A Midsummer Day's Trek

This bucolic scene is the valley of Buffalo Creek in Washington County. State Game Lands #232 is a large tract of wooded land along neglected country lanes that used to be public thoroughfares.

Once again, photos are taken with my lame-arse cell phone. Although this is the notoriously polluted country of coal and shale, there were many fish in the stream, darting in deep pools dappled with the afternoon sun. I tried to imagine a day in their lives, their world, but I couldn't.

The solitude is glorious in the game lands in midsummer. I was a little dismayed to find that the goldenrod are already in bloom, since I associate them with the ripening season of late August and early September.

This trek had a wild feel to it, almost like being back up in the North Country. The road wends through dense forest, occasionally running along the edge of a long-fallow field and frequently running parallel to the creek. In the meadow stretches, the scent of clover lingers in the air.

The old road passing through this segment of the game lands is called Buffalo Camp Road. There are side roads that meet up with it at certain intervals, and they're all worth exploring.

I wanted to stay out there till darkness fell, to immerse myself in the wild lands and the clover smell, to construct a sleeping hut out of grasses and limbs, to swim in moonlit pools with those living fishes.

But tomorrow calls, with its duties and demands. Tomorrow beckons, with its formalities and its rites. Funny how, when the summer is in full swing, you forget what winter was really like.