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"Park"
The expectation of snow: bound by the myth of the North, trailing the empty promise of mercury slowly creeping (inversely, exponentially). Upstate New York sits sheathed in dry leaves and grey sky: the unprecipitant side-effects of a winter just arrived. The deep ravine cuts and cradles the woods sending down the crooked trees with blurs of their browns, their greys, and scattered patches of their ever-greens. The mildly frigid earth sits in still, slanted memories of sunlight—a near-mist of indecision (between light and dark) filtered in through the full-mist of the full clouds. Light sits like a fog bearing in its weight the expectation of snow.
A man makes his way slit down through this forest leading wife and two daughters—through the trees, the branches, brambles, the lowering curve of soil cutting a path not-quite perpendicular to the draw of the antapex. He holds a machete, is anchored to each trunk’s bulwark before feeling out for the next. His family maintains the trail he blazons close behind. Words have ceased for hours. The silence is barometric. It hangs in the atmosphere trapped between the air’s density (cold, heavy) and the light (seemingly floating away from the ground, lacking the substance for the Earth’s shallow embrace).
“Where are we going?” The light collapses back through the icy breeze and he turns back to his daughters merely raising his arm (firmly gripping machete) up halfway in a gesture neither can identify before returning to his march.
An hour later he stops, sits down on a tree lain to rest along the ravinous incline. “We should rest now, and eat something,” removing his backpack and fishing out a sandwich (chicken salad). The girls do the same. The sandwich types vary: turkey, ham and cheese, another chicken salad, but the effect is the same. They eat in silence save for the sound of bread and meat and mayonnaise merged into saliva and set between various jaws locked in each monotonous, unsynched tempo. Swallowing his last bite, he stands. His wife stands. The two girls remain seated on the log.
He resumes his march, but stops when he misses the four short legs trudging behind. Without turning around, “Daisy, Maddie, what are you doing back there?”
“Where are we going?”
“You know we don’t have time for this. I told you we don’t have time for questions. Get up. Follow your mother. Stop wasting time, now.”
“How can we go if we don’t know where we’re going? Or why we’re going or what we’re doing. I’m tired.”
He turns around. “Daisy, Maddie, please get up.” Silence finds its formulaic suspension in the atmosphere. “Okay, Maddie. Okay, Daisy. Look at the ground. Look at the trees. Look at the sky. Feel the air. Why is there no snow? Answer me that. We cannot stay here. We’re freezing but there’s no snow, no rain even. We have to move. We’re all tired, but we can’t just stay here in these woods, not until the sky opens up to us. Come on. If we’re walking we won’t feel so cold.”
The younger girl turns toward her older sister. Their silent exchange is significant. They both stand as one. They both walk in file behind their parents, as before, the elder keeping close watch from behind. The hours again pass as before, now in reverse. The scant sun leans down its rays to tuck them in between horizon and bare treetops. As soon as it’s too dark to see unaided, he stops family and hands them a flashlight. “Stay here. I’ll go on ahead to look for a spot where we can set up camp. Don’t move. Don’t use the light unless necessary. I’ll be right back.” About five hundred meters ahead he finds what’s almost a cave in the ravine’s side: no roof, but the ground is level along a sheer wall for almost seventeen meters. He returns to his family and guides them toward the night’s haven. The fire is small but warm. They stretch out on the ground beside it. They take out one blanket each from their backpacks. Each has an extra shirt for a pillow. The children are the first to lose consciousness. “I worry for them exposed like this to the night. There has to be a better way. They can’t be safe,” he says to his wife, huddled against her in the dead of night.
Morning. The embers wane, the tickles out their flames to compete with the fledgling sun. The last of his coffee goes into the tin (tarnished, dented, cold to the touch). While it heats, he drapes the bacon about a thin rod. It’s the only raw meat they were able to pack. This may be their last proper breakfast for days—inasmuch as it is actually a proper breakfast. The coffee percolates and the bacon sizzles, dripping drops of grease to scatter among the flames. Fingers of scent extend among the sleeping females (some supine, one prostrate) and begin to coax them with the allure and false promise of sated hunger. They arise, drink, eat, and relieve themselves before gathering packs and heading out, in line, towards the unseen end of an unfathomed ravine.
The day goes by as sticks part and twigs crack and dirt shifts underfoot. The sky is a diffuse, bright grey. It entwines the trees within its shimmering bleakness. Again the world shifts past; earth to trees to clouds as one. One line of being follows one path: one straight spiral stretched out descending slowly by increments towards the crotch of the crevice. The day moves along, inching towards gravity’s source. Their progress the light flutter of the air’s absent snow.
Night arrives. Again. The past few hours have been aurally speckled with a soft increase in Daisy’s sniffles. The effects of cold and hunger are felt by everyone. “Stay here.” Again. He scrambles off to find another night’s shelter amid the stars and trees and sky. He again fetches his wife and children. Maddie’s sniffles have begun to catch up with Daisy’s. “We haven’t been doing things right. We’ve been careless, not safe. Maddie, Daisy, these woods are not kind to children. The forest doesn’t respect you like we do. Without the tempering balance of snow you’re left too unprotected.” In the middle of a small clearing are two solid, solitary trees (glorified stumps): bare, limbless, and smooth; not three meters apart. With his hands gently at the girls’ backs, he slides down to where the ground evens out and the undergrowth abates and the two trees stand alone, supported in reciprocal austerity. “This is just what I had in mind.”
When his wife catches up, they all remove their packs. Blankets are spread out on the ground, but he picks up his daughters’ and returns them to their hands. “You can put these back; you won’t be needing them tonight.” Digging into his backpack he removes a length of twine which he then twains with pocketknife (rising through the loop cleft in symmetry). First the youngest: loft, hands carefully under the armpits; he holds her against the trunk, feet four feet from the ground, and twines her tight and safe from harm. He then ties his other daughter to the other tree in the same fashion. “If you need anything just let me know. I hope we can finally rest tonight. We’ll need it for tomorrow.” He lies down with his wife, underneath a blanket, arms enmeshed, serene. Sleep comes easily, steeped in peace. It is only disturbed once when one of the children asks for water. He happily obliges, lifting the canteen to her lips. He starts to ask the other if she’s thirsty as well, but dares not disturb her slumber. They all sleep fast til morning.
With the sun comes a new day with the same routines. The girls are let down; they stretch their backs; bones pop. “My back hurts.” “I’m sorry, honey. You know, ours aren’t much better after sleeping on the hard ground.” They walk. It is much the same as the days before. Earth. Sky. Slope. Cold. Brush. Trees. And quiet. The biggest difference is they’re out of food. Daisy groans. Maddie groans. The woods are bare and their father doesn’t know how much longer they can go on. The air is tense with a stale charge, but no snow breaks it. Without words he thinks of failure. Before he can find them he thinks of nothing. “It shouldn’t be too much farther now.” It is not a lie. he believes this. He is wrong in one sense, but not in every. They come to rest about noon; the sun is bright overhead. None can tell if it is sweat or tears stinging in the biting wind. “The snow wouldn’t come to us, so we tried going to the snow. That was wrong, so now that we are here the snow must come to us.” His words precede silence and the cries of stomachs in self-consumption. “Anyway, no good will come if we keep on like this. Maybe we can scavenge for food, but we’re wasting all our energy running on like this.” He finds two more trees: less than ideal, closer to stumps than the first, but good enough. Securing his daughters with the same strands of rope, he looks to sky, both bright and bleak. “We will return. Don’t worry. Should the snow come and melt and the earths flood, you will be safe. But we don’t need to wait for anything to melt no matter. The snow itself will set us free. No matter how long it seems, we are nearby. We will protect you. Hold our love deep in your hearts until we return. It won’t be too long now. I promise you.”
Father and mother do not return. They cannot be seen anywhere through this dense foliage, through these hard angles of hill and vine. Daisy and Maddie wait, taut, wrapped in the enfolding silence of ravine, sky, and ever-acute sunlight, awaiting the sky’s soft down to spread its soft, white, formless presence about them. The snow does not return, yet; but it must, sometime. A small bird circles the sky and the degrees of heat slip down gradually in play with the ever-approaching arms of the night and one, two dry leaves twist before five, six loose strands of hair batting about their eyelashes and pale skin dips paler among royal shades of blue and all is one, waiting with them, charged in the potential, blowing about alone, silent, sheathed in dry leaves and grey sky, bound by myth and winter and woods between light and dark and slanting down the deep ravine cradled and cut by the weight, the soundless fury, the cold, arbored energy that engulfs and buries and burns the world, bourn and breeding fear, held steady, a promise, kept under scrutiny and all bound in the expectation of snow.
A man makes his way slit down through this forest leading wife and two daughters—through the trees, the branches, brambles, the lowering curve of soil cutting a path not-quite perpendicular to the draw of the antapex. He holds a machete, is anchored to each trunk’s bulwark before feeling out for the next. His family maintains the trail he blazons close behind. Words have ceased for hours. The silence is barometric. It hangs in the atmosphere trapped between the air’s density (cold, heavy) and the light (seemingly floating away from the ground, lacking the substance for the Earth’s shallow embrace).
“Where are we going?” The light collapses back through the icy breeze and he turns back to his daughters merely raising his arm (firmly gripping machete) up halfway in a gesture neither can identify before returning to his march.
An hour later he stops, sits down on a tree lain to rest along the ravinous incline. “We should rest now, and eat something,” removing his backpack and fishing out a sandwich (chicken salad). The girls do the same. The sandwich types vary: turkey, ham and cheese, another chicken salad, but the effect is the same. They eat in silence save for the sound of bread and meat and mayonnaise merged into saliva and set between various jaws locked in each monotonous, unsynched tempo. Swallowing his last bite, he stands. His wife stands. The two girls remain seated on the log.
He resumes his march, but stops when he misses the four short legs trudging behind. Without turning around, “Daisy, Maddie, what are you doing back there?”
“Where are we going?”
“You know we don’t have time for this. I told you we don’t have time for questions. Get up. Follow your mother. Stop wasting time, now.”
“How can we go if we don’t know where we’re going? Or why we’re going or what we’re doing. I’m tired.”
He turns around. “Daisy, Maddie, please get up.” Silence finds its formulaic suspension in the atmosphere. “Okay, Maddie. Okay, Daisy. Look at the ground. Look at the trees. Look at the sky. Feel the air. Why is there no snow? Answer me that. We cannot stay here. We’re freezing but there’s no snow, no rain even. We have to move. We’re all tired, but we can’t just stay here in these woods, not until the sky opens up to us. Come on. If we’re walking we won’t feel so cold.”
The younger girl turns toward her older sister. Their silent exchange is significant. They both stand as one. They both walk in file behind their parents, as before, the elder keeping close watch from behind. The hours again pass as before, now in reverse. The scant sun leans down its rays to tuck them in between horizon and bare treetops. As soon as it’s too dark to see unaided, he stops family and hands them a flashlight. “Stay here. I’ll go on ahead to look for a spot where we can set up camp. Don’t move. Don’t use the light unless necessary. I’ll be right back.” About five hundred meters ahead he finds what’s almost a cave in the ravine’s side: no roof, but the ground is level along a sheer wall for almost seventeen meters. He returns to his family and guides them toward the night’s haven. The fire is small but warm. They stretch out on the ground beside it. They take out one blanket each from their backpacks. Each has an extra shirt for a pillow. The children are the first to lose consciousness. “I worry for them exposed like this to the night. There has to be a better way. They can’t be safe,” he says to his wife, huddled against her in the dead of night.
Morning. The embers wane, the tickles out their flames to compete with the fledgling sun. The last of his coffee goes into the tin (tarnished, dented, cold to the touch). While it heats, he drapes the bacon about a thin rod. It’s the only raw meat they were able to pack. This may be their last proper breakfast for days—inasmuch as it is actually a proper breakfast. The coffee percolates and the bacon sizzles, dripping drops of grease to scatter among the flames. Fingers of scent extend among the sleeping females (some supine, one prostrate) and begin to coax them with the allure and false promise of sated hunger. They arise, drink, eat, and relieve themselves before gathering packs and heading out, in line, towards the unseen end of an unfathomed ravine.
The day goes by as sticks part and twigs crack and dirt shifts underfoot. The sky is a diffuse, bright grey. It entwines the trees within its shimmering bleakness. Again the world shifts past; earth to trees to clouds as one. One line of being follows one path: one straight spiral stretched out descending slowly by increments towards the crotch of the crevice. The day moves along, inching towards gravity’s source. Their progress the light flutter of the air’s absent snow.
Night arrives. Again. The past few hours have been aurally speckled with a soft increase in Daisy’s sniffles. The effects of cold and hunger are felt by everyone. “Stay here.” Again. He scrambles off to find another night’s shelter amid the stars and trees and sky. He again fetches his wife and children. Maddie’s sniffles have begun to catch up with Daisy’s. “We haven’t been doing things right. We’ve been careless, not safe. Maddie, Daisy, these woods are not kind to children. The forest doesn’t respect you like we do. Without the tempering balance of snow you’re left too unprotected.” In the middle of a small clearing are two solid, solitary trees (glorified stumps): bare, limbless, and smooth; not three meters apart. With his hands gently at the girls’ backs, he slides down to where the ground evens out and the undergrowth abates and the two trees stand alone, supported in reciprocal austerity. “This is just what I had in mind.”
When his wife catches up, they all remove their packs. Blankets are spread out on the ground, but he picks up his daughters’ and returns them to their hands. “You can put these back; you won’t be needing them tonight.” Digging into his backpack he removes a length of twine which he then twains with pocketknife (rising through the loop cleft in symmetry). First the youngest: loft, hands carefully under the armpits; he holds her against the trunk, feet four feet from the ground, and twines her tight and safe from harm. He then ties his other daughter to the other tree in the same fashion. “If you need anything just let me know. I hope we can finally rest tonight. We’ll need it for tomorrow.” He lies down with his wife, underneath a blanket, arms enmeshed, serene. Sleep comes easily, steeped in peace. It is only disturbed once when one of the children asks for water. He happily obliges, lifting the canteen to her lips. He starts to ask the other if she’s thirsty as well, but dares not disturb her slumber. They all sleep fast til morning.
With the sun comes a new day with the same routines. The girls are let down; they stretch their backs; bones pop. “My back hurts.” “I’m sorry, honey. You know, ours aren’t much better after sleeping on the hard ground.” They walk. It is much the same as the days before. Earth. Sky. Slope. Cold. Brush. Trees. And quiet. The biggest difference is they’re out of food. Daisy groans. Maddie groans. The woods are bare and their father doesn’t know how much longer they can go on. The air is tense with a stale charge, but no snow breaks it. Without words he thinks of failure. Before he can find them he thinks of nothing. “It shouldn’t be too much farther now.” It is not a lie. he believes this. He is wrong in one sense, but not in every. They come to rest about noon; the sun is bright overhead. None can tell if it is sweat or tears stinging in the biting wind. “The snow wouldn’t come to us, so we tried going to the snow. That was wrong, so now that we are here the snow must come to us.” His words precede silence and the cries of stomachs in self-consumption. “Anyway, no good will come if we keep on like this. Maybe we can scavenge for food, but we’re wasting all our energy running on like this.” He finds two more trees: less than ideal, closer to stumps than the first, but good enough. Securing his daughters with the same strands of rope, he looks to sky, both bright and bleak. “We will return. Don’t worry. Should the snow come and melt and the earths flood, you will be safe. But we don’t need to wait for anything to melt no matter. The snow itself will set us free. No matter how long it seems, we are nearby. We will protect you. Hold our love deep in your hearts until we return. It won’t be too long now. I promise you.”
Father and mother do not return. They cannot be seen anywhere through this dense foliage, through these hard angles of hill and vine. Daisy and Maddie wait, taut, wrapped in the enfolding silence of ravine, sky, and ever-acute sunlight, awaiting the sky’s soft down to spread its soft, white, formless presence about them. The snow does not return, yet; but it must, sometime. A small bird circles the sky and the degrees of heat slip down gradually in play with the ever-approaching arms of the night and one, two dry leaves twist before five, six loose strands of hair batting about their eyelashes and pale skin dips paler among royal shades of blue and all is one, waiting with them, charged in the potential, blowing about alone, silent, sheathed in dry leaves and grey sky, bound by myth and winter and woods between light and dark and slanting down the deep ravine cradled and cut by the weight, the soundless fury, the cold, arbored energy that engulfs and buries and burns the world, bourn and breeding fear, held steady, a promise, kept under scrutiny and all bound in the expectation of snow.