Points of View

           The view of downtown Pittsburgh from the summit of Mt. Washington is so common around here that it's almost cliche.  After living here a few years, you stop seeing it.  And yet, it really is remarkable.

           A lesser known vista is the lonely Ohio River as it pursues its westward course, also seen from the peak of Mt. Washington.  So many things around here are named "Washington" because the guy spent a lot of time out in these parts--speculating for Virginia Colony and for his own personal interests.  Years ago, I saw tourist literature claiming that for Washington, crossing the Delaware was easy, but the Allegheny almost killed him.  It refers to an unplanned December swim he took in the half-frozen river in 1753.

          This larger-than-life sculpture depicts a 1770 meeting that took place between Washington and Guyasutha (known to us upstaters as "Kiasutha"), the Seneca Indian who led young Washington on his first trek up the Allegheny on a failed diplomatic mission to the French.  Though they originally met in 1753, the statues represent an encounter that took place 17 years later, when they sat on the banks of the Ohio and debated the future of the region.  Though they disagreed, they supposedly parted on friendly terms.  The name of the piece is "Points of View."  I think it should be named "Kiss the Girl."

Along Slippery Rock Creek

           Spent a few days of solitude at a little-known retreat center deep in the countryside along Slippery Rock Creek recently.  It was a place of quiet beauty.

           The whole point was to get a chapter of my dissertation written without all the distractions, but alas woods, and fields, and streams, and remodeled barns hold their own distractions for the likes of me...

           It did prove to be a good place to write, especially since my dissertation is about beauty---a painfully esoteric study in the field of aesthetics, as it relates to my equally esoteric line of work.

          There's a near-flatness to the northwest corner of Butler County, and the little back roads wend on for miles and miles between fields and pastures, woods and streams.  In a way, nothing special.  In another way, extraordinary.  The wildflowers are all in bloom.

Venango and Fort Machault

On November 30, 1753, a young George Washington described "Venango" [Franklin, PA] 

in his no-nonsense journal:  

"This is an old Indian Town, fituated at the Mouth of French Creek on Ohio [the Allegheny]... We found French Colours hoifted at a Houfe which they drove Mr. John Frazier, an English Subject, from; I immediately repaired to it.... Captain Joncaire invited us to fup with them and treated us with great Complaifance.  The Wine, as they dofed themselves pretty plentifully with it, foon banifhed the Reftraint which at firft appear'd in their Converfation, and gave a Licenfe to their Tongues to reveal their Sentiments..."  

Of course, in the mid-1700s, they used the letter "F" in many places where we now use an "S."  The John Fraser mentioned here was a Pennsylvania man who had a trading post on this spot until the French evicted him, laying claim to the entire region.  Three years after George Washington's errand into the French-occupied wilderness of Western Pennsylvania, Fort Machault was constructed to guard Paris's claims to the lands west of the Allegheny Mountains.  The below photo shows the spot where French Creek empties into the Allegheny River.  It's a mini-Pittsburgh in that it was a strategic meeting place of two important, navigable waterways into the interior of the continent.  There was a large Delaware Indian village at the point where the two waterways meet.  The French had a fort here.  Then the English had one.  Then, in the 1790s, the Americans had another one.  

I'm from a much younger town just a few miles up the river from Franklin, the straw-fire boomtown that is Oil City.  Some parts of Oil City are still nice, but it was always an industrial town.  Franklin is older, classier, and much prettier, with a charming main street and one of the most interesting old courthouses I've ever seen.  I was back in the area today for a family birthday and had a chance to paddle around the historic confluence in  my kayak. The current was nearly impossible to fight, as I tried to travel upriver from the site of old French Fort Machault to the site of the English Fort Venango.  In the second photo, see the little point of land that probably looks much today as it did in the 1750s--except that virgin forest in the region was largely hemlock and beech.  French Creek is the leftward stream.  It's hard to believe that the mightiest empires of Europe once vied for this spot.  

Super Moon

At 11:30pm on May 5, 2012, I stayed up to see the so-called "Super Moon."  It's said to be 14% bigger and 30% brighter than an average full moon, as it makes its closest pass to the earth this year.  

A View from the Gutter

         The ugly suburbs sprawling over hill and dale.  I wonder if it was all woods and fields forty years ago?  Sometimes I like to look at a place and re-create it in my mind, imagine it as the place it once was.

          Alas, I do hate cleaning out the gutters.  Wrestling with a 32-foot ladder.  Getting my knuckles all scraped to hell.  Looking down from those risky heights.  The house is so damned tall that I rarely clean the gutters, but these blasted silver maples keep clogging them, causing them to overflow.  Now we've got carpenter ants in the rotted wood... I've learned that when you purchase a really old house, it's with the assumption that your home is going to be your hobby.  It will take all the spare time, and energy, and money you can give it.  My whole life is running around plugging holes, doing quick fixes, temporary triage just to keep it all from crumbling to the earth.

          When I was young, I enjoyed dangling from great heights, but that day is long gone.  When I was a renter, I loved nothing more than a quiet, rainy day.  But that is gone, too.  Now when it rains, I think about the gutters.  And the rotten wood.  And the carpenter ants.

The Gracious Intruder

           A quick afternoon hike on my day off yielded some unexpected surprises.  There were redtails all in the sky above.  But far more exciting was this enormous snapping turtle, just a-sauntering down the lane that traverses State Game Land #117 near Burgettstown, Washington County.  These things live about 30 years in the wild, and they're mean!  To think that this guy could have been around back in the days of the Reagan Administration, and Glasnost, and Perestroika... Somehow the world felt more promising then.  Of course, all the possibilities of life do crowd in on you when you're 12.

           This guy wasn't in the mood to chitchat about Cyndi Lauper or the fall of the Berlin Wall.  No, when I placed my hat beside him (for comparison purposes) he struck at me fast as a snake...but not far enough to reach me.  He wouldn't turn his back on me, either.  When I walked around him to get a better look at the spiked shell just above his scaly tail, he turned around with me, keeping his eyes on mine.  I was invading his space, I know, but I couldn't resist baiting the turtle a little.  I put my walking stick near his nose, just to see what he would do.  He struck at it over and over with enormous speed and force.  I'd hate to get bitten by him.  His claws look uninviting, too.

           Speaking of "invading space," Japanese honeysuckle perfumes the air in all the countryside just north of Burgettstown.  This plant is an "invasive species," a gracious intruder, much hated by botanical purists whose cry is "local species."  And yet, the Japanese honeysuckle makes these old overgrown stripmines bloom with life.  These things are everywhere in the game land, and their delicate fragrance lifts the spirit.  They're living proof that sometimes things do get better.  Back when that snapping turtle was young, this land was an abandoned waste: pillaged, and stripped, and left to smolder beneath the summer sun.  Lifeless.  Treeless.  Exposed.  Today, at least, there is life here again, a hardy ecosystem of undemanding grasses, and low shrubs and the very toughest of birds and animals.  This isn't the prettiest place to hike near Pittsburgh, but in early May, it's certainly one of the most aroma-therapeutic.  In addition to the Japanese honeysuckle, there's a slightly sharp but pleasant scent of ramps in the air.  Up north, we call them "wild leeks," and their season is just about past.  

          It was a great day for a short trek, with the sun beaming brightly above scuttling clouds, the birds singing freely, and the warm breezes pressing me on.  However, I did find five deer ticks on me!  Three during the hike itself and two after I got home.  That number is unheard of.  It looks as if the bagworms are settling in for a good, long infestation around here, too, with their ugly nests in the trees.  This last picture is the springtime view of a shot I took back in the chilly days of February when there was a light dusting of snow on this very road.