The Quest for Illusions

 The old, familiar joy--at last--to feel the bracing cold of winter as I stride out into the Big World!  A dismal season of endless rain and 45 degree temps lingered far too long.  Although my recent outings have been largely limited to the local rail trails, due to hunting season, it was freeing and restorative to feel the cold wind searching my outer layers of clothing for even the tiniest point of entry.  Besides, one good thing about walking the rail trails in the winter is that you get to pass through the old rail-towns like the slow ghost of some long-ago steam engine.  The above scene of wintry desolation is the tired-out old borough of Imperial. I always thought it seemed like a dingy place from Route 30, but from the Montour Trail, it has charms.

 A part of me really hates life in the 'burbs.  Even though my career is far more successful here, and folks here tend to understand me a lot better than they did up North, on the whole I found life in the country more to my liking.  I've lived inside large cities before, and would do it again if I had to.  Every city has its own distinct spirit and style.  A fine city like Pittsburgh takes decades to discover and offers new adventures all the time.  But this indistinct place between city and country puzzles me.  Actually, I've been a little dysthymic ever since we moved down here a year and a half ago.  But there's a sad, forlorn loveliness to the worn-out landscape around the the edges of the former Montour Railroad.  

When I was a child, I trusted the eponymous "sylvan" hills that provide the backdrop for all of life in this part of Pennsylvania.   I knew that those hills were my native place, and believed that they would take me back and shelter me...if I asked them to.  Theirs was the power to take me in, give me refuge.  Somehow, I believed that if I could only wander up onto the steep, wooded hillsides at the edge of any town--Kittanning, Oil City, Franklin--then I could escape into a vast wilderness, as free and unencumbered as Grizzly Adams.  Now, of course, I know that most of those hills just have valleys with roads and buildings on the other side.  But my weekly hikes are still an old, old quest to maintain the illusion that there's fuller life, freer life, just around the bend and over the hill.  Much of life's happiness is in the ability to maintain healthy illusions.