Friendship Hill, Country Estate of Albert Gallatin

Friendship Hill is a crazy, senselessly rambling old house on a high bluff above the Monongahela River in Fayette County, PA.  The oldest parts of the house date back to 1789, though there have been many additions over the years.

 It's actually a national park with free admission and miles of good hiking trails, some of which wend along the river.  But even if hiking isn't your thing, the house itself is worth a visit.

 Albert Gallatin was a Franco-Swiss immigrant from Geneva.  He was brilliant and a true renaissance man: a linguist, ethnologist, US senator, ambassador to France, and founder of New York University.  But at heart, Gallatin just wanted to live in the woods.  He built his beautiful estate on the western frontier, and whether he was living in Philadelphia, New York, Paris, or--in later years--Washington, D.C., he escaped there as often as he could, which was not very...

 Gallatin's first wife, Sophia, lived with him at Friendship Hill for one happy summer, but in the fall of their year together, she took ill and died.  She's buried in the woods on the grounds.  

Gallatin's second wife, Hannah, hated Friendship Hill and spent all her time there yearning for the cultivation and stimulation of Philadelphia.  She hated the country house so much that Gallatin ended up selling it and moving back to the cities of the coast. (Hélas, Monsieur Gallatin, vous n'êtes pas seul. Ma femme m'a fait la même chose!) 

It's a beautiful place to visit, with broad pastures, tree-lined lanes, good views, and a general feeling of tranquility.  How much would you have to love a woman to give up a place like this?

St. John's Lutheran Cemetery, Spring Hill, Pittsburgh

 The most famous view of Pittsburgh is from Mt. Washington, and I gotta admit that it's nice.  But a far more sweeping vista is seen from the desolate hilltop neighborhood of Spring Hill, on the Northside.  Tucked away at the top of steep, narrow streets, St. John's Lutheran Cemetery rises up above the rooftops of rundown rowhouses.  This is the final resting place of many a German immigrant from Pittsburgh's industrial days.  The Northside hasn't been a German enclave for many a long year, but here on this hilltop, headstones are still in the old mother tongue. This place is a lot harder to find than Mt. Washington, but the advantage is a broader panorama and a complete absence of people.  Nobody comes here except neighborhood folks.

Mt. Washington's views are almost too close to the skyline.  St. John's Cemetery is removed just enough to let you see most of the major downtown landmarks.  To the far right of the top photo, you see the fountain at the Point.  At the far left--before the leafy branches--you see the 16th Street Bridge.  In between are all the major skyscrapers, the convention center, and the sports arenas.  Mt. Washington itself is visible, with its "inclines," and Mt. Lebanon can be seen at the horizon.  As always, click on a photo to enlarge it.

On the way back down the hill, my friend and I came across a well-known local distillery that makes whiskey according to the recipes of the 18th and 19th centuries: Wigle Whiskey.  One of their specialties is old Monongahela Rye Whiskey--the kind that was made here in the 1700s, and which played such a crucial role in the Whiskey Rebellion.

Too Few Ferns

There are too few ferns in my life.  Ferns are savage.  Ferns are survivors.  Ferns were here first; they'll outlast the human race and perhaps anything we do to the planet.  They'd overtake meadows and fields and whole cities if we let them.  Without human intervention, much of North America would revert to ferns and vines--those damnable vines, the unholy trinity of poison ivy, Virginia creeper, and wild grapevine, which is by far the worst of the three.  But ferns are noble.  They're primordial.  Like great white sharks, they've evolved very little over the eons...maybe because they started out so close to perfect.  With their delicate, lacy leaves and their rich, earthy scent, ferns deserve to dominate the world.  Today in the patchy woods west of the city, where the forest canopy is sparse and the trees all look haggard, I noted with sadness that this is no kind of wilderness to nourish the spirit.  The Pittsburgh region sits in a basin where the Midwestern plains end and the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains begin.  For that reason, air pollution gets pushed up against the highlands and stuck here--both homegrown smog as well as clouds of particulates that are blown in from the Midwest.  In the US, only Los Angeles has worse air quality.  The air pollution weakens the trees and makes them more susceptible to common diseases.  Ragged trees depress me.  A hike among forlorn trees is more upsetting than restorative, and so it makes hiking sometimes seem counterproductive unless I can get away to a more northerly part of the state, where the trees are tall and strong.  And yet, just as my short hike was beginning to wear away at my soul, I came across these ferns, and all was well.  

Pittsburgh from the Rivers

River tours around Pittsburgh are pretty common.  This is The Point as seen from the headwaters of the Ohio River.  It's nice to have the fountain back; it was out of order for four full years.

 The new skyscraper that PNC Bank is adding to the Pittsburgh skyline is being called "the greenest skyscraper in the world."  It'll only be thirty-three floors tall, but will exceed criteria for a "platinum LEED certified building."  I like the way the rising tower already dwarfs my favorite Pittsburgh skyscraper, the much smaller Arrott Building on Fourth Ave.  Built in 1902, it's only 18 stories.  This view is from the Monongahela River, where the boat ride begins.

 The Duquesne Incline is one of two uphill / downhill passenger trolleys that transports people between Mt. Washington and the downtown area.  It's basically a large street car built on a steep slant, and commuters really do use it.

 A graceful fountain marks the spot where the city began, at the confluence of two rivers that gives birth to a third.  The two greatest empires of Europe once vied for control of this spot, thinking they could use it to launch ships westward into the uncharted continent.  Ironically enough, the only boats here today are pleasure boats.

 The Allegheny County Courthouse, which was once one of the tallest buildings on the Pittsburgh skyline, is hidden away among the knees of taller skyscrapers.  It's the one with the triangular roof that looks vaguely ecclesiastical.

 A rare view from the Allegheny, the river of my life, of my homeplaces, and my childhood.  Like me, the Allegheny drifts down here from up north, but you can sense that its heart is still up in the highlands and woods of its northerly origins... Or am I projecting?

This shot is also taken from the Allegheny River.  The city's tallest tower, the ominously black US Steel Building--which is largely occupied by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center--stands vigil over several of its lesser colleagues: The faded old Gulf Tower is the 30s-looking structure just to the left of the black behemoth.  Much shorter but statelier is the old Koppers Building, with the green roof.  The newish looking silver tower a bit to the right is called One Oxford Center, I think.  It's a loveless, nondescript contribution to the city's skyline that went up in the 1980s.

The Edge of Possibility

I could take a camp chair and sit out in my side field at 3am to read a book by flashlight.  The lightning bugs would accompany me.  But I'll never do it.  I could pitch a tent, of a January evening, on the front lawn and sleep there all alone.  But I won't.  I could diverge from my daily course, take an unexpected road, wander long and far into other places, learn the language of the Arapahos, acquire a taste for tortillas and beans.  I could stray off into the mountains of Mexico, like some ruined desperado in a Cormac McCarthy novel, there to take my place at a corner table in a sunny cantina on a village square.  In daylight hours, the tiny plaza would be noisy and bright, sparsely shaded by the patchy branches of four old acacia trees.  By night, the little square would be alive with possibility.  The lower branches of the acacias would glow with strings of red and green Christmas lights in the middle of July.  There, at my corner table, staring out at the plaza, I'd drink my liver into iron.  I could do it; alcoholic lounging in exotic locations is not new to me.  But I won't.  I won't.  The world and I have both grown too old now.

There are wildly extravagent possibilities that pass by us unnoticed.  There's potential in each new moment, but its power is hidden from us by boredom and routine, by unimaginative living.  In fact, I've come to believe that energy, matter, and potential are all there is.  Perhaps the life-giving power that people have called "God" is really nothing more than the potential hidden in each ordinary moment of every day?  Or perhaps "God" is some combination of two or all of these?  

We passed through Washington, DC, en route to the Outer Banks.  Both places are better than I remembered, but still their touristy locations are as dreary as a new suburban cemetery.  The Outer Banks are overrun by Western Pennsylvanians who used to vacation at Atlantic City.  The North Carolina coast has become Upper Saint Clair on stilts.  (And Atlantic City is pretty much Homewood-by-the-Sea.)  And yet, the vacation was too short.  The ocean is good wherever you meet it.  Take your troubles to the ocean, and you're sure to come away with some consolation.