Quaker Run, New York

           Occasionally you just have to cross that 42nd parallel northward and breathe the freer air of a more progressive state.  I love New York State, where there's a sense of civic-mindedness, where public lands are protected, and fracking is still banned.  This is the beautiful and exceedingly wild Allegany State Park in Cattaraugus County, in the region known as "The Southern Tier."  I chanced upon a mother black bear and her cub on my most recent trek here last week on the Flagg Trail.  This park is everything that our Allegheny National Forest ought to be but isn't--due to oil, gas, and timber extraction.  These photos were taken about five miles from the Pennsylvania line.

           All you have to do is cross the border into New York, and you can feel the difference: quaint towns with microbreweries and antique shops, imaginative little restaurants, well-kept farms, vast stretches of well-preserved woodlands.  And lakes! How is it that Nature gave New York so many lakes?  Chautauqua Lake--with its venerable old "Institution"--is not more than fifteen miles from the Pennsylvania border, but it's much larger than any natural lakes south of the 42nd.  I hate to say it, but The Chautauqua Institution couldn't exist, somehow, on our side of the border...

           Pennsylvania is home, and it has a lot to offer: history, scenery, faded glory, and amazing old architecture.  But I must admit that New York is by far the better place to live: its cities are bigger and much more cosmopolitan; its mountains are taller and more rugged; its wilderness is deeper; its got an ingrained commitment to the common good.  And it's got a coastline.

          It's true, too, that Pennsylvania feels quaint, clean, and progressive when you cross over from West Virginia.  I often say that Pennsylvania exists so that New York doesn't have to touch West Virginia. We're a buffer zone between North and South, East and Midwest, true Blue and deep Red.  We've got just enough of the Ivy League and "Seven Sisters" schools to make us passingly respectable.  People are vaguely aware of our first rate symphonies, too.  But everything good is offset by the anti-intellectual, warmongering influences of the Scotch-Irish.  We have enough mouthbreathing Republicans to make us an embarrassing "swing state," not to mention all the coal and natural gas.  I don't know that a place can ever fully recover from the kind of ruination that was inflicted on us by the industrial era.  And we almost certainly will not recover from the Marcellus shale industry that is now running roughshod over our government, aquifers, and countryside.

         Okay, so truth to tell, when I arrived at the gate to this state park, they wanted to charge me $7 entrance fee.  Cash only.  I don't carry cash, so I parked by the roadside and bushwhacked alongside the lake to the trailhead.  Pennsylvania state parks never charge an entrance fee.  PA: 1 / NY: 101.