Standing on the porch at my parents' house, I'm surrounded by trees and snow as far as I can see.  Nature envelopes me as completely as if I were a lost little boat on the ocean.  It's so near at hand, I can't resist reaching out and dipping my naked fingers into the cold snow.  I suppose there's no better place to be, if you're unemployed--far away from people, the colony that has deemed you useless.  You've even offered to do an internship and work for free, but they think you would be a better help if you just got out of the way.

Trees are a rare sight in Boston.  Most vegetation that finds its way into the urban center is food for the working bodies.  There are a few parks.  The most popular one is called Boston Commons.  Its landscape is contrived, but sometimes I would lie on the grass and look up through the oak leaves and pretend that I was in a clearing maintained by forest fairies.  Sun draws out chlorophyll the same in the East as it does back home.  And the sparrows in Boston chirp just like our sparrows do.  Supposedly birds have accents, but I couldn't hear the difference.  I was happy to see that my avian friends can weather the city and prove they are as versatile as humans.  They're more adaptable than I am.  If Boston was a drink, my stomach couldn't take the population concentrate very well.  I spent my mornings walking up and down the boardwalk at the beach, trying to soak up the flash of nature that the harbor provided.

"I need new boots," my sister declared, and my first Saturday in Boston she plopped me in her car and drove to Newbury Street.  Shopping came easily to me.  Reckless purchasing is a genetic skill that I had long diagnosed as one of my mother's core problems.  The realization that I didn't escape it frightens and disgusts me.  I'm unemployed.  I can't be buying myself clothes.  "What else is there to do?" my sister said on Sunday, when I tried to protest a second trip to the stores.  I looked around at the gray buildings and shrugged.