Place #1: Frick Park, June 11th, 3:59 P.M. Hazy, Then Bright.

(Sorry readers, there was a bit of a mix-up on my end, but luckily Melanie has been great about it and let me flip entries for this week. The Inland Northwest entry is actually my blog prompt while this will serve as my place entry.)

This is the second time I've been here, but really, it will be the first.

I'm indifferent to Frick Park. It's simply there. I have no close attachment. There are probably two reasons for that.

One: I'm think I'm an elitist when it comes to landscape. I almost turn up my nose at nature in Pennsylvania. When I saw the woods across the state, I remembered that this was where our nation got its coal. I saw billboards when I first drove across this state promoting it still in it dubious form of clean coal. I remember living in South Korea where coal processing went unchecked and when it's hazy or cloudy like it was today at Frick, I think of the particles in the air. When I think of Pennsylvania, I think of Centralia. I think of anthracite. I see the rolling low woods and envision them empty--more than empty, hollowed out. The greenest places here have this invisible film to it.

That's my bias and I'm ashamed of it. I was going to stay at the intersection where families appear with their retrievers and frisbees, but I decided on a more inclined path like I did when I first came here. Those preconceived notions I have of Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania seem more idiotic as I realize this place, save for the cardinals, abundance of rabbits, and dealing with my first summer of humidity, could just as easily be the state park across the street from my mother's home. When I breathe in that organic smell that can only be found in woods--proper name of the scent failing me--it takes me back to when I was younger and spent summers getting cut up by blackberry bramble and nettles with my sister or on warmer days like this, California with my mother's best friend and her son as we walked in circles drawn to the faintest trickle of water like I see snaked along this pathway.

Groups of mountain bikers pass me, families, couples--I almost feel strange about being alone out here. Almost. But I enjoy it this second time, alone, instead of having to keep pace with someone else. Now that I think of it, I've rarely ever been in the woods alone. I don't know solitude that isn't urban. That's a harsh truth. I don't know solitude that isn't urban.

The incline is getting steeper and I'm sweating buckets, tanks really. I wish I had brought a water bottle. The trees here are more spaced out and thin. It's comforting unlike the more impenetrable fir of my home. The person I first came here with calls my apartment a bunker. She's right, too. I only hear birds in the morning and sunlight penetrates my apartment, never really bathing it. The haze is starting to dissipate with the sunbreak. Something about this place smells different in the light.

I've often heard that mosquitoes that are often drawn towards the sweat of beer drinkers. If you could see my right forearm, you'd find that hypothesis correct. But I don't mind it. It certainly beats having a crane fly go straight for the space between your eyes. Mosquitoes are the only insects I'll notice today. I want to say I observed butterflies, but they could've just as easily been leaves. They're still quite green. No stinkbugs in this park. Am I that lucky, or do they not fare so well when outside of my [expletive]-ing apartment?

The trees tighten up, start to enclose as I get towards the top of the hill. It's not enough to block the sun. I can't wait to be at the top of this. I break off the path I originally took and take the route to the top. I've begun to realize that even when I'm home, the ten months I've spent living in Pittsburgh have all been urban save for anything I hadn't seen via car between Cleveland, Washington D.C., or Brooklyn. This is the second time in ten months I've been in any sort of natural space save for my mother's stables next to the mountains. Even then, Seattle feels overhead.

Two times in ten months. Downright shameful. More harsh realities. The top is coming up soon. I try to imagine what I'll be treated with. Cityscape, the long arch of the park's canopy, the source of the creek. Maybe a nice cooling wind. No, I'm treated to large concrete blocks, odd black radial tubes, and what appears to be a labradoodle gnawing at a tennis ball. The dog park is actually a pleasant sight (save for the chainlink fence), that's not what I'm complaining about. Walking around the top though, the most recognizable sight is what appears to be a gridlocked freeway. That person I first came here with said something that I blocked out during this humid little hike.

Two: The reason why I don't have a close attachment to this park is that I'm never away from what I'm trying to get away. I hadn't noticed it now even though I noticed it then when my companion first pointed it out. I was actually taking an effort to actually soak in the environment. But I suppose I could hear the sounds of car horns, large semi-freighters, and fast traffic all along. There's no really getting lost. When I got to the top and saw the freeway, it was all I could hear. For a moment, I was out of the city, but then my mind, as usual, got in the way.

The path back down, the ground felt a bit more damp and somewhat more steep. A few years ago, I tore a ligament on something far less steep. More cardinals. Did you know I'd never seen a cardinal until I came East? I came across a very large, but felled tree. The wood looked older, more white. I went off trail to get a closer look, unable to help but think of how much it looked like driftwood. After a few cursory glances, I noticed that the closer to the edge I got, there was a bit what seemed like a vale, a terrific summer vantage point.

Shouldn't I have seen this before? Well, yes. But I suppose my eyes were on companion most of the time. This is my second time here, but really, its my first. It's hard to believe how on one side of this mound there was a freeway, but the other a semblance of rolling hill.

More rabbits on the way down. I don't see rabbits much at home either, easy feeding for feral dogs and coyotes. I think about what another friend said to me when I was trying to grab the attention of her pet rabbit with a steady tapping of my fingers. She told me that it wouldn't grab his attention, that as a prey animal, they were inclined to flee from a curious sound that would say, intice a dog. As a boy, my mother wouldn't let me venture into Dash Point or Saltwater State, much less the Olympic Rainforest. Wolves, bears, Roosevelt elk, are all fairly real risks. In the first green space I see in Pittsburgh, this state, is filled with rabbits.

My bias, really is a matter of overblown, unrealistic expectations. Looking at the history of Frick Park, the story (or myth) of its creation, was Henry Frick's daughter requesting a place where the children of Pittsburgh could enjoy nature. While I'm certainly no child, I suppose that is exactly what I'm doing. It's hard to leave this city with classes and my jobs, hard to find time to go out into the Wilds. I can't judge this park. It's doing exactly what it's supposed to. When I take off my clothes in my apartment, for the first time, they actually smell like the trees and grass, strong enough to overpower the usual scent of bacon and Old Spice in my room.

I looked at a map of the park. It turns out I only got towards the center of the bottom half, completely oblivious to the Nine Mile Run. Completely oblivious that it even had another section potentially away from concrete.

I'm seeing what I want to see in this state. I see coal and Centralia because when I was home, I called Pittsburgh my home, accidentally, three times.