Real Winter in the North Country

How many times have I left a brown and gray city, in the chilly ghost of a climate change winter, and driven north only to find that, by the time I reach Grove City, it’s full blown Hibernus?  Then, as I go further and further north, leaving the interstate and taking to the backroads, the lanes grow narrower, and the trees draw nearer, and the temperatures drop, and the snow deepens. I had to dig this driveway out by hand on Friday morning of last week, the same morning I dug my neighbor’s car out of the snow where she got stuck while driving her child to school (which they never cancel up in those parts).

I love that about my almost-weekly journey up to my other life: I seem to journey into a whole other climate, another realm altogether. It’s consistently 5 to 10 degrees cooler up there, and there’s snow all winter. Last year, we had a brown Christmas in Pittsburgh, but then we went to our place up north for the night, and had a white Christmas as daylight faded. When I left Pittsburgh last Thursday after work, the city was in its usual chilly gray wintertime garb—without snow, as usual. By the time I got up north, it was a friggin’ blizzard. I love it. I love being snowbound up there and watching it falling among the trees.   

One of my favorite sights is a snowy deciduous forest—where dark tree trunks stand out against a perfectly white forest floor. I went up this past Thursday to bring my older daughter home from college for Christmas break. Because she’s minoring in Arabic, she’ll be spending next semester in Jordan. I know better than to worry too much about that. I was even younger than her when I spent a summer homeless on a beach in France after having been robbed my first night in Paris. There are few joys greater than travel. Do we even know ourselves before we have another culture to compare our assumptions to? Can we even say that we speak our native tongues without some working knowledge of the world’s other languages? Travel and living abroad make a person wiser, and more accepting, and far more interesting.

These are the things I say to myself, and they mostly allay my fears about letting my child go off to see the world alone. But…well. It’s also true that when I was her age, I knew how to stay out of trouble and how to throw a punch if staying out of trouble wasn’t an option. (I had three brothers…) Jordan is a very quiet country with a whole lot less violent crime than the United States. She should be the one worried to leave an old man like myself back here.

She’ll be fine. I guess my real issue with her studying overseas is the fact that I will be out of reach. I was always there when she was sick or scared or lonely. I was mother and father to both my daughters (in their mother’s constant absence).  It’s no use being too sentimental about such things, but it does make it hard to see them go to live in the Middle East. 

My bird friends were so, so hungry when I got up north. The deep snow makes it hard for them to find seeds to eat, and the bugs are all gone for the season. Never before had I seen such a convocation at my bird feeders: dark-eyed juncos by the dozens, many black-capped chickadees, no small number of tufted titmice, a hairy woodpecker—which is a beautiful creature with a ridiculous name—a few graceful nuthatches, sleek and elegant, and even a blue jay and a cardinal, which had never deigned to visit my feeders before.

The thing about beautiful times and places is that they give you a strength that you can take with you anywhere. They multiply their beauty to you, and it comes back to shelter you in a cold season. I hope I’ve given my children that, now that I see them fledging. As for me, there’s very little I want except to commune with trees and observe birds. Jordan, of the world’s many peaceful places. She’s only going to Jordan. Hell, I went to Cameroon when I was four years older than her and spent 5 years. Oh, how I missed the snow during that half-decade-long summer.

Pittsburgh at Night

My precocious 12-year old nephew (who is hyper-intelligent, and home-schooled, and being raised by well-intended-but-misguided fundamentalist parents) came to spend a night with us in Pittsburgh.  We were celebrating a late Thanksgiving for my side of the family…but gratitude is always in season.  I love it that I’m the favorite uncle on that side of the family.  God knows they’ve got enough uncles to choose from.  My nephew and his family live on a farm in Ohio, and they don’t much see the outside world.  When he entered the neighborhood church that I pastor, he said with complete awe, “This is the highest ceiling I have ever seen.”  He was clearly smitten by the sense of grandeur and otherness that the building is meant to inspire, but which it fails to inspire in many nowadays.  It made sense to show him the city at night and to drive down through its Christmas lights and crowds.  He was…flabbergasted by the urbanity.  There are so many ways to live a life….

 

The Joy of Burn Barrels

My rural grandparents used a burn barrel, and I recently took comfort in following their lead.  I don’t recall their ever putting a trash can at the curb.  There was no trash can and no curb—just a grassy embankment where the gravel road met their property.  Household trash had two destinations in that time and place: the rubbish heap and the burn barrel.  “Rubbish” consisted of anything that would rot: coffee grounds, food scraps, eggshells, plant waste, anything once-living and now-dead…you get the point.  Things that could go up in smoke were not put on the rubbish heap; they went into the burn barrel: paper, cardboard, wood, styrofoam, plastic…. The occasional soda can found its way to the burn barrel, too—even though it didn’t burn—for lack of recycling.  But there was precious little soda (or “pop”) in that house, and never any beer cans for such devout Methodists as they were.

Of course, this was a horrible way to dispose of household refuse.  While the composting was actually a good thing, the burning was a very bad thing—especially in the case of plastics and styrofoam.  Burn barrels are illegal in many municipalities nowadays, including all of Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located.  But my place up north has an old burn barrel that’s rusting out near the bottom and “leaning toward Fisher,” as my grandfather used to say of anything crooked.  (Fisher is a village in Clarion County.)  I don’t even know if burn barrels are still legal up there, but I had some cardboard items to get rid of, and the burn barrel was beckoning.  The fire made a pleasant glow against the 5:00pm gloaming—warm and bright, everything this season is not.  See how it lights up the snowfield and holds its flame bravely, briefly against the gathering dark?  I know the world is too old for such nonsense, but there was such comfort in standing down there by the edge of the woods, in the chilly gloaming, to warm my body and soul by the orange flames of the burn barrel.  

 

Two Mile Run County Park—Way Cooler than It Sounds!

I’m a native of Venango County and a homeowner there.  I’ve been exploring this place pretty regularly for much of my life, but especially since my return three years ago.  Even so, I’d never bothered to go to the popular Three Mile Run County Park.  But look at this place.  It’s well worth a visit, even in an early North Country winter.  

Like much of the state, and almost all of Venango County, Three Mile Run Park is scenic, if not quite beautiful.  The sepia tones of early winter seem to suit the place under moody gray skies...  

Do you remember these things?  We called them merry-go-rounds, even though they weren’t like the ones at the fair.  I thought they’d been deemed too dangerous, and that they got pulled out of all the playgrounds decades ago.  As a child, I took many a bruising from getting swept off these things by centrifugal force.  But you always get back on.  It’s fun to be dizzy when you’re a kid.  We grownups can’t take it.

The reason I’d never been tempted to visit Two Mile Run County Park was written right into its name: “County” park.  There’s a lot of public land around here, miles and miles of woodlands to discover.  We’ve got the Allegheny National Forest, and the beautiful, lesser-visited Oil Creek State Park, and Cornplanter State Forest, and many game lands owned and operated by the state.  I assumed that a “county park” would be nothing more than a few baseball diamonds, some swing sets, a tennis court and a dog run.  I was so wrong!  Two Mile Run is as cool as almost any state park I know, and it offers just as much.  It’s got trails for hiking, biking, horseback riding, and ATVs.  It’s got a lake for fishing, with a swimming beach, kayaks and paddle boats for rent, and a big concession stand—closed for the winter.  It’s got a large campground with restrooms, and showers, and primitive sites, and sites with full hookups, as well as rustic cabins, like the one pictured here.  The campground is closed for the season, but the park even has an office that’s open year round.  And of course, it’s got the ubiquitous playgrounds and sports fields…for those of you who are into that kind of thing….

At 2,700 acres, it’s bigger than the ever-popular McConnell’s Mill State Park…and more than twice the size of Ryerson Station State Park.  The trail system is impressive, and the scenery is pleasant.

Oh, and picnic pavilions.  There are so many picnic pavilions.  This is the Big Rock Pavilion, presumably because it’s located next to a big rock.

Venango County was very wealthy at one time.  The decaying old mansions in Oil City and Franklin are evidence of that, not to mention the grand old farms and rural estates—some of which are still privately owned, but most of which have fallen into the hands of religious or social nonprofits.  Venango County had oil money, and lots of it.  But how do they continue to maintain such a magnificent park today, when all the money the polluters and frackers make goes down to Texas?

A part of me wants to learn how to do oil paintings.  I’d do scenes pretty much like this one.  I’d be the Corot of the inland Northeast.

In addition to all the many recreational opportunities at Two Mile Run, there are also two houses that you can rent.  This one they call “The Cottage.”  

And this one they call “The Farmhouse.”  I mean, what other county has a park this awesome?  

See the face in this tree?  That’s another thing I like about Two Mile Run; unlike the sometimes sterile, institutional feel of state-owned lands, someone really loves this place.  Think about it.  In order to maintain a park like this, the county has to pay office employees, lifeguards, rangers, groundskeepers, and maids to clean the rental properties.  They’ve got to pay for all the mowing, and snow removal, and maintenance of everything.  Does Venango County do all of this with taxpayer dollars?  If so, it’s a fantastic use of our taxes.  But how do they do it in such a deeply Republican county, where everything is about private ownership and Trumpism, and the tax base just keeps shrinking?  Anyhow, I definitely need to come back here.  There’s much more to discover.

Serious question: If you had to spend the rest of your life within the bounds of a single American county, which one would it be?  You’re wearing a bracelet on your ankle that will zap you painfully hard if ever you cross the county line.  Choose wisely.  There aren’t many counties that provide a full array of urban, suburban, and rural opportunities.  Los Angeles County, California, offers the best of both worlds: first rate urban opportunities as well as mountains, wilderness, and outdoor wonders.  But do you really want to live in Southern California?  Allegheny County, where my primary residence is located, is far too heavy on the urban dimension and too light on the rural.  I don’t think I’d pick Venango County.  The urban opportunities are just too few.  But between Oil Creek State Park, and Cornplanter State Forest, and the various state game lands, and Four Mile Run County Park, we’ve got enough wild places here to keep me happy.