Sublimescapes

Sublimescapes seeks mountaintop experiences at any altitude - amidst urban flora and fauna, atop ridge lines, along industrial shorelines. From where I sit on a sunny spring morning (at my study desk, where I start most mornings,) I hear both birds’ celebratory songs and the white-noise whirring of a generator atop a nearby hospital parking structure. I hear traffic - car horns, revving engines, an occasional perturbed driver - but also my backyard chickens clucking and oak leaves catching the breeze and, during grey days in Pittsburgh, the patter of rain. These are the dominant sounds in my urban neighborhood’s compact, complex ecosystem in which both life and decay, both wildlife and things made by humans (vinyl-siding homes, potholed streets, so many, many automobiles) coexist and compete. I write because I want it all: Because I delight in watching the swallows and finches alighting upon three locust trees outside my window and building a nest near my front door. But also because I want humans to stop generating so much waste and climate change and injustice, embodied even in that hospital generator whirring. I also know humans are participating in an amazing process of co-creation in which our minds and hands and sheer brawn produce wondrous contraptions, both massive and nanosize - amidst those ridge lines and shorelines, for sure, but also in this neighboring hospital, where humans repair humans, strangers share body organs, new births enrapture. This, too, is nature. Conversely, vibrant blue jays can be destructive and mean. I write because I want the order of things to become clearer. But I hear the incessant whirring. I see and feel the grisly and the oily. And I still don’t understand birdspeak. So I keep writing. Sublimescapes is a micro-blog about encountering nature in unexpected places. Because the nature of wilderness can be explored anywhere.