Life is mostly good down here in the suburbs. I find enough silence, and solitude, and discovery in the overgrown strip mines and the hilly woodlots that form a ring around the desolate outer edges of the city. I explore the state game lands, and every once in a while, I trek out as far as a state park. Raccoon Creek. Ryerson. Moraine. Occasionally I come across a truly beautiful spot, too. My great goal down here in the Southwest is to do some back country camping in the Quebec Run Wild Area of Forbes State Forest. But when I lived up in the North Woods, there was none of this dreary poking around old strip mines and abandoned buildings. There was never any coal in that region, which left the topography gloriously intact. No, up there, I wasn't a ghoulish little man nosing around the dark corners of abandoned sheds. Quite the contrary, I made spectacular weekly discoveries of truly wild places.
Southwestern Pennsylvania is where I own land, and that connects me to it deeply. My first memories of the world are set in this area. This is where my children are in school, and I don't believe in changing schools if it can be avoided. Here, my wife and I have careers that are going well, and work that we truly love. It's here that the city-of-our-life is located--along with all the memories of being young, and adventurous, and starting our life together as a family. I can't drive down any street in the city without thinking, "Oh, yeah, that's where we went for our first anniversary," or, "This is the neighborhood our favorite professor lived in," or, "That's the corner where I was walking home, falling down drunk, and I asked a black guy for a cigarette."
I can see now that I will almost certainly live and die in the Southwest corner of the state. But sometimes I feel like an exile here from the Great North Woods. I can't wait to go back...
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