This past weekend my wife and I, along with a friend (Lucas), spent the days traversing the rounded hill-tops and 'fording' the rushing, early-spring streams of the Allegheny National Forest. It was a relaxing weekend, spent with pack on back and map in hand. We didn't have a real destination in mind, as all we hoped to do was to get our minds away from the cramped-up offices that have come to be the main environment through which we spend a majority of our waking existence. The peaceful rush of water and the rapid-fire tapping of the Downy Woodpecker was tugging at my soul in the deepest recesses of my being. I had to get out in nature. I had to leave the house. I didn't want to drink any beer this Saturday. The weather would have no affect on my mind; I was going no matter whether it rained, snowed or threw down lightning--which, ironically, was the coming forecast.
But, as is most common in Pennsylvania, the forecast never came into fruition, and we had two beautiful days of hiking weather. Parts of the shadowed valleys still had pockets of snow, but for the most part, we indulged our senses by touching lichen and moss-covered rocks, smelling the fragrance of vast stands of White-Pine and methodically enjoying the calmness that radiated outwards from water rushing over rocks and branches, as it made its quick escape down to the Allegheny River. Juncos, sparrows, hawks and chipmunks were our most-commonly seen fellow creatures, and we were delighted in their seeming disinterest in us, leaving us to our own adventure, as they flout above our heads in canopies, or stole away in hollowed-out trunks.
An escape to nature really does bring one back to reality in regards to our very HUMAN and natural connection to the earth. I've heard many times over again about those who have contemplated the vastness of the universe, and in consequence thereafter, been humbled. But for me, the universe is not tangible. It's large, sure enough, but I need to have my 'place checked' by seeing grandiose things that I can concretely know to be greater than myself. And hiking amongst gigantic igneous boulders is the perfect place. Thankfully, the Alleghenies are strewn-through with these mammoths, and each time I perch myself upon one, I am struck by how old this one, solitary rock must be. It's not part of the soil. It's not part of the earth's crust. It's not part of the hill. It's its own entity, sitting in that one place for over 1,000,000 years. It has seen geographical time, as it itself is a consequence ( and witness) to the near incomprehensible forces that created its being. And we mere humans, with our 72-year life-spans, climb on top of it and feel might. Who are we fooling, right?!
It's amazing the beauty that sits less than a two-hour drive to the east. It's hard for me to imagine that in this country, a nation in which we are blessed to have so many natural and geographic anomalies, that we Americans wouldn't want to preserve our own treasure. It's too bad that this last refuge of Western Pennsylvania wilderness might be on the chopping block for more gas drilling, yet I'm hopeful that the forest will be resilient, after all, it's already been environmentally pillaged once before; it's just unfortunate that 2011 is no different than 1911 in our society's collective thinking about the importance and necessity of nature.
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