The View from Craggy Heights

From high above, on the stony heights, looking down to the Trump-loving farm valleys below, you'd never know that this is a nation fueled by greed and fear.  From up here it looks like a place that makes sense, a pretty place of fields and meadows, a green place worth living and dying for.  From up here it looks like the kind of place where decent people live, people who send their mothers cards for Mother's Day, and help a neighbor in need, and share what they have with the ones who have little.  From up here, looking down, you'd swear this was an orderly place, well-managed, well-cultivated, well-loved, the kind of place where a black man could go jogging and not get killed by two rednecks with guns.

But the view from up here can be deceiving.  Once you quit these silvery heights and descend the rocky pinnacles to the fertile valleys below, you'll find a place far less lovely than the one you saw from a distance.  It's a nation where concerned citizens have to circulate online petitions just to get those two murderous, bloodthirsty lynchers arrested.  A simple arrest doesn't even mean that a person is deemed guilty.  It means that a person is being investigated for guilt.  Will the State of Georgia not even admit that Greg and Travis McMichael need to be held in custody and charged with the death of an innocent man, whose only crime was physical exercise--something these gun-toting illiterates wouldn't recognize?  All they saw was a black man running, and they assumed he'd been out raping and stealing.  Why have they not been taken into custody?  Why, when the murder was caught on film, have they not been charged?  

It looks so beautiful from up here, so serene, so pastoral.  That's one of the reasons I love it up here on the craggy heights.  I can look down on this place that I still love and see it as it ought to be.  But America is a deeply sick place, an empire in decay.  As much as I love my homeland, I love justice more.  Can you see the shadows gathering above these peaceful valleys?  Can you feel the eerie chill on the evening wind?  If we cannot come together to end white supremacy, this experiment in democracy will not end well for any of us.  

Butler Knob Area, Jacks Mountain, Standing Stone Trail

I've been spending all my weekends on the Standing Stone Trail.  I don't consider it quarantine-breaking because I interact with no one on the trip out there or back.  Never in my adult life have I had weekends free, and I love it.  This time around, I decided to check out the Butler Knob area of Jacks Mountain.

Of course, I've published pictures of this scene before.  It's the so-called Throne Room on Jacks Mountain, a little north of Butler Knob.  I like the way the lower mountains off to the east look almost like waves frozen in their sequence as they rush to break on the craggy shore.  Wooded waves.

My younger daughter wanted to come with me on this trip, and it was so wonderful to have her there, even though I usually go to the woods to get away from people and the roles their presence imposes on me--like the role of father.  It was just a joy to spend time with her, to hear about the things she thinks about, to share some of my interests with her.  This is the view from the top of Butler Knob, the highest peak on Jacks Mountain.  Many mountains, of course, have more than one peak.  This scene looks from the taller one down onto a lower one, but all on the same hill.

Some long distance trails, like the Laurel Highlands Trail, have shelters like this one built at regular intervals.  The only shelter along the Standing Stone Trail is on the lower reaches of Butler Knob.  Actually, this place is odd enough.  My daughter and I parked at Singers Gap, where Jacks Mountain Road comes to a T on the summit, then hiked in a few miles toward Butler Knob.  Rain was threatening, so we put down camp in a spot that we assumed was secluded.  In the morning we awoke to the sound of gunshots.  It was the first day of spring gobbler season, and there were pickups with New York and Ohio plates parked not thirty feet from our campsite.  We had no idea we were just a few bushes away from Jacks Tower Road.

I didn't love hiking with my kid among people shooting guns--even lower powered rifles for turkey.  We also crossed paths with two different groups of way-cool trail runners, who didn't mind all the shooting.  The mountain was teeming with humankind that morning.  But it was very much worth the visit.  We hiked back to the car, drove into Huntingdon for dinner, then drove back up Jacks Tower Road and parked thirty feet from the campsite that we had thought was so secluded.  Breaking camp has never been easier, and it was sure nice NOT to have to load up the pack and lug a wet tent back down the mountain.

The Glories of Huntingdon

Huntingdon is a wonderful little town.  It's surrounded on all sides by the beautiful low mountains of Central Pennsylvania, with their forested flanks and their rocky peaks.  The valleys on all sides are narrow and long and filled with ancient farms and their immense farmhouses and big barns. There are Trump signs on many of the yards in the countryside surrounding the town--which gives me pause, since I associate Trump with bigotry and hate.  But the town of Huntindgon has pretty parks, classy old mansions, ornate churches, shady streets, a nice little shopping district, and some really cool features like coffee shops, and microbreweries, and antique stores.  There's a private college here and no shortage of beautiful people.  As mentioned recently, it also has an Amtrak daily to New York.  Oh, and a cool little church turned Orthodox with an onion dome added just to bring the point home.  What more could you ask from a small town in the mountains.  

Canoe Creek State Park

 My collection of Pennsylvania state parks is up to about 34, most of which are in the western half of the state.  I've been driving past Canoe Creek State Park for years as I've hurried along to the Standing Stone Trail.  But on my way home this time I stopped.  At first I didn't have much hope for the park, surrounded as it is by the contour-plowed hills of central PA.  It didn't look wild enough for my tastes.  But what it lacks in wilderness it makes up for in simple beauty.  By the time I left, I really liked it.  Too bad there's no campground.

I'm glad I gave Canoe Creek an hour or two of my life.  It's definitely worth a lot more than that.  But we'll all be judged by the scant moments of our lives that strangers just happen to step in on.  Think of that.  Some people will always and only remember you for the single moment of your life that they observed.  To them, you'll forever be a flat character, unchangeable, irredeemable.  You're that guy with the tattoos who threw a fit, or that picky "karen" who asked to speak to the manager.  They'll overlook your greater story--forgetting even that you have one--and decide they know as much about you as they need to know.  Patience.  Tolerance.  Kindness.  Look at these redbuds in bloom.