Ghost on the Trail

            I took the pause of the continual snow Sunday evening to mean I should bundle up once more and make my way across campus to the freshly blanketed Rachel Carson Garden.  The winter quiet was broken up by the slush of the cars below and a lonely bird calling for a friend.  Even as fresh as the snowfall was on a lazy Sunday, indistinguishable shoeprints carried on in a constant stream.  Though the snow covered the dirt trampled trail the owners of these tracks still manage to avoid the buried garden and lawn on their roundabout way to the apartment stairs.  This adherence to the trail resulted in a Bermuda triangle where the crossways lay between Buhl’s lower entrance, the trail to the apartments, and the stairs to campus.

            In front of me stretched the vast, untouched snow covered lawn and garden.  I couldn’t decide whether to break the balance and wander from the trail.   On my previous visits I had taken to walking in a meandering loop in front of the garden nestled alongside the stairs to campus.  This portion of the lawn is in a brick alcove that protects it from the piercing wind.  When I stand there I almost get too warm for my heavy jacket and thick scarf.  Almost. 

            But yesterday, unlike those shoeprints so sure of their trail, I hesitated from my normal, weaving path.  Had I been equipped with the proper snow attire I would not have thought twice about falling backward into the pristine blanket that lay before me.  I might not have made an actual snow angel but rather just lay in the muffled silence for a while.  Maybe I would build a mound like castle to brighten the more observant passerby’s day. 

            Then I began to wonder if people had noticed my shoeprint’s break from the trail on previous visits as I noticed their consistency in steps even without a visible trail to follow.  Would somebody stop and wonder why there was a looping labyrinth tracked out on the hidden lawn?  Had they noticed my presence left behind before?  Would they, too, break from the regular trail to see what I had found so interesting?  To see if I had left anything behind?   Or was everyone so hurried in his or her morning routine, head bent against the self-created wind, to notice the alcove they passed everyday?

            Well, they had the opportunity in last week’s snow to notice my meandering trail.  Where I had tripped on a hidden rock and stumbled, leaving a snow crater in my wake.  But this week I decided differently.  I kept to the trail, my shuffled walk mixed with the slew of shoeprints.  The blanket of snow covering the lawn and garden snuggled in the alcove remained fresh.  And this week I became as much of a ghost as any of the other travelers along this path.

Crashing Waves

            So many big changes can happen to a place in just a week.  After bundling up with at least three more layers than the last time I ventured to the garden I make it across campus and down the concrete steps, snow crunching beneath my boots the whole way.  Before I even reach the bottom of the stairs my heart sinks.

            You see the garden is split in two, divided by the path people take to the apartments or the stairs leading to 5^th avenue.  The first chunk is nestled up against the stairway, hidden until you reach the very bottom step.  The second chunk is right in the middle of the otherwise open lawn.  An island of plants in a sea of mud and grass.  Since before I knew it was a garden this second chunk had been overflowing with elephant grass, mint, and a knotted mess of thistles.  But now, on just my second visit to this struggling garden, this entire second chunk has been ripped out and discarded.  All that’s left is the vague outline of what looks like the kidney-shaped pools I’ve seen my dad draw up for clients, and the stubble of stems poking through the fresh snow.   Without the waves of elephant grass I have clear view to the roofs of the Chatham apartments.  But the area looks too open now.  Like a flood could just was it away with no plants to hold the ground in place. 

            I knew this was coming.  When the Mortar Board began planting last fall we were told we would be working on the second chunk in the spring.  The clearing of this section should be a good sign.  A sign that this garden has not been forgotten once again.  That people are still formulating plans of which plants to put where and when.  That at the soonest possible date my roommate and I will be out there with the rest of Mortar Board adding life to this now sad blob of space.

            “Besides,” my roommate tells me once I’ve returned from my outing and reported my findings, “That elephant grass was pretty useless there.  Just some random seeds somebody threw down so landscaping wouldn’t reclaim it as part of the lawn.” 

            Even so, I had been hoping to see that mess of elephant grass just one more time, its stalks bending with the weight of the cold before crashing back to the ground where it overflowed into the surrounding lawn.  On my walk over this afternoon I had pictured it to look like a brown toned version of “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa”.  The stalks the crashing waves they had been on my last visit with the now fresh snow creating the froth of the colliding tide.  With the elephant grass ripped out the vision I have constructed in my head is the way I will remember this second chunk of garden.  At least until planting begins in the spring.

Rachel Carson and the Secret Garden

            Having been apart of the Chatham community for about four years I was surprised to hear fellow members of The Mortar Board, a senior honors society, discuss an on-campus service project of planting in the Rachel Carson Garden.  The surprise was not due to addition of more plants to Chatham’s campus, but because in all my time researching Chatham and attending the university, I had never once heard reference to this allusive “Rachel Carson Garden”.

            My visit this past week was very similar to my first visit to the garden to begin planting with the Mortar Board.  Both days were brisk, a thick sweatshirt able to keep the chill away, even though there should be a greater difference between October and January.  There is a wetness that hangs in the air and coats the concrete stairs which lead down the side of Buhl, the science building.  The concrete ends abruptly; giving way to a trail that seems to have been created by continual passage of students looking for a shortcut to the apartments, which in turn has left a crater for an ever-present blob of water stuck in the stage between pond and puddle.  Nestled snuggly beside the brick structure of the stairs, in the patchy area between Buhl and the Laughlin Music Hall, sits the Rachel Carson Garden.

The garden still seems empty, with just a few tree-like shrubs fighting their way through winter.  But if I look close enough in the fading light, I can see the remains of the now dormant plants I helped to plant.  I crouch down to get a closer look at a section of plants closest to the edge of the small garden.  My balance is uneasy and I fear falling back into the surrounding mud.  I rest my fingers against the mulch to steady my wobble.  The ground is cool to the touch and I am not surprised to find patches of snow that have evaded the heat of the sun.  Now closer to the ground I can make out where the soil has more recently been disturbed, where the dark red leaves of my plant still remains.  And this one is mine.  I remember planting it, knees sinking into the soft grass while I tucked the fledgling in with a mix of compost and clay-like soil. 

But that was a clear fall morning, and this is an unusually warm winter evening.  The trees’ bright leaves replaced by the lights of Shady Side as they flicker on to combat the darkening grey sky.  If it wasn’t for the light of the Buhl Atrium I wouldn’t have been able to make it that far along the garden.  Still, the light is not enough for me to make out the thin, blue plant identifier three bunches of red leaves away from my plant.  When we had planted the dozen or so new additions to the Rachel Carson Garden that October morning, I was educated on each plant name, when they would look their brightest, what they would look like, and why they were good for the garden.  That information faded quicker than the written plant identifiers.  And so all I can leave with tonight is some soggy red leaves and mud caked boots.