Passages: Doorways in the Carnegie Museum Hall of Architecture

Ever since childhood, the Hall of Architecture has been my favorite room in the Carnegie Museums.

 But each time I tried to take my kids there in 2013, I found it closed for renovations. 

 It was great to find the exhibit reopened today, though I'm not sure what they've been renovating.  It looks just exactly the same as it did in the 1970s.

 I wonder if there's not something hopelessly utilitarian about a culture that no longer puts any aesthetic effort into its entrances and doorways.

 In modern times, even the entrances to prominent public buildings are typically undecorated, ugly metal and glass.  They seem to say, "Get in here, get your business done, then get out.  Accomplishment is the only thing that matters."

 These ancient doorways convey a powerful emotional message.  They say, "When you enter these doors, you are entering into more than just a building.  You are entering into a story, a tradition, a community that is bigger, and older, and infinitely wiser than you are alone."

 This ecclesiastical doorway might be my favorite, with fantastic creatures nesting in its intricately vining tracery.  It comes from medieval Norway.  

This one is Roman.  Nice, but I far prefer the ones with nature themes.  They look like something from The Hobbit.

Keystone State Park Revisited

To the untrained eye, this view looks like just another obnoxious powerline swath, or "easement," that's been cut through the forest.  Pipeline and powerline swaths are harmful to our woodlands, and I despise them.  But I actually like this one for the view that it affords.  Look at the misty blue ridgeline in the furthest distance.  This is a southeasterly view toward Chestnut Ridge, the westernmost summit in the Appalachian Mountains as they pass through Pennsylvania.  The mountains begin here, some forty miles east of Pittsburgh.  I think this view was the highlight of today's trip back to Keystone State Park.

I'm not sure why I wanted to go back to Keystone.  Maybe I'm an underachiever.  Maybe I'm a lover of self-sabotage.  But there was something about the place that allured me today.  I went there for the first time on the day after Christmas, and I knew when I left that I would have to return to hike the southern portion of the park.  Now I can confidently say that I've been on every inch of trail the park offers.

 Like I said before, in so many words, Keystone is just a little too tame for me.  It's surely nice in the summer for folks who enjoy flatwater canoeing, fishing, and lake swimming.  But for those of us who love the deep woods, the world encroaches just a little too close to this parkland.  The noises of passing trucks and nameless machines are distant, but ever-present here.  "Hiking" at Keystone is always more like "taking a walk in the woods."

But for me today, it was a restorative walk.  I used to believe that I would be happier than a Kardashian if I could only own fifty acres of woodlands.  All I wanted was just my own little woodlot to explore, and understand, and discover in every season.  A single place can have many different faces depending on the time of day and the time of year you visit.  I even looked into purchasing some wooded land up North, though buying land in Western Pennsylvania has become hazardous; if you don't get the mineral rights, the frackers can roll in and destroy everything.  

But I think I'm learning the wisdom of the Buddha's saying, "Have one love, have one worry.  Have two loves, have two worries."  If I actually had my own patch of woods, I would forever be worrying about windstorms, and strangling vines, and hemlock adelgids, and emerald ash borers.  And there would be bagworms, and gypsy moths, and oak wilt, and beech disease to worry about.  If I owned it, I would walk the land anxiously, looking for signs of trespassers, and poachers, and tree disease.  

It's better to walk the land than to own it.  Ah, but look at that far-off summit.  I fain would wander off into those ridges and disappear me in their darkling folds and hollows--all leafless and gray--"far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife."  I could go all Mick Dodge... But alas, I long ago heard the siren's song of non-profit work, and I've got an unfashionable but very rewarding institution to lead into the future.  Funny how one decision, made long ago, turns around to make many of your subsequent decisions for you.  I've chosen a different path, and it has limited my options as I move forward.  It's a path that only occasionally traverses that tantalizing ridgeline.

I'm glad the recent arctic cold spell killed many of the invasive bugs that are trying to kill our trees.