Background

Portia Agnes Bella was born on September 5th in 1960 in the small town of Four Springs, Pennsylvania to Fiona and Carmen Bella. It was never a guess on why Portia became the nature loving lady she is today as her family was always outdoorsy. Her mother was an educator at the local school before working in the Ohiopyle State Park after its opening in 1965. Her father would also join her in working here but in law enforcement, his previously being a cop fitting right in. Portia was never a big people person and would oftentimes opt to follow along with her Mom or Dad through the park on weekends off from school instead of being around her peers. She was quiet, curious, and shy, never good at sports nor particularly good at standing up for herself. Most of this would stick into her teen and adult years as well. Deep down Mr. and Mrs. Bella wanted Portia to go into a career that involved the outdoors but they never needed to push. When other kids would say they wanted to become a firefighter or a police officer or an astronaut, Portia already knew the words for what she wanted to be, and that was a botanist. It may not be the degree that’d make her the most money but she set herself down that path anyways. When she graduated high school, and after a year break between the two, she’d move to get her bachelors at Pennsylvania State University. During her college years Portia stuck to herself as she always did. Despite this she’d often work her early mornings and afternoons at the campus’s greenhouse and botany club. It was usually quiet and after her rounds of the plant growing facilities she was able to work on classwork or bury herself in books amongst a place that felt safer than the hectic campus town outside. She met a few people here and there but most just knew her as the quiet plant lady that shuffled around the halls and always, somehow, had dirt stains somewhere on her outfits. These years weren’t easy and Portia found herself becoming more and more stressed with her workload and homesickness and by the end of her bachelors degree she was overjoyed to finally head home permanently...as far as she knew. After college life returned to how Portia enjoyed it, quiet, uneventful, and away from lots of people. Most would say she never put her degree to good use but Portia didn't care. She'd start working at her small local library alongside an even smaller gardening shop where she'd build a greenhouse that’d sell fresh produce year around. The things she learned both academically and in life within the last four years went to good use in her own eyes. After eight years into being back from college her Dad would become ill and eventually bed ridden from influenza and the subsequent Pneumonia. Her mother would take leave from her job to take care of him while Portia worked extra hours to help pay for whatever she could, but none of this would help. On a particularly dreary April afternoon Carmen Bella would pass away from cardiac arrest caused by pneumonia, leaving Portia and her mother Fiona to live by themselves. The next years were just as quiet if not more so than the previous...but Portia knew it wasn't the good kind of quiet she'd found to love. She'd find tears running down her cheeks as she sat in the breakfast nook of her childhood home, a place that always garnered safety from these feelings. On trails she'd walked for years and years she'd find herself never stopping to take in the sights in fear she'd feel her knees buckle out from beneath her. It was a quiet only someone you relied on and leaned on, now gone, left. The quiet was not merciful and would start to take Portia's mother the following year. This time Portia would take leave from her jobs and take care of her, but it wasn't much use either. In the years following her parents' passing, Portia would only return to work at her gardens, noticeably even more taken by the quiet. Her boss insisted and would eventually officially move her to a permanent position cleaning and taking care of the greenhouses and produce so she wouldn't need to deal with the public. Portia didn't say much nor argued at her full time plant babysitter job. She even quite enjoyed the new position, though she still didn't say much. When that fateful march day came, Portia didn't say much either. She was scared, mortified even by what she saw, but she stayed quiet. She moved into the woods and traveled. She was never particularly good at standing up for herself nor fighting, but the woods was where she could survive the best. The woods was where she knew, where she could point anywhere and tell you exactly how those things worked and grew and lived. Just like what she loved, she too would become part of the ecosystem, foraging and growing what she needed, giving back what she didn't. Maybe it was only happen stance she came upon Knox county, maybe the roots and birds and wind told her that's where she should head, either way she'd keep on doing what she loved. Living.