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How close can I get to nature while staying in the city, without losing my sense of place and purpose, without being so marked by the city that I lose my wilderness, here where garish orange dots the vista? I have been inside too long, too long without friends and purpose, without anyone to tell me what color are my eyes under a cloudy sky or over a frozen ravine?

Walking away from the water, I see city property, plastic neon orange objects nestled into nature: buoys behind the dam, a plastic “fence” leaned up against an oak, and in front of a pine, four orange and white striped cones with caution tape veils, the word “CAPITAL” written on each object’s base.

What’s the function of these official objects? They seem to have outlived their purpose. They seem to me as wild as what they half-heartedly protect. This tree could fall, the dam bust. The yellow caution tape is for me in my own disaster, a disaster in which, having held it together for so long, I let nature graft itself on me without fighting it, cracking and peeling, chipping, and that’s where the moss grows greenest.