Washington Park Overlook, Warren

A little chore took me to the pleasant town of Warren just yesterday, where I discovered this view out over town.  Warren is a small city full of grand old mansions and stately public buildings.  If the Kinzua Dam ever fails, this town will get washed away in seconds.  It'll be Johnstown all over again.

Off Trail at Oil Creek State Park

There were more folks than I expected at Oil Creek State Park on Labor Day.  I tend to avoid public parks on holidays, but it called to me from across the miles.  There's too much uncertainty in my life right now.  I miss my daughters who are away at college.  I've been feeling a little edgy and bored.  I had to do what I've been doing all my life: Take it to the trees.  The trees have seen it all, and their counsel is always wise.

The weather was nice, not too hot, and I didn't have time to go too far from home.  It would have been a good day to put a kayak on Oil Creek, but who would taxi me back to my car?  

Oil Creek doesn't disappoint--with its rugged, steep terrain, its pleasant vistas, and its lazy, winding stream.  I'm hoping to do the whole 37-mile loop someday.  But I always expect summers to hold far more adventures than you can fit into them.  

At one point, I got into a pretty heated text conversation with a faraway friend and wandered off the trail and onto private land, where I made this slightly eerie discovery.  It's an old Detroit from late 30s or early 40s.  Someone drove it in here long ago, pushed it over on its side, and left it.

Midlife Wonders: Birds, Wildflowers, Houseplants

My weird, unexpected, and perhaps slightly less than manly interest in wildflowers continues.  So much so that I've taken to drying them, so I can put them out in the winter.  I still have a "best friend" from my college days--though it feels strange for someone my age to have such a thing.  When I told him about my new interest in wildflowers, he disapproved.  Funny how Gen X men are always policing each other's masculinity...

No one ever told me that your mid-50s would be like a second childhood--a time when you regard the world with wide-eyed wonder and a fresh openness to new discoveries.

I've gone over half a century without noticing birds and wildflowers.  But now?  Now I can't look away.  How did I miss them for all these years?  I even bought two low maintenance houseplants yesterday.  Never in my life have I owned a houseplant.  Now I wonder how I lived so long without them.  

There was a whole flock of goldfinches at my feeder up North--beautiful small birds with bright yellow bodies and black wings.  I sat and watched them like a movie, grinning like a fool.  And there were chickadees, and nuthatches, and tufted titmice, and house wrens--like the one who used to live in a little box on my grandmother's clothesline pole.  She called it "Jenny Wren."  Chipmunks and mourning doves chased each other beneath the feeder, picking up the fallen seeds.  The world is a place of many wonders.  But it takes us so long, so, so very long to have our eyes opened to many of them.