiful day. It's not a day for playing outside or skiing. It's not a day for running errands or doing anything productive. It's a day to build a fire or at least turn one on and be entertained, whether that's with a good book, a new movie, or even taking a nap. If it were warmer, with the sun shining like it is, I'd stay out here longer. I'd make real plans, but my fingers ache from the cold and my breath is freezing in the scarf that covers my mouth. I have plenty of nothing left to accomplish today.
This is the morning I choose to sit in my backyard. The is reflecting painfully of the fresh powder from the recent snow fall and the winds from last night have hidden all traces of life. They've even swept away my dog's foot prints. I notice the way the snow has drifted by our bank and it reminds me of the wispy dunes when my parents took us out west to White Sands. It reminds me of that until the wind shifts throwing grains of snow about like an hourglass, grains blowing every which way. The house behind me groans and the dampness in my nose freezes and cracks, then freezes again.
It's a deceptive morning. Were I not sitting out in my backyard, waiting for the living world to wake up or at least make its appearance, I might think that it was a beautiful day. It's not a day for playing outside or skiing. It's not a day for running errands or doing anything productive. It's a day to build a fire or at least turn one on and be entertained, whether that's with a good book, a new movie, or even taking a nap. If it were warmer, with the sun shining like it is, I'd stay out here longer. I'd make real plans, but my fingers ache from the cold and my breath is freezing in the scarf that covers my mouth. I have plenty of nothing left to accomplish today.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Blog Prompt 1 My Side of the Mountain People
I come from mountain people. Well...not exactly, or at least not literally. My parents are by no means mountain people, but they do not make up the whole of my existence. Of course they influenced my growth and development, but their Ohio lifestyle and Ohio attitude are somewhat lost on me. I am definitely a product of the Laurel Highlands. I don't say youns (yinz) and I don't hunt, but there is some connection to this mountainous landscape that is indelibly a part of my being. Although, I complain about the winters every time I'm jonesing for a little golf, I don't really mean it. I need winter. I wouldn't know what to do if I never saw snow again or didn't the luxury of an all out March slush fest. For those of youns from 'round here you know what I'm talking about. It's that brand of snow, usually coming sometime in early spring where it looks like snow, but when you shovel it at the end of the driveway it splashes out gray water.
Of course winter exists many places, but what exists in me is a saltiness about it. I have an attitude and some might call it a sense of superiority about it, but it's not that exactly. What gets to me and makes me realize this part of myself is the way I get in a snow storm when I'm stuck behind someone who's clearly not from around here by the way they panic behind the wheel, swerving and making abrupt jerks of the wheel. It's just snow people! No need to freak out. There's also no need to race along like an idiot who thinks they're oblivious to the effects of snow and rubber interacting.
What proves to me that I'm a mountain person is the way that I can't stand cities and the pretension associated with them. (This is where I also take note of the fact that I'm not completely without some nature writing inklings) I know that I couldn't live in a place where I have to go somewhere other than my own to find grass. I feel at home when I can just walk outside and see a few trees or a night expanse of lawn. I like knowing or at least believing that my neighbor is a genuinely good person and if I pull over on the side of the road someone will offer to help. All of these are things I've experienced first hand. All of these are things that I can't live without. It's the simple wisdom of the guy leaning on his truck and talking about what the clouds mean or going to bar that was funded by money from either coal or the rail road. The thing that is most important about a mountain person is there sense of history. Even if your family is from these parts, you're a part of something because you grew up here. Sincerity isn't just an act and people follow through with their promises, maybe not right away, but eventually because they have a sense of duty and no concept of time, especially in the winter.
Of course winter exists many places, but what exists in me is a saltiness about it. I have an attitude and some might call it a sense of superiority about it, but it's not that exactly. What gets to me and makes me realize this part of myself is the way I get in a snow storm when I'm stuck behind someone who's clearly not from around here by the way they panic behind the wheel, swerving and making abrupt jerks of the wheel. It's just snow people! No need to freak out. There's also no need to race along like an idiot who thinks they're oblivious to the effects of snow and rubber interacting.
What proves to me that I'm a mountain person is the way that I can't stand cities and the pretension associated with them. (This is where I also take note of the fact that I'm not completely without some nature writing inklings) I know that I couldn't live in a place where I have to go somewhere other than my own to find grass. I feel at home when I can just walk outside and see a few trees or a night expanse of lawn. I like knowing or at least believing that my neighbor is a genuinely good person and if I pull over on the side of the road someone will offer to help. All of these are things I've experienced first hand. All of these are things that I can't live without. It's the simple wisdom of the guy leaning on his truck and talking about what the clouds mean or going to bar that was funded by money from either coal or the rail road. The thing that is most important about a mountain person is there sense of history. Even if your family is from these parts, you're a part of something because you grew up here. Sincerity isn't just an act and people follow through with their promises, maybe not right away, but eventually because they have a sense of duty and no concept of time, especially in the winter.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Home Sweet Home
The snow has fallen mixed with a little ice and my brother probably should have had a two hour delay today. I had to chase the dog out in the yard. My mom and dad's vicious little schnoodle (schnauzer poodle mix) got spooked by something went off on a tear into the neighbor's yard, barking but not scaring anyone except for me, but that was more because I had to crunch out across the newly frosted expanse of my backyard in flip flops.
I shouldn't have stayed home today, I think as I take careful, but purposeful strides up the hill and into the neighbor's yard. For such a domesticated animal, virtually a cat/dog hybrid with her natural tendencies to use family members as her personal pillow or stretch out lazily on the back of couches, Sadie has an uncomfortable adeptness at moving on this new ice. I probably should have found something more gripping, more solid than these flip-flops, but nothing else was close at hand, but as I'm wrangling her up and re-directing her barking tantrum back toward our property I would hardly have the nerve to call these flip-flops convenient for their immediate closeness. My toes feel chapped and ache with a coldness that is too easy to forget when you're sitting by the gas fireplace typing blog entries. Sadie is stretched out on the back of the couch now, reading over my shoulder in a way that would annoy me if she weren't such a hair-brained dog. And, as if on cue, she's off the back of the couch and proving my point, yapping away at an icicle that just fell from the eaves.
Outside, the trees are bare and even though our winter has been mild, I'm already itching for spring. I'm not the type to stay cooped up like this only observing nature from behind the panes of glass that barely know how to keep the cold out. I fold my blanket back over my toes that still tingle with the after burn of my little chase this morning and plead with the dog to just shut up already. Haven't you caused enough problems for one day, Miss Sadie, Lady of the House and Bitch of the backyard?
I shouldn't have stayed home today, I think as I take careful, but purposeful strides up the hill and into the neighbor's yard. For such a domesticated animal, virtually a cat/dog hybrid with her natural tendencies to use family members as her personal pillow or stretch out lazily on the back of couches, Sadie has an uncomfortable adeptness at moving on this new ice. I probably should have found something more gripping, more solid than these flip-flops, but nothing else was close at hand, but as I'm wrangling her up and re-directing her barking tantrum back toward our property I would hardly have the nerve to call these flip-flops convenient for their immediate closeness. My toes feel chapped and ache with a coldness that is too easy to forget when you're sitting by the gas fireplace typing blog entries. Sadie is stretched out on the back of the couch now, reading over my shoulder in a way that would annoy me if she weren't such a hair-brained dog. And, as if on cue, she's off the back of the couch and proving my point, yapping away at an icicle that just fell from the eaves.
Outside, the trees are bare and even though our winter has been mild, I'm already itching for spring. I'm not the type to stay cooped up like this only observing nature from behind the panes of glass that barely know how to keep the cold out. I fold my blanket back over my toes that still tingle with the after burn of my little chase this morning and plead with the dog to just shut up already. Haven't you caused enough problems for one day, Miss Sadie, Lady of the House and Bitch of the backyard?
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