Raccoon Creek, Forest Trail

           Some secrets are better kept.  Nothing can be gained by sharing them, and a lot can be lost.  So you tell me your dark secret in a selfish attempt to mollify your aching conscience.  I might have figured it out on my own someday.  And I might not have.

           And even if I did figure it out, I may or may not have chosen to confront you about it.  Maybe I would have valued our routine enough to keep my secret knowledge to myself.  It's called discipline.  It has to do with prioritizing the things that matter most to your overall well-being.

          But if you come right out and tell me--with tears and mea culpas--then all those possibilities are lost.   Once a truth has been given a name, you can never unknow it.  Words add an extra layer of reality to otherwise abstract facts; they confer real weight onto abstractions.  That's why some people don't like to talk about  their fears.  They know that words give things power.  There's something to be said for the old Germanic tendency to keep things under your hat.  Hiding emotions and keeping secrets are just two tactics in a comprehensive system of mental health.

          The evidence of long ago human habitation along Forest Trail, Raccoon Creek State Park, is part of its charm. Note the old foundation in the second photo.  It's the shallow cellar of some small house or outbuilding.  And sitting alongside the trail is this perfectly carved stone block.  Stone-cutting is a disappearing art, but here sits the masterpiece of some long-forgotten craftsman.  Too bad the stone can't serve some structural function somewhere.  I mean, it's already been stripped of its wild character and natural form.  It seems unfair to domesticate it, then leave it to sit in the woods.  Of course, I don't feel passionately enough about it to try to cart the damn thing out of there...

The Southern Tier, New York

           As long as we're extolling the virtues of all things north of the 42nd parallel, here are some more photos of New York State's Southern Tier.  This is an abandoned farmhouse on NY 394 in Cattaraugus County.  In fact, I saw this house from I-86 en route to Allegany State Park from the Chautauqua Institution; it's at the "Schoolhouse Road" exit just west of the village of Randolph.  If I could have found an inconspicuous spot to park my car, I would have been in that place!

          Locally, some people talk about the "Twin Tiers."  That's to say, the Southern Tier of New York and the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania.  Ironically, it means that the "Southern Tier" is to the north of the "Northern Tier."  But that's not the only confusing thing about using the expression "Twin Tiers."   The most confusing and misleading thing is that there's very little similarity between them.  This is the Hotel Lenway on the shores of Lake Chautauqua.  It's very much like the old wooden hotels you'll find in the Finger Lakes.  Down here, south of the border, I'm pretty sure that all the clapboard hotels disappeared long ago.  They were consumed in grease fires and drunken mishaps with kerosene lamps. Down here, big wooden structures don't last more than seventy or eighty years because, after a long shift at the factory or coal mine, people collapse into bed with lit cigarettes in their mouths.  And nobody bothers to paint real wooden clapboards.  Unless Home Depot is having a real cheap sale on vinyl siding, that place is toast.

           The gulls--or terns--on the docks at Lake Chautauqua, Bemus Point.  Come early because seating atop the poles appears to be limited.

          This is the venerable old Athenaeum Hotel on the grounds of the Chautauqua Institution.  In some ways, Chautauqua is a pretentious place.  It's what would happen if National Public Radio hosted an old fashioned church camp: costly, intellectual, with first rate speakers and plush--if faded--accommodations.

Quaker Run, New York

           Occasionally you just have to cross that 42nd parallel northward and breathe the freer air of a more progressive state.  I love New York State, where there's a sense of civic-mindedness, where public lands are protected, and fracking is still banned.  This is the beautiful and exceedingly wild Allegany State Park in Cattaraugus County, in the region known as "The Southern Tier."  I chanced upon a mother black bear and her cub on my most recent trek here last week on the Flagg Trail.  This park is everything that our Allegheny National Forest ought to be but isn't--due to oil, gas, and timber extraction.  These photos were taken about five miles from the Pennsylvania line.

           All you have to do is cross the border into New York, and you can feel the difference: quaint towns with microbreweries and antique shops, imaginative little restaurants, well-kept farms, vast stretches of well-preserved woodlands.  And lakes! How is it that Nature gave New York so many lakes?  Chautauqua Lake--with its venerable old "Institution"--is not more than fifteen miles from the Pennsylvania border, but it's much larger than any natural lakes south of the 42nd.  I hate to say it, but The Chautauqua Institution couldn't exist, somehow, on our side of the border...

           Pennsylvania is home, and it has a lot to offer: history, scenery, faded glory, and amazing old architecture.  But I must admit that New York is by far the better place to live: its cities are bigger and much more cosmopolitan; its mountains are taller and more rugged; its wilderness is deeper; its got an ingrained commitment to the common good.  And it's got a coastline.

          It's true, too, that Pennsylvania feels quaint, clean, and progressive when you cross over from West Virginia.  I often say that Pennsylvania exists so that New York doesn't have to touch West Virginia. We're a buffer zone between North and South, East and Midwest, true Blue and deep Red.  We've got just enough of the Ivy League and "Seven Sisters" schools to make us passingly respectable.  People are vaguely aware of our first rate symphonies, too.  But everything good is offset by the anti-intellectual, warmongering influences of the Scotch-Irish.  We have enough mouthbreathing Republicans to make us an embarrassing "swing state," not to mention all the coal and natural gas.  I don't know that a place can ever fully recover from the kind of ruination that was inflicted on us by the industrial era.  And we almost certainly will not recover from the Marcellus shale industry that is now running roughshod over our government, aquifers, and countryside.

         Okay, so truth to tell, when I arrived at the gate to this state park, they wanted to charge me $7 entrance fee.  Cash only.  I don't carry cash, so I parked by the roadside and bushwhacked alongside the lake to the trailhead.  Pennsylvania state parks never charge an entrance fee.  PA: 1 / NY: 101.

City Steps of Pittsburgh

          One thing I love about Pittsburgh is the steepness of the streets.  The old city steps are maintained in many places, like this sidewalk along Cuthbert Street on Mount Washington.  In some of the denser neighborhoods, a paved street might actually dead-end at a pair of steps.  The steps themselves are considered part of the street.  You'll often see a municipal staircase with a street sign.  The old city steps add to the wonder and the mystery of the city.  To me, they give Pittsburgh a mythical feel, similar to the dark world of a Simon and Garfunkel song...

Union Trust Building

          The old Union Trust Building in downtown Pittsburgh adds its strange beauty to the understory of the city skyline.  It's the one with the Flemish-style roof.  Constructed by Henry Clay Frick in the 1917, the old skyscraper--now hardly worthy of the word--is being refitted for LEED certification by the Green Building Alliance.  Occupancy rates are very high in the "first tier" office towers downtown.  But in these old buildings, the occupancy rates are relatively low due to a lack of amenities: outdated heating and cooling systems, no employee parking, not enough restrooms, not enough electrical outlets, etc.  It's good to see them renovating rather than tearing down and building something ugly and cheap.

The Carnegie

It's the spaces that I love, far more than any of the displays--which are interesting enough.

The same dinosaurs that were here when I was a child, in the 1970s...except that the displays are more interactive now.  Also, the dark, maritime murals that used to haunt my dreams are all gone.  Oh, and the "brontosaurus" is now an "apatosaurus." Paleontologists are now saying that there were no brontos, and so the poor lizard has become extinct twice...

These murals haven't changed since the 1930s, when they accurately depicted the world just outside the museum walls.

I did feel bad for these stately fellows, though the rodents chant, "Sic Semper Tyrannis!"  

There's nothing like a grand staircase to give you as sense that the world is still big and full of possibilities.  Actually, I prefer a forest, but marble pillars will do the trick in a pinch.

The courtyard outside is quiet and peaceful, with its sculptures and fountain.  

What could be better than a beat-up leather couch at the foot of a grand staircase?  Sometimes I think there's too little man-made beauty in contemporary life.  Our spirits are impoverished by windowless cubicles and fluorescent lights.