Grandview, Mt. Washington: Week One - Commitment

I am afraid of commitment. Commitment of most things - big things - life things - but this fear doesn't just stop with the huge decisions. It also encompasses the smaller decisions in my life. Like what place to choose to write a blog. In this fear comes my perpetual attempt to foresee what I will learn before I learn it, what I will write before I write it, what conclusions I will draw from the unknown... before I even face it. It's not hard to see the inherent problem with this line of thought. But it's in actualizing a change that I'm most apt to focus on now. So...

I'll say that Grandview was not my first choice of a nature blog-spot. My first spot was going to be my front porch, if only because I knew I had already seen change there. A pumpkin decaying, a small seed of Russian Sage already taking hold under the rhododendron - a sixty yeas old shrub with a proficiency bloomer, surreal in its display of magenta in April. But see, I've already noticed these things - already come to see these changes, colors, aspects, every time I leave my house.

So I thought I would expand my horizon. Quite literally. And make a commitment - to look out over a vast land and see it as it is, imagine it as it was, and find myself as spectator - both of the thick, solid arms of water that reach out as rivers down below, and of the sky that spreads out and fills every other empty space.

Today it's too cold to sit on a bench or stand on an outlook and hold on to the verdi-gris railings, that hold back a body from open, empty space. So, I walk. The wind whips through my hair so that often what I see are strands of gray sky through thick clumps of brown waves and curls. The air smells a little like snow, a little like rain, a little like shampoo.

The whole time I walk, first down the slow descents of slope, then up the steeper flights of hill, I listen to the clomp of my boot heels, feel my socks begin to slip down into the soft arches of my feet, because these are the wrong shoes for this kind of mountain. The whole time I walk, I write in my head.

I start at the place on Grandview closest to the Southside slopes, where the incline cuts through the trees like a smooth zipper, taking people from the air to the ground, and back up again. Here, the view is wide open and I can see all three rivers. Only until recently - very recently, I'm embarrassed to admit - have I learned which of the rivers is which. From here, on this winter day of cold and dry, the lackluster clouds are so massive they don't accent the sky, so much as make it up, grey as an old dime or river stone. From here, I can see my whole city. I say 'my' unintentionally, but realize that's what it is when I'm up here. A deposit of buildings that give my home a name. Pittsburgh.

This view, this place up here, it's so expansive, so wide and open and all-encompassing, that it will be difficult to decide what I am going to write about each week. Maybe that's where this fear of commitment can come into play. Because this view is like life - there are so many options - so many places to look. The rivers, the steep slopes that drop from the railings and hold grasses that look like hay, the plastic cups thrown over the edge, the massive stone blocks that are used to keep the hillside from sliping and sliding away. Then there's the sky - the clouds that will catch all manner of sunlight when the sun decides to shine, or the way I can watch the weather cross miles of the land to come and settle over this spot. Even the time of day I write will be a choice, because here, when the sun sets, the sky can be so cerulean it blows your mind - it stops you so that you stop, regardless of whatever you were doing, wherever you were going, because now that you see this blue, you want nothing else for awhile. At least not until it fades. Or the nighttime darkness from above - the way the night lights cling to every imperfection along the surface of the rivers and glitters it back, moves it so that it looks like an impasto painting.

In short, after so much looking out over the expanse, seeing how much there is to take in, it is clear that I will need to focus. And then commit. To what most catches my eye and moves my heart. And then follow it, stay with it, watch it and learn it - the same way I aspire to live my life - with the things that are important to me, the people I love, the ideas that move me to write.