site sits

It was refreshing to return to Morris Woods after having not been there in so long. After finding my own site to sit at, I never made the time to return to the woods. It was odd at first because I kept thinking about how this wasn't "my" site, and how someone else was probably thinking the same thing about the site I call my own. My mind kept wondering and I ended up spending a good deal of time thinking about what exactly the person whose site this was thought about while sitting here. Were they able to close all thoughts out of their mind and sit in piece (as if meditating), or were they constantly considering the various facets in their life and how each affects another?

Before I get to my chosen tree I see something more exciting. It's two large birds eating and fighting over some floppy creature. I stop for a while. The sunset behind them is bright orange, brighter than I've seen in a while. Their activity doesn't let up, and when I leave they are still there; I hear them making noise for the whole thirty minutes I sit at my site. The snow is stiff and crunchy. Earlier in the day, someone told me that it felt like stale cake. Maybe. 

It’s been a crazy last few days. I avoided going to my site for a while because I had so much on my mind. I didn’t trust my ability to go and observe, nor did I have any faith in my capacity to just be, when my head felt like it might explode from snowballing anxieties, doubts and frustrations. Finally, I decided to just go and let it snowball. So I apologize if this had little to do with the site and just leaves you hanging in the madhouse of my head. I left class on Thursday more than a little frustrated—not at the class, but at my inability to articulate anything I was trying to argue. I meant to meditate on that at my site, but once there I couldn’t even remember what it was that I was frustrated about. It was all faded and seemed like it was eons ago.

This past weekend was a really tough one for me because I got into a huge fight with someone I love dearly, so my trip to my site today was very cleansing. I had spent all of yesterday hardly able to leave my bed or open my mouth without crying, and if I had gone outside yesterday to do my site sit, I probably would have described everything as bleak and cold and dead. However, last night I spoke again to the person and we resolved our argument and feel closer than before. So today when I went outside, instead of focusing on the frozen, cold, and dead, I found myself looking at life, healing, and regrowth in the nature around me. The river that last time had been moving along so strongly, was largely frozen over now, but some movement remained even with its partial frozen cover.

This week I decided to take Anne's suggestion and do a little research on the labyrinth instead.

The labyrinth at Bryn Mawr was created by Jeanne Rachel Solomon '00, a McBride student, and offered by the McBrides as a gift to the college in 1999. 

In an article entitled "Risks on the Path", Solomon writes "We are prompted to slow down, to follow the path as it turns in and out to lead us into the center and out again. On the way we can muse, contemplate, dream, ask questions, provide answers, breathe, quiet the chatter inside, become silent and amazed."

There was something soothing about how slow and fast the snow fell from the sky and the way it filled the dark trees around me. I turned white from head to toes by the time I reached what I thought was the center of the labyrinth. The carpet of snow beneath my feet could not hide the path from me, I knew it all too well. The snow continued to fall soundlessly as white flakes creeped into the opening of my boots. Despite how soothing the way the snow slowed everything down and how fluffy the ground beneath me felt, I couldn’t grasp why I didn’t like it as much as liked it last year. I felt like a little girl every time it snowed. I had always looked forward to the snow angels, the snowball fights, and the shoveling. I guess I missed the way the snow brought people together.

This is so cheesy I can hardly stand it, but...it's what happened.

Tuesday morning, I'd gotten up early, seen all the snow, and was sure I'd get to spend the day watching it from the sofa. So I was a little grumbly when I learned that I had to hoof it out to Bryn Mawr. Grumblier when the trains from Center City were running slow...so, en route, I wrote up my description of my site sit: "The snow around my site was unbroken, and lovely, full of sparkles. I couldn't bear to break it, to deface it with my footsteps....so I decided to respect the space, and skip my visit this week."

Unfortunately, when I got off the train, trudged my way into campus, and to my site,

Tomorrow would have been my friend Isaiah’s twentieth birthday. On the day he passed away, it snowed this same way. The snow fell on the trees in a hushed yet persistent way, small flakes sneakily adding up until my boots were drowning in white flurries. I felt very aware of my own body this morning. My feet felt heavy; grounded but not in the most reassuring of ways. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t see the ground beneath me. I felt the stuffiness in my nose, the coldness held at the tips of my fingers, and the tightness in my throat. Closing my eyes, I went back to that December day over a year ago.