The Phipps Conservatory

The Phipps is truly one of Pittsburgh's treasures.  Aside from being just a really cool building, it's almost exactly as I remember it from earliest childhood.

This is the Palm Court--the beautiful, lushly planted room that serves as a central lobby.  The date above the archway reads 1892.  This place dates back to the days of the old Pittsburgh robber barons, when this city had a financial district second only to the one in New York--Fourth Avenue, downtown, with its lavishly detailed early skyscrapers.

 It's worth a day, if you have one to spare, just to wander among all these varied life forms.

 The Cactus Room might be my favorite.  The plants here are so alien and brutal, and they remind me of the days out in New Mexico, wandering across the High Plains in search of abandoned towns.

Parts of the Phipps are wild and unkempt, like a real forest.  Other areas are overly manicured, like the formal gardens of Versailles.

Winter is a good time to visit, when the outer gardens are covered in snow and the chill keeps the crowds away.  And yet, I can't wait to get back to the real woods.

Cameroon Comes to Pittsburgh

It smells like Cameroon.  It looks like Cameroon.  It doesn't sound like Cameroon (with melodic and unforgettable birdcalls) but two out of three...  The Phipps Conservatory is calling this exhibit "Congo," just for the sake of greater name recognition.  But they got the trees, and the plants, and the crafts, and the inspiration all from Cameroon--that West African country where I spent five years, in the second half of the 1990s.  This grass-roofed pavilion is an approximation of the famous chief's palace at Bandjoun, in the West Province.

They had little displays of Bamileke art here and there.  This is an ancestor dressed in traditional beads.  Of course, the room was filled with vaguely recognizable plants that I recalled from years ago.  In fact, I spent two hours there, just smelling the old remembered vegetal aromas, feeling the steamy air, returning in my mind to a place I never fully left but which I so seldom revisit.  I don't dare call up the memories too often.  They were beautiful days, on the whole, but I was a drunken fool back then, and remembering brings me shame.

Dude!  Is that what I think it is?  No, it's just cassava, the staple of a Southern Cameroonian diet.  We always heard from disdainful expats that it was void of all nutritional content, but the Phipps claims that cassava is a great source of many minerals.

A scant and humble attempt at a Cameroonian rainforest canopy.  It's not perfect, but it actually does capture the overall contour and visual effect that I remember.  Ah, damn these memories!  You can stick them away in the attic of the mind, try to seal them off forever, but they're exactly where you left them.  The memories fade gradually, as the years pass, but their overall impression--like this Phipps version of an African jungle--remains faithful to the truth.  

These plants weren't even in the so-called Congo exhibit, but they too looked exactly like the Cameroon I remember.  In fact, I planted the colorful things (called "crotons") in front of my little bungalow in order to create a privacy screen.  I always felt as if I was on display over there, and I erected all sorts of barriers to hide myself away from prying eyes.  How is it that wealthy young Americans are allowed to take all their crazy out into the Third World and inflict it on well-meaning people who just want to live their lives in peace?

I named my bungalow "The House Behind the Mango Tree" because that's what it was.  There was no street and no house number--just a footpath--and my home was the Embassy's emergency evacuation point for Americans in the South Province.  In the grounds of that lovely place I had mangoes, avocados, bananas, guavas, and the trees pictured here, with their fruit: papayas.  (I actually think papaya tastes like baby vomit.  Don't ask.)  Papaya leaves are a powerful remedy for  various ailments.

Raccoon Creek State Park...in 12 Degrees

Familiarity breeds contempt.  It really does.  But what is contempt if not a sort of disappointed love?  We can only feel contempt for something or someone we know well.  Contempt is the scorched earth of retreat, a charred countryside where each hillock and furrow is familiar.

I truly felt contempt for Raccoon Creek State Park as I went slinking back there in 12 degree weather to seek the solitude of the forest--domesticated and featureless woodlot that it is.  How many times have I snapped a photo of this same old cellar hole?  How many times have I hiked past it and wondered what it was?  Far too many to count.  I know this place much better than I'd like.  There's no mystery or discovery here for me anymore, and there never was much.  But I must admit that today, for the first time ever, I paused at the remains of this ancient homestead and tried to sense its story.  Someone laid these stones, one by one...someone with hopes, and recurring thoughts, and tangled relationships much like my own.  And now, all the world knows of him is this crumbling foundation along the unambitiously named "Lake Trail" at Raccoon Creek.

If you look closely at the center of this photo, you'll see the remains of an old stone springhouse, with gabled wall pointing toward the sky.  I climbed up to it once, in a winter now forgotten, perhaps four years ago.  Some year in the first half of the 19th century is etched into the stone.  1841?  I can't recall.  There's still a lot of bitterness among locals that the state invoked its right of eminent domain in order to create this public park out of family farms, from the 1930s through the 1960s, I think.

But Raccoon Lake never disappoints.  It's always beautiful, in the shimmering heat of a golden July as in the frozen brilliance of winter.  That's the public beach, with bathhouse, across the water.  And someone built a snowman out there on the lake, which can barely be seen in the center of the photo.  As always, click on the picture to enlarge it.

Yes, familiarity breeds contempt.  But it was nice to take refuge again among the trees.  It's been so long since I've had a trek.  The Lake / Forest Trails Loop takes about two hours in summer and a little longer in the snow.  Unfortunately, I was following hard on the heels of a dog-walker whose tracks in the snow made me feel crowded and unoriginal.  But hell, I was hiking at Raccoon, not Denali National Park.  Besides, I have a hunch that I know whose footprints they were.  She was an old friend from years ago, though we barely see each other anymore.  The park offers 44 miles of trails, but she and her dog walk the same exact loop every week.  (Sheez, talk about familiarity.)

The white spot in the center of this picture is Raccoon Lake as seen from the hills above.  I've always liked this view.  I find it comforting to see the water from so far away, to name it and know it.  I know this place entirely too well.  I hate it with a gentle, passionate hatred that's very close to love, and boredom, and a sense of ownership.