The Pennsylvania / New York Border: a Forest Crossing

I rarely write anything on this blog these days.  I’m too overworked and too tired.  But for my 50th birthday, I returned to my sacred place, the Allegheny National Forest, and found things more or less as I left them 10 years ago.  Crossing the border into New York State still felt like a an act of resistance to the right-wing nut jobs that are discarding democracy in favor of unbridled capitalism.  Sneaking across the border into a bluer state.  It’s a lovely crossing even if your political convictions tend toward the hateful.  Borders are arbitrary human conventions.  Here in the forest, the only thing that designates them is a sign—with no one standing guard.

Millions of displaced people roam the globe today.  These are not gangs of roving bandits, murderers, and thugs, but ordinary people who flee the violence and the chaos of their native places, nations that now exist only on maps: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador...  I do not argue for open borders (as fool Republicans claim).  I only argue for the humane treatment of people who look to us for refuge, as people have been doing for centuries.  In any case, the border here is easy to cross for anyone who’s willing to brave the slippery melting snow.