The Ghost of Winter

The bedraggled, hunted old ghost of a Pennsylvania winter is making its cameo appearance, trying with all its chilly might to reassert itself as a force in our regular lives.  Wintertime, in this era of climate change, is like a man who gets no respect; it hits exceptionally hard despite a lack of confidence--or perhaps precisely because of it.  

But it was lovely to be in the silent winter woods yesterday.  Nary a bird or a bug to challenge the unbroken quietness.  Only the wind dared to stir, that same bitter wind which is in large part the cause of the silence!  

And the sun struggled briefly and occasionally through the veil of gray that makes holidays so very necessary at this dark time of year.  It felt like furtive, lusty glances from a beautiful stranger, or a few stolen kisses from an old lover.

The lakeside lodge was unoccupied for once.  It looked so appealing, so festive in its snowy desolation.  I wanted so badly to spend Christmas there with just my little family and some canned turkey and instant stuffing from Dollar General!  But no.  Alas, we still drive to see all the grandparents on Christmas Day.

For my 50th birthday, in late January, I'm going to do a segment of the Standing Stone Trail with my oldest friend.  I don't know what the weather will be.  It could be one of these vengeful winter spasms, when the old season of yore tries to reclaim its grip on the world.  Or it could be a 21st century winter, which is even worse: days upon days of rain, temps in the 40s, endless gray.  I'd really rather have the cold.  50.  Now that does begin to feel old.  30 didn't bother me.  40 didn't feel all that much different from 30.  But 50?

The Lingering Season

This lingering autumn season endures, despite early hints of winter.  I recently took an afternoon walk and was surprised at how rapidly evening came on.

I love the luxuriant leaves in high summer, green and whispering in the breeze.  I love them too in the earlier fall, alive with yellows and oranges and reds.  But there's beauty in the barrenness, too.  Bare branches are revealing.  You see the landscape and the skies and the shapes of the trees.

This might be the single most photographed tree on this blog.  I've taken pictures of it in every season of the year, and indeed in every season of my own life.  It speaks stability and power.

Here's the same beautiful tree from another angle.  Do you see what I see here?  I don't even know what kind of tree it is, but I admire it so greatly.  Its independence, its uniqueness, its dissimilarity to all its neighbors, its strong, shapely branches, its imaginative contours.  

There's so much wisdom in trees.  A tree never strays from the spot where it’s planted.  But in that spot, it digs deep and reaches high.  However steep the terrain, however rocky the soil, a tree will make the best of its place in the world, sending its roots far and wide to probe the earth for all it needs to live.  It deploys strong branches up into the air and grasps nutrition from the light and air itself.  Then it takes the sparse harvest of air, and earth, and water and transforms them into the pleasures of table: pears and mangoes, walnuts and coconuts, coffee and tea.  When the season of change is upon it, the tree does not cling, but allows its leaves to drift gently to the earth, where they become soil to sustain the tree’s life again.  It wastes nothing.  A tree is forever aiming for the future, sending its seeds out into the world and recreating itself in its own shade.  

Emerald View Trail, Pittsburgh

Emerald View Park, which overlooks the city of Pittsburgh from the summit of Mt. Washington, is a city park that covers 280 meandering acres of urban forestland.  The Mt. Washington neighborhood is truly one of the city's most beautiful places.  It's an old inner city neighborhood mostly made up of working class whites and an ever-increasing population of moneyed hipsters and professionals.  But for all the casual neglect and easy seediness of old Pittsburgh, it's got fantastic views out over the rivers and the city skyline.  There are expensive condos going in all the time, but the great majority of the place is still made up of aging storefronts, corner stores, and tall, narrow houses, closely spaced, on narrow streets that wind crookedly uphill--or downhill.  The neighborhood is connected to the South Side and downtown by two steep cable car tracks, called "inclines.

The Emerald View Trail is tucked away in the viny woods and scrublands that were too steep to build on.  It follows a circuitous route that offers panoramic vistas out over all three of the city's rivers, its skyscrapers, and another lesser known neighborhood called the West End Village.  Its course is nearly three miles long, and surprisingly uncrowded on a Veterans' Day in pleasant weather.

The trail starts at a place along Grandview Avenue known as "Points of View Park," which is really just a statue of George Washington and the Seneca Indian Guyasuta, staring intimately into each other's eyes.  It looks like they're about to lean in for a kiss.  

Old Homestead, Clintonville, Pennsylvania

Got to snoop around this old place while I was on my recent writing retreat.  It's a lopsided stone house with an ugly cinder block addition.  It was popular sometime after the Civil War to plaster over exterior stone walls and draw a fake brick pattern into the plaster.  Stone houses were considered old fashioned and provincial, so they would try to make them look like painted brick.  You can see that effect at this place, where the white facade is wearing away.  But it only succeeds in making the house look like it was built out of cinder blocks.

The fellow who owns the house has found tax records dating back to 1805, and he guesses that there was originally a log cabin on the spot, and that the current house was built between 1810 and 1820.  He says the plot was laid out in 1794, and that the original owner was a judge.  It has fallen on hard times indeed.  Note the child's swing dangling from the tree in the left of this photo.  As always, click on any photo to enlarge it.

This is just inside the front door, which faces north.  I'm guessing that this house is of the old "hall and parlor" design, which would have meant that there were two large rooms on the main floor: a "hall" (or kitchen) just inside the front door, where most of family life would have occurred, and a "parlor" where you see the sunken windows, and where the master and mistress of the house would have slept and entertained guests.  Strange to think that the fanciest room in the house used to double as the master bedroom.  But this floor design has long since been replaced with the more modern living room, dining room, kitchen combo.

The stairs bore my weight with no trouble, and the second floor seemed somehow much larger than the first.

But before we go up there, this is the inside of the ugly addition that someone added to the place in the 40s or 50s.  It's a garage with perhaps the world's spookiest cellar door.  See below.

Not "No," but "HELL no," I'm not going down there.

Here's the staircase from the old "hall" up to the second floor, where there are three bedrooms.

This is the largest of them.

It didn't occur to me until too late that I was actually exploring this old house on Halloween day.  See how the vines have fount their way inside.  There was also a hive of bees someplace inside the walls, though I have no idea why they would still be swarming in October.

See how the windows are so deeply set into the thick stone walls.

The first floor has two closed-up fireplaces, one at each end of the house.  I also went up the the attic, which was brightly enough lit with the natural light of a single window.  There's a slate roof that's seen a lot of damage from vines and rot.  Somehow I thought I'd snapped more photos of this house, but I'm not finding them just now.

Vintage House from the 1980s

This charming-if-slightly-spooky little bungalow sits in the countryside of Venango County.  I had this place to myself for the week of Halloween and absolutely loved it.

The best thing about this place is that it hasn't been remodeled since at least the 1980s, maybe earlier.  From the layout of the house to the decor, it felt like stepping back into my Generation X childhood.

We often lived in ghostly, nondescript ranch houses with three bedrooms and wood-paneled walls that backed up onto the woods--just like this place.  When I was staying here, I hung a sheet over this sliding glass door at night.  It just made me feel less exposed...

See the pond out the window, with a late maple tree all abloom on the opposite bank.  And here, inside this kitchen, which also serves as the dining room, there's an old coffee mug tree with vintage cups, and a small built-in hutch with Norman Rockwell plates on display, not to mention the cupboards and chairs.

Also, the kitchen is the front room.  I spent Tuesday through Friday here last week, trying to catch up on some writing.  The place belongs to a friend of my wife who rents it out on airbnb.

The glass doors off the living room look into these dark woods, already bare.  I was here over a very rainy, windy Halloween night, when a large tree split and came crashing down while I was sleeping.

Oh, and before I forget, this is the pattern in the Formica kitchen counters!  So innocent, so whimsical, playful and sweet, like a snapshot into the imagination of a former age.

Here's the wallpaper in the entry hall.  I think they were going for that colonial revival look of the 1970s and 80s.  I remember it well.

The living room has a working fireplace.  It was the perfect place to spend a rainy fall day, working on my computer.  I discovered that little instant fire-logs can be purchased at the Family Dollar in nearby Clintonville for $3 apiece.

The bathroom is a gem of 20th century styling.  Check out the floral design around the bowl of the sink and the faux-marble pattern in the counter top.  

The dark wood paneling, the louvered doors, the old shaded lamp protruding from the wall like a sconce--it's all so nostalgic.

Eagles?  Yes, we decorate with eagles!

This place belonged to the postmaster in town, who ran a print shop out of an outbuilding after he retired.  He grew old and moved in with his daughter, allowing most of the furniture and dishes and trinkets to be sold with the house.

Like I said, eagles are our thing.

You can actually rent this place on airbnb.  At $79 a night for the whole house, it's a steal.  

The Allegheny River, Venango County

This is the great Allegheny, seen from the Kennerdell Overlook.  The fall is well advanced up there, softened by gray skies and pungent with the scent of fallen leaves.  The bright maple trees are all bare, though the oaks and their allies still hold out in less vibrant--but still lovely--earth tones.  I spent the better part of a very nice week up here, working on a writing project.

McNay Ridge and Ryerson Campgrounds

This post is mainly a reminder to my future self.  Others will not be interested.  But, as I've said before, I keep the blog entirely for my own purposes.  Hey Self: The McNay Ridge group tenting area at Ryerson would be perfect for that camping experience that you've always kind of dreamed of creating.  This is the grassy parking lot, looking down toward the pavilion in the pines.

Past the pine grove where the pavilion stands, there's another broad clearing that could be used for tents and large gatherings--seen better from the next pic.

Here, we're standing in the large clearing looking back toward the pavilion.  It's a big meadow, perfect for what I have in mind...

A little lane separates this group tenting area from the main campground and the rest of the park.  It feels remote.

The pavilion and restrooms are in a smaller clearing near the parking area.

The campground auditorium is perfect for my purposes!  And it's on McNay Ridge, just adjacent to the group tenting area.  It seats about 70, but could seat more if people brought lawn chairs.  It's totally reminiscent of the "brush arbors" of olden times.

It's even got an old church bell that could be rung with a hammer to call people to meetings.

And a stone pulpit...

The auditorium and bell as seen from the lane toward the tenting area.  The group I'd like to create could come back here every summer.  It'd take a lot of planning, but not too much money.  I'll have to give it more thought, but wanted to document my findings for future reference.