Stony Point Revisited

 

This is the little-known overlook at a place called Stony Point, in the Allegheny National Forest.  It's not a spectacular view, but it is a pleasant one.  On our two-family camping trip over Labor Day weekend, I thought this would make a pleasant destination for a two dads and five children.  (The mothers stayed back a the campsite to talk and snack.)  Our friends are mixed-race.  When they got to the campsite in the ANF, they expressed a little shock and fear at all the Trump signs and Confederate flags they had seen driving up to this part of the world.  Me?  In my white privilege, I just look at the flags and signs and roll my eyes.  "Idiots.  Fools.  Unlettered haters."  But my black friends see such things and think, "What if our car breaks down here?  What if we need help out here among people who are flying flags that say, 'We hate you'?"  

On the trail up to Stony Point, we overtook a middle-aged couple in camo.  They turned and stared at us hard: two white guys, three black kids and two white kids.  I took it upon myself to be all homespun and chatty with them.  "Hey there!  You folks headed up to Stony Point?  That's where we're goin'!  I didn't think anybody else knew about that spot."  The woman wouldn't even look at us.  The man just said, "Yep."  I assumed that either they were disappointed that we had interrupted their solitude, or else they were disturbed to see three black kids in the woods (and two dads, no moms to boot--potentially gay guys who had adopted).  Their stony silence had a hostile feel to me.  I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt; I get annoyed too when I think I have the forest to myself, then I see a band of people--especially kids--trooping past.  But there sure are a lot of symbols up in that area to express hate and the marginalization of minorities.  It made me feel shame for the place that I love...