Impermanence

          Still ruminating over my recent theme of impermanence--which is autumn's wise insight--I came across these lines recently in The Good Earth, by Pearl Buck.  By modern standards, Buck's masterpiece novel is a little tendentious.  It plays the chords of "forgetfulness," "acquisitiveness," and "connection to the earth" over and over.  But despite that lack of refinement, the book shows a great understanding of human psychology and desire.  I first read it when I was ten, and it's still one of the few novels I consider worth rereading every two decades or so.  It's essentially a parable about happiness, set in China in the early 20th century.  Early on, Buck describes a peasant farmer working his land.  His faithful but simple-minded and unattractive wife is working by his side:

          "He had no articulate thought of anything; there was only this perfect sympathy of movement, of turning this earth of theirs over to the sun, this earth which formed their home and fed their bodies and made their [clay] gods.  The earth lay rich and dark, and fell apart lightly under the points of their hoes.  Sometimes they turned up a bit of brick, a splinter of wood.  It was nothing.  Some time, in some age, bodies of men and women had been buried there, houses had stood there, had fallen, and gone back into the earth.  So would also their house, some time, return into the earth, their bodies also.  Each had his turn at this earth..."

The Autumn Poets

          We went away to Florida last week (though I would have preferred Vermont), and when we got back, the autumn season was already in full swing.  I hate to miss even a minute of my soul's most resonant season.  And as fall comes to Western Pennsylvania, once again I welcome its annual reminder of impermanence.  All its autumnal glory lies in its transience.  We are wiser, happier people when we learn to embrace impermanence, but by the time we learn it, our lives are usually on the verge of proving it by disappearing forever from the earth.  I've never understood the third verse of this poem ("the eyes of many elves"?), but  here's a celebration of the season's melancholia.  

This handsome blue heron was one of two hanging out at the shallow end of the lake.  He made two screeching honks when he saw me, and his friend flew away majestically.  

Besides the Autumn poets sing
a few prosaic days
a little this side of the snow
and that side of the haze

A few incisive mornings

a few ascetic eves

Gone, Mr. Bryant's golden rod

and Mr. Thompson's sheaves.

Still is the bustle in the brook

sealed are the spicy valves

mesmeric fingers softly touch 

the eyes of many elves

Perhaps a squirrel may remain

my sentiments to share--

Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind

thy windy will to bear.

~Emily Dickinson

Wednesdays at Raccoon Lake

           I love this new thing where I have Wednesdays off.  Both the kids are in school all day.  The wife is seeing clients in the city.  It means that I can strike off on my own as soon as the little people board the school bus.  I used to avoid Raccoon Creek because it was always so busy on Sundays, my erstwhile hiking day.  But if you can get there on a weekday, when there are fewer people around, it is by far the best local outdoor destination.  I can spend five glorious hours on the trails or on the lake and still be home in time to complete most of the tasks that my wife left me on her "honeydew list."  

          The south side of the lake has most of the development: road, beach, fishing spots, trails, boat rentals.  But there's an isolated picnic area on the wooded north side of the lake--pictured at the top.  You can only get there by boat; there are no roads or trails.  It's just a little wooden dock and two picnic tables in a clearing.  I loved hanging out there.  Because the only access is by water, you somehow feel as if you've got your own defensible piece of lakeside real estate there.  It made a great spot to spend an hour before hiking some trails along the valley walls above the lake.

The "Main Picnic Area," Raccoon Creek

           The long-closed "Main Picnic Area" at Raccoon Creek is a study in woodland desolation.  It looks to me as if it's been abandoned for about fifteen years.  Large pavilions with fireplaces, restrooms, parking lots, and water pumps are all decaying back into the landscape.

           Raccoon Creek is "the" outdoor destination for Pittsburghers, and the beach, hiking trails, and campground make it a busy park.  But people don't seem to go on picnics as much as they used to.  Signs say this picnic area was closed because of budget "constraints."  Two other large picnic areas remain open...but I've never seen many people in either of them.

           There is a small tree growing right through the top of this picnic table.  The park service gives this dismal place a slightly positive spin by calling it a "reduced mowing area."  There's poison ivy everywhere.

          In tough economic times, our state parks have had a very busy year.  People have turned to them as cheap vacation destinations close to home.  Also, as the Evil Governor Corbett has threatened to cut funding to the parks, I think people have rediscovered them in a kind of panic..."to love that well which thou must leave ere long."  Apparently Raccoon is so big that it can spare a forty-acre picnic area.  I sure hope all our parks don't end up looking like this place by the time the Corbett Regime leaves office...

The Forest Drug

A gallery forest of straight pines at Raccoon Creek.

           The forest is a drug.  Like all drugs, it needs a little time to take effect, but once you've been out there among the trees for a half hour or more--hopefully outside earshot of all roads--it begins to work its magic.

Edible teaberries can be found almost all year long.  In the 1770s, the leaves of this berry were used for making an ersatz tea, because Britain had shut down all imports from the Caribbean.   

          There's a pleasant lightheadedness, relaxed breathing, a mild sense of euphoria.  More than that, there's a new emotional dimension.  The forest opens an unseen door in the mind, and suddenly life is colored by the new realization that there are mysteries and wonders beyond knowing.

Raccoon Lake on a deserted Wednesday.

          A good hike, like a good vacation, leaves you ready to go home.  After a nice, long, restorative trek through the woods, you should feel relief at the sight of your car.  The forest rush fades, but the well-being lingers long...because you have relearned a thing that we all forget daily: that "Something More" is possible in life.  That well-being carries you through traffic.  It gives you peace for your soul-sucking commute to work.  It makes you more patient with your children and happier to be alive.

Raccoon Lake

Along the Montour Trail

          What the?  You find some strange, strange things along the Montour Trail, since it was once a coal railroad that ran a semicircle around the outermost edges of Pittsburgh.  This is near the little park in Hendersonville, Washington County.  Was this place a grange?  A church?  It reminds me of a certain kind of bizarre, oddball desolation that I find when I go ghost towning out in New Mexico, as I did the September before last.