susan-c-ramirez

Persephone

Fri, 01 May 2026 19:46:38 GMT

Persephone has returned. Just like she does at this time every year, she is gracing Lightfall Hollow. The picture of innocence, where she walks, flowers trail in her wake. She is obviously happy to be here, and even though she is invariably a handful, I am happy to have her youthful spirit to keep me company once again.

The goddess of spring, Persephone is one of my favorite characters from classical mythology. After winter’s quiescence, she delivers fertility, vitality, and growth to our world.

Flowers fall under Persephone’s divine authority, and they are her specialty. A true anthophile (lover of flowers) with a green thumb as big as all outdoors, her very presence is distinguished by their blooming.

But Persephone is not simply a gentle maiden or sweet young thing. She is reckless, fickle, chaotic, and ungovernable.

Her capricious nature is understandable. For Persephone is not only the goddess of spring, rebirth, and flowers, she is also the queen of the underworld where, along with her husband, Hades, she commands, judges, punishes, and rewards the dead. There, she is commonly referred to as the “Dread Queen,” “Iron Queen,” or “she who brings destruction.” Yet, I cannot help but feel sympathy for Persephone. If you ask me, the stress of having to fulfill dual paradoxical roles – acting as a bridge between two vastly different realms – would cause anyone – even a goddess and queen – to become moody and mercurial.

As formidable and fearsome as Persephone is in her role as queen of the underworld, she does at times demonstrate in that friendless place the sort of kindness and caring fit for a bringer of new life. As “midwife of the soul,” she helps the virtuous make the transition between life and death. She also has a soft spot for lost and confused souls, as well as for those who have died young or suffered cruel deaths, singling them out for special attention.

Presumably, her partiality stems from her ability to empathize with their pain, having been forcibly taken from her mother at a tender age when she was abducted by Hades to live forever in his dreary domain of shadows and shades. Such was the Lord of the Dead’s selfish desire. It did not matter to him how impossibly arduous the transition from bright possibility to gloomy resignation would be for Persephone or how wretched with homesickness the goddess of Earth’s most exuberant season would undoubtedly become in such a dull, joyless environment.

I can only fathom that Hades must have been that forlorn. He must have been desperate for what he saw as Persephone’s and wanted to be his: beauty, hope, bliss, creativity, and an indomitable spirit.

It is fortunate then that Persephone’s mother is Demeter, the goddess of agriculture. A doting and devoted parent, Demeter experienced grief so consuming when her daughter was stolen that she single-mindedly wandered the world, searching for her missing child while neglecting her farming duties and causing global famine. The situation got so dire that humankind was in danger of dying out. Moreover, with their lives dependent upon the worship of mortals, the survival of the Olympian gods and goddesses was likewise threatened.

Under intense pressure from the anxious Olympians, Zeus, as the deities’ king, took charge of the situation and coerced a compromise between Demeter and Hades. Persephone would live six months of every year with her husband in the underworld and the other six months with her mother on Earth. In this way, the four seasons were created. Each year in autumn, Persephone returns to the underworld. As Demeter mourns the loss of her daughter, plant life goes dormant, and Earth begins its slumber that lasts through the winter. Then in spring, Persephone comes home to her mother. As Demeter rejoices, the world awakens and its vegetation flourishes once more until summer’s end.

Of course, Persephone is a myth. Whether I believe in her or not, she has no physical existence. Rather, she exists as a powerful symbol. She represents feminine strength and resiliency, as well as the human ability to embrace all aspects of oneself. She also symbolizes the inseparable interdependence of life and death that gives purpose to being, along with the entwinement of conscious clarity with subconscious murk.

Persephone is nothing other than a symbol. Yet maybe that is why she is so easy to relate to. Because I can understand why someone who spends half their time in a dark place would go a little crazy when liberated to the light. I imagine the grand freedom of it all would make anyone so overpoweringly ecstatic that they would lose self-control and impetuously act on whims.

So between Persephone’s oppressive role conflict and her predisposition for rapturous impulsivity when freed from a bleak world and released to a vibrant one, I suppose I can forgive her for the aggravation she regularly causes me in spring with her messy, unpredictable, and uncontrollable ways. Because, after all, Persephone embodies life and death, and there is nothing more messy, unpredictable, and uncontrollable then life and death.

Yet sometimes I wonder if Persephone is purposedly punishing me with her erratic behavior. Given that spring is not my favorite season, maybe she resents my ingratitude. Be that as it may, I do take enormous delight in my garden flowers and the wildflowers too, and I do find it wondrous in spring when fragile, but resolute shoots begin pushing themselves up out of the barren ground in my gardens and the hollow’s woods.

Beginning sometime in March, the earlier in the month the better, just as soon as it is warm enough to put my hands in the soil, I am out there every day with a pick, shovel, clippers, hand saw, and some superb weeding gadget I do not know the name of. With them, along with what little brawn is mine (not much), I clear debris, remove underbrush, install conservation measures, sculpt the landscape, dig out more garden space, and weed, weed, weed. Luckily, I have a penchant for dirt. (As in soil. Not filth.)

It is hard work, but I genuinely believe it is hard work that has given me my deep spiritual connection to the hollow, my sense of oneness with this land. I swear there is a sort of life-affirming, mystical experience that comes with hard physical labor. A consciousness of a sacred reality. I think the English poet, painter, and visionary William Blake said it best: “Arise and drink your bliss, for everything that lives is holy.”

I further believe that my hard work is valuable. Even so, I do sometimes feel guilty about all the time and energy I devote to my gardening. I wonder how on earth such extravagant gardening on a remote piece of property very few people see could possibly be helping to make the world a better place. But then I think that surely any positive action a person puts their whole heart and soul into is of worth to the world. I do not understand it, but I believe, in some inexplicable way, even unseen positive actions done unreservedly help make the world a better place.

On the other hand, I work so diligently co-creating the land each spring that I break the resolution I make every New Year’s, to take the time to make a physical record of all the co-creative handiworks – not all of them mine – that are here. I especially want a written record, along with photos and preserved specimens, of my garden flowers and the wildflowers that adorn the cabin’s lawns and surrounding woods. But I never allow myself to get to it.

So far, all I have for a written record is a simple, alphabetical list of the common names of the more than one hundred flower types, beginning with Allegheny monkey flower and ending with zinnia. I have yet to make note of when each flower blooms, for how long and in what location, its characteristics and preferences, as well as any scientific information, surrounding myths, indigenous wisdom, or my own observations. The four decades of pictures I have taken are still not organized, and there are many flowers that have never been photographed. As for preserved specimens, years ago, my husband made me a flower press, but I still have not pressed a single flower.

Worse than my lack of recordkeeping is that I do not take nearly enough time to revel in the harvests of Persephone and my labors – to gaze intently and slowly savor the unique beauty of each flower. I always think there will be “next year,” and that is when I will finally give each floral treasure all the appreciation it deserves. Then next year rolls around with way too much to do and a blink of an eye to do it in. Nonetheless, if I do not change my ways, I know someday I will seriously regret all I have missed.

Despite all my transformative work, I try to keep my gardens wild and natural looking. Formal gardens are not for me. I agree with the Irish horticulturist, William Robinson, that the perfect garden is one “devoid of any trace of man.” Although I have not achieved that high mark, I hope my gardens are at least ones worthy of a child’s approval.

I think maybe this predilection comes from my own childhood. Several blocks from where my family lived in a working-class neighborhood, there was for a few years a gorgeous plot of pink and yellow tulips. There must have been several hundred sandwiched in between two sad-looking houses. I loved those tulips and could hardly wait to see them each spring. But one year when I arrived for our annual visit, the tulips were gone. Where they had grown had been paved over to make a couple of parking spaces. I was horrified. In my child’s imagination, I heard the tulips where they were trapped underground, gasping for air, trying to scream for help, suffocating, and dying in the dark. I have never forgotten that, and I think it may be why I let my flowers have their untamed druthers with me.

You would think Persephone would be pleased and maybe even awed by my compassion and the way I indulge her flowers. But apparently not. Since she cuts me no slack.

Take this spring, for example. After a bitterly cold winter – and while I do love winter – I was ready for spring. I was not the only one either. The hungry deer, presumably as a last resort, had not only chomped away at my evergreens – the likes of English ivy, periwinkle, rhododendron, and mountain laurel – but they even denuded of its needles the cast-off Christmas tree that is still lying by the firepit right outside the cabin. In fact, all the plants my uninvited guests helped themselves to are, more or less, right outside the cabin.

Each morning of this past winter, I would find hoof prints in the yard. Despite how indignant I was about the deer devouring the scarce verdure of winter, I had to laugh one snow-covered morning when I noticed that a deer hoof print bears a distinct resemblance to a peace sign made with two stubby fingers. In the snow, it looked like the deer were trying to call an end to winter’s hostilities, signaling the heavens with an unfurled white surrender flag stamped with peace signs.

At first, the deer’s plea for a ceasefire appeared to have worked. Soon thereafter, the weather warmed, and I began my spring gardening. For several weeks, things went like clockwork. Snowdrops bloomed followed by crocuses, Siberian squill, forsythia, daffodils, hyacinths, and Lenten roses. Even the gnawed upon periwinkle swiftly generated new leaves and flowered.

The pussy willow bush, however, gave its usual lackluster performance. Which was particularly disappointing this year. I had tried so earnestly to encourage its blossoming with numerous sharings of a lovely piece of Polish folklore where ordinary bushes growing along a creek rescue kittens from drowning. As a reward, the bushes receive fuzzy, kitten-like catkins and become the pussy willows that are still with us today. But the sweet tale of pussy willow heroism did not move my own pussy willow one whit. Just like in all prior years, it produced no catkins.

Contrastingly, in the woods, as though mocking the pussy willow for its unproductivity, violets, spring beauties, and Quaker ladies heavily carpeted the ground and brought color to last autumn’s fallen leaves. Meanwhile, back in my gardens, the green stems and leaves of Virginia bluebells, bleeding hearts, columbine, and iris stood tall and waited to blossom. And even many of my hostas – of which I have planted dozens of various kinds – had begun to stab their way through the soil with their swordlike tips.

Boy, did that turn out to be a mistake. Because there was a cold snap. The temperature dropped dramatically, and it stayed cold for four killer days. At night, it would go down to as low as the low twenties, and during the day, it would scarcely climb out of the thirties. I thought to myself that Persephone must be in one of her moods. Perhaps brought on by the stress of her recent transition.

At dusk during those four frigid days, I tiptoed about my gardens like a mother tucking in her babes, making snug what flowers I could with scraps of old sheets and towels. But I have too many. Even if I had spent my gardening budget for the next several years to buy more sheets and towels, I still would not have had enough coverings to protect them all.

Miraculously, most survived. The daffodils, hyacinths, bleeding hearts, and hostas took the hardest hits, but the first two will come back next year, and, although the bleeding hearts and hostas were damaged enough to diminish their size once fully grown, they were left with a good chance to still make a decent showing. It is remarkable how resilient flowers can be. Their stubborn survival instinct and adaptability remind me of Persephone.

Also like Persephone, flowers – at least for me – are resistant to control. They seem determined to have their own way, and they usually do. Good examples are my late bloomers.

The prize for my oldest late bloomer goes to a rhododendron. It was a gift from friends of my parents forty years ago. I planted it outside my bedroom window, and for thirty-five years, it grew but did not bloom. Many was the time I considered ripping it out and tossing it on the burn pile. But for some unknown reason, I let it be. Then, five years ago, it began producing stunning flowers of pure white, and it has ever since.

Another late bloomer is the wisteria that has taken over the dilapidated gazebo in my secret garden. Like many of my plants here, I bought it online for ninety-nine cents. Unsurprisingly, for ninety-nine cents, one receives in return a rather puny plant. Nonetheless, the vast majority of my ninety-nine cent buys were terrific bargains from a website that, unfortunately, no longer exists.

At any rate, I nursed that wisteria for fifteen years. I guess because I think there is nothing more romantic than a rickety gazebo held together by braided ropes of wizened wood and dangling chains of lavender blossoms. But for all my trouble during those fifteen years, the wisteria, like the rhododendron, grew but did not bloom. That is, until two years ago.

The yellow flag irises are also included among the late bloomers. As I was then unaware that such irises are invasive, I planted one at the edge of the pond over three decades ago. It bloomed for a couple of years and then disappeared. Presumably, a muskrat had it for dessert. A decade later, not only did that lone iris reappear, but a massive colony of the same came up with it. Hundreds upon hundreds encircled the pond. Far too many to rip out by hand, they are still here.

I know I should feel remorse for my dumb mistake in planting an invasive plant, but ever since, when the yellow flag irises bloom in mid-May, I feel like I am living in one of Monet’s paintings of those sunshiny flowers. It is difficult to feel guilt and regret when one is captivated by beauty and soothed by serenity.

Two other late bloomers are the oriental poppies a friend gave me and the Virginia bluebells another friend gave me. Both did barely anything for close to two decades, but this year when they showed up, I was delighted to see they had multiplied like there was no tomorrow.

The poppies have yet to bloom, but they are in bud with hairy green pods that will soon split open to turn loose brazen flowers of garish red-orange that sashay and shamelessly flaunt their wares for every passing son of Zephyrus (aka Greek god of the west wind). A friend of mine calls such poppies “floozies,” and that word does capture their mien.

As for the bluebells, although they are almost finished blooming and despite Persephone’s caprice, I am especially gratified by how well they performed for the past few weeks. Bluebells have come to mean something special to me ever since I long ago acquired a large oil painting of a young woman kneeling in prayer, surrounded by a woodland filled with blooming bluebells.

It hangs above the cabin’s woodstove and is close to being my all-time favorite material possession. The artist titled his work Woodland Prayer , but from the first time I saw that painting – even though her face is hidden from view, and she wears modern-day clothes – I recognized that young woman as Persephone. In my mind’s eye, Hades has just burst forth from the underworld, his gold chariot pulled by obsidian-black horses with nostrils and eyes that smolder with a violent red. Persephone, terrified, drops to her knees and prays.

In the Homeric Hymns and other ancient myths, several different types of flowers are said to be the ones Persephone was picking when she was abducted by Hades. Never mentioned, however, are bluebells. But I can easily imagine that they were bluebells, and, interestingly enough, in some more modern retellings of Persephone’s abduction, the flowers that distracted the young goddess and left her vulnerable are bluebells.

The choice of bluebells in modern retellings makes a sort of sense to me since bluebells have long been associated with fairies. Fairies, like Persephone, are said to act as a bridge between two realms, our human world and the magical world. Often that magical world of fairyland is said to be located underground.

Of course, fairies, also like Persephone, are mythical creatures. However, what is not a myth is the comfort and strength the goddess of spring’s story and the “Persephone” painting gave me during a time when I was in my own bad place. They conveyed a deep psychological and spiritual meaning that provided me with hope when I needed it most. In a way that I do not fully understand that story and that painting became my ultimate reality, and they kept me going when I thought I could not.

I suppose that is why beneath bluebells is where I want to be buried someday. Preferably, naturally, wrapped in a simple cloth shroud and allowed to decompose beneath the earth.

Another reason for my final wish is because, according to folklore, bluebells when rung summon fairies to their dances. I am enchanted with the image of my remains being that upon which the Good Folk and People of Peace trip to light fantastic.

I realize to some my wish for my body to return to the earth without chemicals or cremation may engender a gruesome picture, and I can sympathize with their squeamishness.

I know there are people who cannot even bring themselves to view an embalmed and, albeit temporarily, preserved body. Which does baffle me. After all, death is not catching, and, as countless numbers of humankind have proven, all the best people do it.

Being both a longtime gardener and woodswoman, I have gotten quite familiar with decomposition. I have witnessed the rotting away of countless dead trees and other plants, and I have frequently come across the corpses of decomposing animals. In some of those cases, I have returned to the death scene multiple times so I could study decomposition from start to finish. And, yes, the dismantling of a living creature’s body is gruesome. But if observed long and intently enough, I have found that human sight can move past the repugnant physical to something too metaphysically beautiful for words.

My desire for my dead body to decompose naturally is because I love this world. It has nourished me with an eternity of what is wondrous and good. Therefore, as my last earthly act, I would like to return at least a tiny little bit of that immeasurable favor and have Earth feed upon me as I have fed upon it. (Well, that and I get a kick out of envisioning fairies making merry upon my late-blooming carcass.)

But enough about the art of late-blooming. Except that I do want to say something about those of my flowers that have yet to ever blossom. About them, I remain hopeful. Remembering their late blooming peers, I am not inclined to give up and yank them out of my gardens. At least, not yet.

Another example of flowers with Persephone-like qualities are the volunteers. They include the twenty or so wildflower types I never planted but which apparently decided on their own that they preferred a life less spartan and thereby took up a more pampered existence in my gardens. While some of my crocuses, Siberian squill, and daffodils concluded the opposite. Those rogues chose to leave home and now live free out in the woods—where, I must admit, they give me as much pleasure as they would confined to my gardens. Finally, there are those flowers, like the rascally black-eyed Susans, cone flowers, daisies, forget-me-nots, widow’s tears, and several others that apparently like to garden-hop late at night when I am asleep and not looking.

I can almost believe that absurd notion since it has been my experience that, also like Persephone, flowers have a hidden life and do mysterious things. Besides my garden-hopping rascals, another case in point is the St. John’s Wort that mystifyingly appeared among my garden plantings surrounding Mabel, the old giant of a maple tree outside my front porch that was downed to a jagged remainder of a trunk by a windstorm a few years ago.

I had just finished writing about St. John’s Wort (aka Chase Devil) an hour or so before. It is a sun-loving wild plant that thrives in the poor soil of disturbed or neglected areas, like roadsides or abandoned fields. I assumed it was this preference for the impoverished ground of blighted landscapes that prevented St. John’s Wort from growing in my fertile gardens the many times I had tried to get it to do so.

For years, I had tried, and then out of the blue, through no effort of my own, as if by magic, there it was. While I realize seeds can sometimes lie dormant in the dirt for years and then finally sprout for no obvious reason, this St. John’s Wort was a large one. It towered over a crowd of large, shade-loving hostas that I regularly tend. I don’t know how I could have possibly missed it until then or why it would choose to grow both in the heavy shade and rich soil it naturally disdains. I would like to think that St. John’s Wort grew itself as a thank you gift for me in exchange for my love note to its kind, but that is a cuckoo thought.

Another cuckoo thought – and I do have them, a lot – is that maybe it is Mabel who is at the center of the mystery. I have further reason to suspect that old tree relic of playing practical jokes on me because of another puzzling incident involving the seventy-five gold and purple crocuses I planted around her last fall. The crocuses came up when they were supposed to just fine, but here is the weird part.

Only the gold crocuses bloomed where I had planted them in clusters around Mabel. All the purples popped up elsewhere. Each bloomed in its own solitary spot, and they were quite scattered from one another. Some ended up as far away as the woods on the other side of my secret garden, which is at least a winding football field from Mabel. How could that possibly have happened? Well, maybe because, again like Persephone, crocuses are not only covert and inscrutable, they are defiant.

Crocuses, like snowdrops, can push up through frozen soil and bloom in snow. I remember a great lady I once knew who said that coming upon jewel-like crocuses blooming in a white landscape was “thrilling.” Back then, I failed to ask her why, but now I think it was because the lady herself was a bit of a rebel. Consequently, she understood that crocuses cheerfully blossoming in defiance of grave winter creates the thrill of hope in human hearts.

The crocus rebellion is a reassurance that the renewal of life the spring season represents is inevitable. That while we humans and our world are not, life itself is eternal. Somewhere, somehow, life will always go on. In this I take great comfort and thank the wise lady for her insight.

Yet there is no denying that the way the crocuses I planted last fall came up this spring all over the unintended place is defiance gone over the top. Still, the crocuses’ outlandish conduct does not weaken my conviction that defiance in some measure is good. It can create toughness, and to survive, flowers, like any other living beings, need to be tough. Particularly if they are going to survive the whims of Persephone.

As demonstrated by this spring’s volatility. Because no sooner had my gardens endured four days of untimely cold than the hollow was blasted with unseasonable heat, causing numerous flowers to make their initial appearance way too soon, and others already in bud or bloom to zoom through their blooming far too quickly. True, in spring, every flower blooms for too short a time, but the breakneck speed recently exhibited by many is ridiculous.

To make matters even more challenging, yet another cold snap immediately followed the warm spell. This one was briefer at least, lasting for a couple of days with only one night in the mid-twenties. For which I again made twilight rounds in my gardens, tucking in flowers with torn pieces of towels and sheets.

As before, most of the flowers and other plants too weathered the aberrant cold unharmed. Even the bleeding hearts pulled through with no additional damage. Probably because I had covered them more snugly. The two exceptions were the painted ferns and astilbes. Both had surfaced after the first cold snap, only to shrivel and turn an umber brown during the second. I assume they are goners. Well, at least until next spring.

Concerning the hostas, because they were further developed than during the earlier freeze, they were far more heavily damaged. After thawing, most were reduced to what looked like glops of melted ice cream or the Wicked Witch of the West after Dorothy had finished with her. I seriously doubt the hostas are going to amount to much of anything this year.

But that is okay. As proud as I am of my hosta collection, for a few years now, the deer have been dining on them more and more. Last summer, they ate practically every single hosta down to a pathetic stub. They even gobbled up the ones I risked life and limb for by planting them on a steep hillside. (A death-defying attempt to artistically recreate a waterfall from Pennsylvania’s Ricketts Glen State Park with cascading blue and green hostas.) To spare myself further frustration – while once again perhaps risking an early demise – I was already thinking of replacing the hostas with plants less relished by deer.

That is just the way it is with gardening. A gardener is someone who is constantly battling the natural world, and a good many times, the natural world wins. Yet, in my experience, for every few losses, there is a win or, even better, something given with no strings attached that is so intriguing, exhilarating, stirring, mesmerizing, beautiful, amazing, or inspiring that it immerses the senses, frees the mind, and pumps up the heart.

And at least the natural world is natural. Not so the climate change caused by humans that now must be contended with too.

Granted, cold air surges have long been a normal part of springtime in the Alleghenies. The atmosphere is in transition between winter and summer. There are clashes between lingering cold air masses and arriving warm air masses, and sometimes the cold gains the advantage for a bit. The recent cold snaps could just be par for the course, or metaphorically, the result of Persephone’s usual vagary.

But the cold snaps may have also been due to the increasingly weakened polar jet stream above the eastern United States, the result of unnatural and extreme warming in the Arctic that keeps allowing colder air to dip south, making temperature swings more extreme.

As for “false springs” – where temperatures rise too early, causing plants to start growing prematurely and be susceptible to damage once temperatures fall again – they have also been historically common. However, they are occurring much more frequently here in the Alleghenies, and global warming is almost certainly the culprit.

So as if competing with the natural world and coping with Persephone’s spontaneity were not enough, now climate change is adding to the struggle.

Still, despite being outnumbered, along with all the defeats and disappointments that come with flower gardening, I will keep fighting the good fight. Because the flowers are worth it. Their blooming reminds me that life itself is for blossoming. And that is no myth – it is a fact to hold onto for dear life.

And now I have to go cover some flowers. As it is going down to freezing tonight.

Damn you, Persephone! Go to hell.

(Just kidding. I love her.)

Red Sky at Morning

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 13:34:29 GMT

When I looked out my windows at sunrise the other day, I saw red. It was the dark red of anger, spent blood, and demon eyes, and it spanned not just the atmosphere above the eastern horizon like every other sunrise I had ever seen, but the entire sky. Even more chilling, the same satanic color covered everything under the sky. Lightfall Hollow’s trees, creek, pond, and ground were painted in the same red as the firmament above.

My first thought was that a wildfire must be raging nearby, and the hollow would soon be engulfed in flames. But try as I might, I could not get so much as a whiff of wood smoke.

Bewildered and anxious, my imagination ran wild. Smelling the air once again, I thought I detected sulfur, and it crossed my mind that perhaps hell had erupted, spewing forth the devil and his minions. Evil turned loose, they were invading both heaven and Earth.

I had been curled up in bed, lazily drowsy, listening to the soprano solo of a Carolina wren. According to ancient Irish mythology, the wren is a messenger from the spiritual realm who delivers messages, including warnings, answers, prophecies, and secrets, from immortals to us humans. Yet the wren is no angel. He is a cunning trickster who is said to have won his Celtic title, “King of the Birds” by cheating his feathered friends.

The story goes like this. Long ago in the days of the Druids, the birds decided to have a contest to see who could fly the highest. The winner of the competition would be crowned king.

The tiny wren, realizing he had no chance of winning solely through his own efforts, surreptitiously hitched a ride with the mighty eagle by hiding in the eagle’s feathers. Sure enough, the eagle flew the highest, but when he at last tired, the wren took to the air, leaving the eagle behind, and flying higher. Not exactly the actions of an angelic creature.

I can only think the wren’s lust for power got the best of him. Which was quite human of him. For invariably, there are those among us with megalomaniacal obsessions and rapacious desires. Their needy, greedy nature goads them into forfeiting their virtue in exchange for the pursuit of sovereignty. When all they ever really needed was faith, hope, and love.

But back to the wren. Perverse celestial being or not, it was certainly an angelic song the wren sang outside my bedroom window at sunrise the other morning as an electrical storm brewed and I lazed about half-asleep in my own otherworldly realm. I suppose the surreal state of mind I was experiencing is why I was prompted to personify some of the other nonhumans outside my window.

My anthropomorphizing began with some fuzzy thinking about what a shame it was that the wren’s song was not being appreciated by anyone but me. Consequently, each time there was a flash of lightning from the developing storm, my dreamy brain envisioned a photographer immortalizing the wren’s performance. While thunderclaps applauded, and the hollow’s creek babbled praise for the sopranist. Who sang on like no one was listening, and it did not matter if no one was listening because fame had never been the Creator’s point.

Which left me to ponder if over the thousands of years between the Druids’ heyday and today, wrens have progressed beyond selfish cunningness to humble wisdom. It was an encouraging thought. Because what is possible for a bird is surely possible for a human. I just hope we are a whole lot quicker at getting to the worthiest place to be.

I might have stayed in bed like that, spellbound by the wren’s aria and the rhythmic accolades of his fans, until their blended composition lulled me back to sleep. But then the altos, tenors, and basses of a raindrop chorus joined in, and the recital became a concert. Not wanting to miss a single note, I propped myself up on one elbow so that I could reach and fully crank open my bedroom window.

That is when I saw the red. It startled me. I jumped out of bed and ran to my cabin’s front windows where I saw the ghastly abomination had corrupted everything in sight. I next ran to the windows at the back of the cabin. The same repugnant shade was staining that view too. I wondered if all of Earth was trapped in the same apocalyptic aberration. I wondered if the world was ending.

I might have then moved on from being anxious to being terrified. However, I was now wide awake and had my wits about me. Rational, I figured what I was seeing was surely not the result of a prison break from perdition, but much more probably a kind of wedding between light and land. I had just never witnessed the spectacle before, and because I am human, I had initially reacted to the unknown I encountered with some fear, loathing, and jumping to absurd conclusions. But now I was certain the mysterious anomaly I was watching was a normal, albeit rare, occurrence.

I was right too. The little research I later did proved what I had seen was primarily a natural phenomenon of Earth and sky, brought on by a number of factors, only one of which is related to diabolical forces let loose and the world’s demise.

What is first needed for a panoramic sunrise is a large quantity of atmospheric water vapor, dust particles, or pollution particles. A substantial combination of two or all three of these works as well.

An approaching thunderstorm can provide an abundance of water vapor to the atmosphere by doing what approaching thunderstorms do. They squeeze moisture out of the air and force it up higher.

While the wind gusts that often proceed a thunderstorm can add more dust particles by picking up dry, loose soil. Although the fact of the matter is, I do not recall any wind that dawn. Nor was the ground dry, and here in the woodland that is my home, apart from the hollow’s dirt and gravel road, there is plenty of vegetation to hold onto the precious dirt. Be that as it may, all of Earth’s air contains dust particles, not only from the soil, but from other natural sources, like pollen, mold spores, bacteria, etc.

As for human-made air pollution, the Allegheny region certainly has more than its fair share. Something that is bound to get worse if the diabolical forces of industrial tycoons get their uncontrolled, imprudent way. Let loose, these robber barons have it within their power to steal from the world until there is nothing left and it dies.

I subsequently feel fortunate that, at least for the time being, the rural Alleghenian county where I live generally experiences good to moderate air quality. Nonetheless, anthropogenic pollution particles, like natural dust particles, are present in the air of even the world’s most pristine locations, and Lightfall Hollow is no exception.

What the water vapor, dust, and pollution particles do is create a dense atmosphere. Which intensifies the scattering of the wavelengths in the color spectrum (aka the light spectrum or visible spectrum). Scattering is the atmospheric diversion of wavelengths. It redirects the wavelengths from the straight path of the sunlight to spread out in multiple directions. While all colors in the spectrum are subject to scattering, shorter wavelengths are more easily scattered than longer wavelengths.

In the daytime, when the sun is at relatively high altitudes, there is just enough scattering to allow blue, the shortest wavelength in the color spectrum, to permeate the atmosphere. Even on days when there is a heavy cloud cover blocking the sun, above the clouds, the sky is blue.

Conversely, at sunrise and sunset, the sun is low in the sky. Meaning it must travel a longer path through the atmosphere. This elongated route of sunlight near the horizon increases scattering. Blue light is mostly scattered away, fading to a hazy, bluish-white hue in the part of the sky further away from the sun. Whereas longer wavelengths can pass through the atmosphere with less scattering. Red, as the longest wavelength in the color spectrum, has the best chance of making it through to appear in a sunrise. Or, for that matter, a sunset.

While the sun’s longer path through the atmosphere at the start and end of day is the fundamental cause of wavelength scattering, an atmosphere made dense by the presence of large quantities of water vapor, dust, and/or pollution particles intensifies the scattering even more, thereby boosting the chances of a predominantly red sunrise or sunset.

Yet extreme amounts of water vapor or particles in the atmosphere can dull the most vibrant red and probably explains why the red that gave me such a start was a deep burgundy, rather than a bright scarlet.

Clouds are additionally crucial, not just for red, but for any intensely colorful rising or setting of Earth’s star. High and mid-altitude clouds catch and strengthen the colors that have passed through the vapor and particles. The clouds then act like a projection screen, reflecting the light downward and illuminating the sky.

But when there is an approaching thunderstorm, there are typically low-hanging clouds. Although such clouds most often block the sun’s rays and prevent their colorful display, if the sun is low enough to shine underneath the clouds, the light is projected up from the sun onto the clouds’ undersides. And if the atmosphere is so dense that red, however darkened, is the only color that made it through, it is cast by the clouds. Which can create a sweeping, otherworldly scene of Earth and sky.

In other words, mystery solved. Solved and solved with science.

However, there was another mystery that occurred shortly thereafter. As the thunderstorm arrived and the rain began to heavily fall, the dark red was stripped away, revealing a pearly silver. It was as if a hellish veil had been lifted to show a heavenly face.

This mystery I decided not to try to solve. Although I am certain there is a scientific explanation for it as well, sometimes it is better to let a wonder be. Especially one that is extraordinary, awe-inspiring, and symbolically hopeful. As was this marvel. At least to my wondering eyes.

Because it looked to me like that omnipresent pearly silver was both a consecration and a promise.

And who’s to say? Maybe the wren outside my bedroom at dawn the other morning was not singing simply for the hell of it. It is easy for me to imagine he was a cunning trickster, keeping me lounging away in bed after it was time to get up and cheating me out of an early bird start to the day. More challenging to envision is that the wren was also a divine messenger, delivering a warning, answer, prophecy, and secret all wrapped up in one sublime heaven and Earth.

Hard to believe, but the wonder of it is, I do. That is my all-in-one faith, hope, and love, and I am sticking to it.

Clear Shade Revisited

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 20:12:52 GMT

The new year began with some snow. Not much, but enough. Enough to lighten the earth and brighten the gloom with its white.

White, the color of potential, possibility, and new beginnings. The pristine page where an untold story can be written. The clean sheet where a groundbreaking song can be composed. The untouched canvas where a recreated world can be painted.

A better story. A better song. A better world. Changed, fixed, and made whole.

Wonderful then this new year began with some snow. Not much, but enough. Enough to remind me to take heart. That no matter how dark and dismal things get, fresh starts are regularly in sight.

Enough snow too to prompt me to dust off my skis and revisit Clear Shade, the designated wild area situated high on the Allegheny Front of the Allegheny Mountains in Pennsylvania’s Gallitzin State Forest where my favorite cross-country ski trail does its serene wandering. Having completed the trail once again in this latest new year, I can now say I have been skiing Clear Shade for over four decades.

Yet, I am left to wonder if this past visit will be my last.

In any event, it took place on a beautiful day. The sun shone in a cloudless sky. While the ice crystals in the fallen snow sparkled with a clear, brilliant light. It was as though Earth had accepted Heaven’s marriage proposal and was showing off her diamond.

The wind was calm, and the temperature was just right. Cold enough that the snow was a dry powder. There was no melt to make it heavy and sticky. The bottoms of my skis stayed free of frustrating clumps. Gliding was easy.

Nor was there any icing from thaws and refreezes. Klutz though I be, I could successfully control my speed and the accuracy of my turns.

All in all, the snow was so ski-perfect I occasionally found myself imagining I had left solid ground and was in the sky, my feet skating through the dazzling white of empyrean’s twelve pearly gates.

It was cold. But it was not so cold that I was not comfortable. There was no stopping all the time to blow my running nose or wipe my tearing eyes. There was no pausing to pull my hat down to defrost my frontal lobe, my scarf up to warm my breath, or my gloves off to shove my hands beneath my cold-weather gear and into the tropical paradise of my armpits.

Also lovely was the forest’s lavish hush. Now and again, a wren whistled, a chickadee chattered, or a crow cawed, and once I heard an airplane that was not visible when I looked for it, bringing back a childhood memory of when I believed what I was hearing with nothing in sight was the sound of the world turning at an accelerated speed. Alarmed, I would worry that Earth would lose control and spin so fast it would fall apart, its pieces flung into outer space where I, along with all I had ever known, would be isolated and lost forever in an empty, impenetrable darkness. A day terror product of my little kid imagination that continues to haunt me with its disturbing image of abject desolation and forsakenness.

But it was easy to shake off that old demon as I skied Clear Shade in divine solitude with silence as the prevailing sound. Speaking to me in that still small voice I revere and adore and hear most clearly when I am alone in the natural world. Only to know I am never alone.

Yet, despite the beautiful day, clement weather, picturesque surroundings, and comfort and joy of sovereign quiet, there were obstacles to overcome.

As I said, there was not all that much snow. The hemlocks and other evergreens were not bundled up in their velvet cloaks, but were stripped down to their lace underwear. Scantily clad as well was the trail. A fair number of embedded rocks were exposed. Some marshy spots showed through. Both types of hindrances were relatively easy to maneuver around, but they did break up the rhythm of my ski.

Much more challenging to get past were the seven large, fallen trees lying across the trail at various points. Though they were no surprise. I had anticipated there would be fallen trees to contend with. While snow amounts are decreasing in the Alleghenies, wind speeds are increasing, and that means more fallen trees, as well as other types of land damage and damage to infrastructure too, including homes.

Seasonal temperature shifts, regional topography, and passing weather fronts have long contributed to wind levels in the Alleghenies, and they still do. However, now climate change is also coming into play. Specifically, the jet stream that flows over the mid-to-high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and drives the weather here is being altered. While it is true this meteorological phenomenon is still in a state of ongoing analysis, the consensus from scientists is that anthropogenic, or human-induced climate change is the culprit for the jet stream’s mutation.

The world has four main jet streams. Two are in the Northern Hemisphere, and two are in the Southern Hemisphere. These fast-moving, powerful “rivers of wind” are perpetually present five to nine miles up in the atmosphere and generally flow west to east. They exist because when high-altitude warm air masses collide with high-altitude cold air masses, the warmer air rises as the cooler air sinks, and this movement creates a particular form of wind called an air current.

The type of air current that constitutes a jet stream is normally organized, stable, and concentrated. Which is not necessarily true for all of Earth’s air currents. Though all jet streams are air currents, not all air currents are jet streams.

The jet streams are wavy in shape, and they meander much like a winding river. When a portion of a jet stream turns northward, the bend it makes is called a ridge. When a portion dips southward, the curve it forms is called a trough.

Recently above the eastern United States, the polar jet stream atop us has developed an exceptionally large trough. Such unusually deep southward dips are linked to the Arctic’s swift warming, where massive amounts of sea ice are melting because of greenhouse gas emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and several other gases, all of which trap heat in the atmosphere and raise temperatures worldwide. Not only that, but the loss of the Arctic’s highly reflective white sea ice allows the highly absorbent dark ocean to take in additional solar energy and then release it through evaporation to the air above, thereby warming the atmosphere even more and causing increased melting of sea ice.

It’s a vicious circle that is making the Arctic heat two to four times faster than the global average, and this drastic amplification is reducing the temperature difference between cold northern air and warm southern air that powers our jet stream.

Our jet stream is weakening. It is meandering more than usual, becoming wavier with ridges and troughs occurring more frequently and becoming more prominent and persistent. It is also slowing. Large-scale ridges and troughs can even cause it to stall at times, leading to seemingly interminable weather patterns. Consequently, climate in the Alleghenies, including long-term conditions of wind frequency, intensity, and duration, is changing.

The presence of the pronounced trough currently above us is producing repeated waves of low-pressure systems tracking across the mid-Atlantic region, with each system strengthening surface winds due to steeper pressure gradients. The low-pressure systems are formed as the jet stream exits the trough, where it speeds up and spreads out, leaving a void in the atmosphere. Comparatively warmer air from further down in the atmosphere is then pulled up, filling the void while lowering air pressure near the Earth’s surface. As the air is lifted, the surrounding surface air rushes in to replace it, causing the low-pressure system to further strengthen.

The reason low-pressure systems can cause strong surface winds is because they often have steep pressure gradients. A pressure gradient is the rate of change of atmospheric pressure over a specific horizontal distance. A big pressure change over a short distance makes for a steep pressure gradient, defined by significant atmospheric pressure differences. The pressure differences create a pressure gradient force that accelerates the air, forcing it to rapidly move from high-pressure areas to low-pressure areas.

Along with everything else already mentioned, sometimes the Northern Hemisphere’s polar vortex gets into the act. A polar vortex is a band of strong, cold wind spinning counterclockwise ten to thirty miles above the Earth’s surface. The world has two polar vortexes. One is above the North Pole. The other is above the South Pole.

Our polar vortex above the North Pole, like our polar jet stream below it, is being destabilized due to the Arctic’s intensified warming. More frequently now it slides off the pole, stretches, or splits into two or three rings. Arctic air can then descend southward and reinforce the jet stream’s dip.

In summary, the warmer the Arctic, the weaker our jet stream. The weaker our jet stream, the more apt it is to meander with more and larger ridges and troughs, as well as being more prone to stalling. More and larger troughs mean the likelihood of more low-pressure systems that may persist for long periods. The more low-pressure systems, the more probable steep pressure gradients. The more steep pressure gradients, the more exceedingly powerful pressure gradient forces. The more exceedingly powerful pressure gradient forces, the more high winds. And the more high winds, the greater the possibility of damage to land and infrastructure, including homes.

I must admit the idea that the arrival of fierce winds in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountains is related to the disappearance of sea ice in the Arctic Circle can seem preposterous. The notion feels like something out of a bizarre, irrational, disjointed dream. Yet I believe it. I believe it because the harsh truth is, each step from Arctic ice to Allegheny wind logically follows the previous one so that, in the end, the connection makes perfect sense. Therefore, though the wind was but a playful breeze during my recent new year’s ski, violent winds, along with the danger they pose and the destruction they can cause, are evidently here in the Alleghenies for an indefinite stay.

Incidentally, I have not even touched on the disrupted jet stream’s effect on temperature and other weather conditions. Nor have I gotten into the various other atmospheric and oceanic processes that are also being impacted by climate change. Simply put, the news on all those fronts is not good either.

Returning to my highlight of the wind, I guess I must become more adept at climbing over large, fallen trees. Either that or give up enjoying my favorite cross-country ski trail. Which I hate to admit is a serious consideration. Because I cannot deny struggling across the trees lying on Clear Shade’s trail rattled me.

Granted, the fact that I refused to remove my skis added to the difficulty. Stubborn as an ass, I conquered all seven of those tree obstacles with my skis locked to my feet. Which made for some rather inelegant moves. Although in getting over tree number four, I accomplished – albeit through no volition of my own – the gymnastic split that so eluded me in high school.

It was an exemplary split too. Although excruciatingly painful for a woman well past her limber youth. My anguished screams and angry swearing are probably still rolling through Father Gallitzin’s forest, across the Allegheny Front, and into the Arctic. Reverberating in the ears of wild critters from here to there. Piercingly broadcasting me a potty-mouthed nincompoop to white-tailed deer and caribou, cardinals and puffins, rainbow trout and beluga whales, American Bigfoots and Arctic Tornits.

How I ever got out of that split and back atop my skis, I shall never know. However, when I was subsequently confronted with large, fallen trees numbers five, six, and seven, I totally get why I still would not do the sensible thing and take off my damn skis.

My absurd mulishness was because of a perilous incident I had previously experienced while skiing Clear Shade. It happened back when the Alleghenies regularly got more snow than is typical at present. There was probably a good two feet on the ground that day, and more snow was falling. The air was bitter. The wind wailing like a banshee. The trees shuddering, as if in horror at the spirit’s grim declaration. Their trunks creaking, cracking, and popping. It made me wonder if they were trying to uproot and run from the inevitable.

As for the fine feathered friends of Clear Shade, not one let out so much as a peep. All literal birdbrains were undoubtedly hunkered down, waiting out the storm. I should have heeded their wisdom. Yet I was not about to miss a chance to ski. So, off I went into the woods. Solitary and proudly reliant on only myself.

Self-reliance is something I greatly prize. I like the realization that no one will come to my rescue. Should I get into a jam, I must figure a way out of it on my own and work solo to do everything it takes to extract myself. For I am the only one who will save me.

At the most basic level, I find self-reliance exhilarating. A vitality booster that helps prevent laziness and helplessness. However, it does have its downside.

As I demonstrated that fateful, blizzardy day in Clear Shade. What happened was, about halfway through my trek, one of my skis came off, and for the life of me, I could not get it back on. The snow was so deep. It came up well past my knees, and my unbound ski kept sinking and disappearing into mounds of feathery fluff. From which I dug it out time and time again. Though it was like retrieving an errant twig from a mountain of goose down. Then after brushing off the countless clusters of flakes with my increasingly numbing hands, I would try and try to get my boot to grip the binding securely enough to fasten itself in place. Only to fail and lose the unruly ski once again to the merciless snow.

Not a very impressive predicament, I know. It’s embarrassing. I wish I had a more spectacular crisis to tell, a plight full of exciting drama, intrigue, and action, but that is what happened. My ski fell off, and I could not get it back on.

After multiple misses, I gave up, took off my other ski and started to walk the last few miles of the trail. To put it mildly, trudging through all that deep snow was exhausting. So exhausting I eventually gave up on that as well. At which point, it occurred to me that I might not make it out of there.

I should have been frightened. But I wasn’t. I felt remarkably calm, and all I wanted was to sleep. I lay down in the snow and began to drift off. But right as I reached the place between awake and asleep – that mystical borderland where the conscious and the subconscious play tag in a misty wood – something amazing happened.

A woman who is very dear to me materialized out of the storm and inspired me to get up and keep going. The experience was similar to what happened when I was lost during a hike in Idaho, and my uncle saved me. Although during the Idaho incident, I was wide awake. For what went on in Clear Shade, I was in a surreal daze. And while my uncle’s message to me was conveyed in blunt words, hers was communicated in cryptic action. I have yet to grasp what she meant when she smiled knowingly and, without a word, gently tugged up my tossle cap and held the baby pink interior of a conch shell to my ear.

I am pretty sure the conch shell she held was the Queen Conch that sat on my nightstand when I was a young girl. Back then, I was captivated by that rosily whorled treasure from the deep, but had long since forgotten it. And what a seashell could possibly have to do with the adult me defeated and stranded in an Appalachian winter wood, I still cannot fathom.

But the lady who put it to my ear must have known what she was doing. Because something in the rhythmic rolling roar I heard in the shell’s sublime heart awakened my survival instinct, motivating me to push myself up from the snow and continue to fight my way out of the mess I had gotten myself into. Obviously, as I am no ghost – at least not yet – I made it.

My best guess is the loved one who saved me during the Clear Shade adventure was a hallucination. Still, I don’t really know. What I do know for certain is that I am grateful. Grateful for both the Idaho and Pennsylvania rescues. Not only because they delivered me from harm – or worse – but because they have blessed me with a humble uncertainty as to how self-reliant I truly am. Hopefully those double doses of doubt are enough to give me some pause when I need it.

I thought about that as I ended my most recent cross-country ski and left Gallitzin State Forest for home. Getting across those seven fallen trees while accompanied by a chilling memory did rattle me. Yet I cannot imagine giving up something that is so me. Just where would I be then?

Of course, it might help solve my conundrum if I would call up my courage and get over the fear of removing skis before climbing trees. Especially when the snow is not very deep and easily walkable. Again, I’m embarrassed. My ski overattachment must be off the charts. That is, of course, if there is a chart for ski overattachment. Which I somehow kinda doubt. So perhaps I have invented a new mental illness. I wonder if some brilliant psychologist will name it after me, and I will be famous. Or, more plausibly, infamous.

Much more important than what the future holds for me, however, is what the future holds for Clear Shade, the surrounding Gallitzin State Forest, and other wilds in the Alleghenies, Pennsylvania, Appalachia, and elsewhere. I worry, and I believe I have legitimate reason to worry, that the vast majority, if not all, could be taken away. Many gone, perhaps even in my own lifetime.

Industrial greed is the culprit. Something Pennsylvania, including the Allegheny region, is no stranger to. Much of Pennsylvania’s idyllic landscape has been heavily degraded for centuries by the extraction industries of timber, coal, oil, and gas, as well as numerous manufacturing industries and, last but not least, climate change, the largest percentage of which is caused by industrial pursuits. So it is that God’s country is made by man a godforsaken wasteland.

Clear Shade Wild Area and Gallitzin State Forest are prime examples, having been heavily logged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in sacrifice to the timber and iron industries. By the time lumber barons were done pillaging the primeval woods, all that was left were rotting stumps and scorched, sterile earth from severed, dried-out treetops fueling massive wildfires, baking the ground and destroying soil nutrients. What had once been a gorgeous wilderness teeming with life was left an ugly, barren hellscape.

Luckily, however, there were people who cared. Among them was Joseph Rothrock, “Pennsylvania’s Father of Forestry.” Because of his advocacy and the advocacy of others, forest restoration projects were established for Pennsylvania’s most desecrated lands. In 1916, the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry took control of what would become Gallitzin State Forest, including Clear Shade Wild Area. While the wild area took its name from the Clear Shade Creek flowing through it, the state forest was named for the Russian prince and 19th century Catholic priest, Father Dimitri Gallitzin.

Lovingly known as the “Apostle of the Alleghenies,” Father Gallitzin was a superior man who, though born to tremendous wealth and social standing – his godmother was Catherine the Great – never became hooked on money, fame, or power. Instead, he relinquished his inheritance and spent the better part of his life administering to the Allegheny poor, spending what finances he had on their welfare. He died in relative poverty, but rich in spirit, proving as he did that it is possible to come into intimate contact with money and still not catch the money disease. The addiction that brings to spiritual ruins so many good people.

Over the years, the forest that had been so violently ravaged returned and is now as magnificent, wild, and natural as it ever was. However, the miracle of rebirth that is Gallitzin State Forest and its Clear Shade did not happen without a lot of human help. I wonder if today there are such devoted and savvy champions and stewards of Pennsylvania’s woodlands.

We sure do need them. In no small measure because climate change is rearing its ugly head in Gallitzin, Clear Shade, and our other wilds too, generating severe weather events and the warming that is destroying habitats and ousting native species native.

Then there is the industrial activity that remains furiously alive and well in Pennsylvania, exacerbating climate change and destroying the environment further through hazardous waste generation, pollution of air, water, and soil, and over-extraction of natural resources. Each year, from the state’s tens of thousands of producing wells, over seven trillion cubic feet of natural gas are extracted and roughly seven million barrels of crude oil are taken. While from Pennsylvania’s hundred or so coal mines, around fifty million tons of coal are removed. Besides the extraction industries of gas, oil, and coal, there are approximately seven hundred Pennsylvania mineral mines. As for the commonwealth’s manufacturing industries, there are currently over thirteen thousand firms.

In rapacious company with the above environmental offenders are the one hundred or so data centers currently in Pennsylvania, with many more planned. Data centers are warehouses for computers that serve the internet. They can be enormous, with some over a million square feet, the size of more than seventeen football fields. Obviously then, they require large chunks of open land. They also use huge amounts of electricity. While vast quantities of water are necessary to meet their extreme cooling needs.

With over eighty-six thousand miles of waterways, Pennsylvania is water rich. Our plentiful water, massive energy infrastructure, and expansive amounts of rural land, plus some other features, make our state a highly attractive destination for data centers.

Between the interrelated, devouring monsters of climate change and industrial schemes, I fear for wildernesses like Gallitzin and Clear Shade. Moreover, I fear for all of Pennsylvania, Appalachia, and the entire world too. Sometimes I wonder if that old childhood day terror of mine – that horrifying vision of Earth spinning out of control, falling to pieces and into desolation and forsakenness – I wonder if that specter was really a warning look at the future.

Except that the reality is, Earth spinning out of control is not the problem. We are the problem. We are the ones who are spinning out of control, and we are risking everything falling to pieces on us. We are risking desolation and forsakenness. And all because of greed.

On that account, I suspect I will continue to ski Clear Shade. Even when threatening obstacles obstruct my path. I will do so because I cannot help but believe that in some admittedly miniscule way, by virtue of my awed appreciation of the natural world, I am standing up for the glorious creation that was given to us for free. The place where the still small voice carries more weight and has more true power than the loudest voice in the room. The blaring bellow of greed.

No matter how dark and dismal things get, I remember that hope never abandons. In this supreme truth, I take heart. The world can still be changed. It can be fixed and made whole. Fresh starts are regularly available. At least for now.

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 13:29:55 GMT

My Christmas tree is listing like a drunken sailor. I wonder why. Perhaps because I got it lit on cheap vodka.

Which some might judge as tree abuse. But in my defense, I always welcome Yuletide conifers into my home with a big cup of boozy cheer. It is my long-held tradition, and no prior tree has ever shown the slightest sign of inebriation.

So how was I to know this year’s tree would be the first of its grand, evergreen kind unable to hold its liquor! Each one of its numerous predecessors received the same generous pour of holiday spirits and yet managed to stand upright with their dignity intact. Rather than leaning rearwards like some off-balance lush. Fairy lights weaving through shaky branches. Baubles dangling precariously. Crowning star sitting cockeyed and pushed back.

Rest assured, it has never been my objective to overserve Christmas trees. My intentions have been pure. I have merely wanted to keep my firs, pines, and spruces vibrant and their deaths postponed for as long as possible, and consuming a copious amount of vodka helps. It helps a lot. At least that has been my observation for lo these many years.

However, I could be wrong. Certainly, the experts at the National Christmas Tree Association disagree with me. They contend there is no truth to the notion that vodka breaks up resin, the thick, gooey substance secreted as a protective response to injury by virtually all conifers, as well as quite a few deciduous trees and other plants too.

It goes without saying that a Christmas tree that has been chopped down and had its trunk severed from its roots has suffered an injury. Its cut will then ooze resin which will form a sealant. As good as a wound adhesive as resin is, shielding the tree from pathogens and insects, its gumminess also prohibits the water the tree needs from being absorbed through its rootless trunk. This is why it is recommended by real Christmas tree enthusiasts everywhere that, before putting the tree in its stand, a new cut be made by sawing an inch or so off its bottom.

Afterwards, the sooner the tree is stood in water, the better. Though this will not prevent it from secreting more resin. Excessive buildup can still occur. But a guzzle of vodka can foil a killer clog. Or not.

The National Christmas Tree Association additionally maintains that alcohol, or for that matter, any additive, dehydrates a tree, causing needles to become brittle and shed faster. They, along with multiple plant physiologists at universities and other places of prestige recommend a Christmas tree have its thirst consistently quenched with plenty of plain, cold, fresh water and only plain, cold, fresh water.

Nonetheless, it is my tradition to treat my Christmas trees to a welcoming vodka cocktail, and before now, my intemperate hospitality has always seemed to work to their benefit. Still, perhaps my current tree is trying to tell me otherwise, and I have been putting my faith in an old wives’ tale.

Albeit, the practice of presumably invigorating a Christmas tree with vodka began, not with old women, but with a middle-aged man. In 1989, Kenneth Takeo Nagao, a long-time resident of Eugene, Oregon and proud American of Japanese-Hawaiian heritage, started what would become a popular Christmas tradition. As a successful and influential architect who designed many private homes and public buildings, Mr. Nagao must have been familiar with lacquer, a common finishing material originally made of tree resin and one that holds a prominent place in the history of architectural and interior design.

Although I have no idea if Mr. Nagao had any knowledge of such, it is perhaps also relevant that lacquer work is an ancient Asian art form, its beginnings dating back to around 5,000 BCE. It is an extremely labor-intensive craft that creates a highly durable and glossy surface on all sorts of items, including furniture, screens, everyday utensils, musical instruments, decorative art, and even coffins. Intricate designs are achieved through layering anywhere from dozens to over one hundred coats of lacquer, with various layers sometimes applied in different colors and inlaid with such delicate materials as eggshell, mother-of-pearl, gold filament, silver leaf, etc. Complex carvings and fine paintings, frequently featuring mythological or nature scenes are also customary. Just as remarkably, despite being as old as civilization, lacquer work was paramount to the Modern Movement of the late 19th to mid-20th centuries when the fearless, ground-and-glass-ceiling-breaking Irish architect and furniture designer, Eileen Gray, put it to contemporary use in her famous designs.

Whether Mr. Nagao knew about Asian lacquer work or not, it makes sense, because of his professional experience, he would theorize as he did. Since traditional lacquer is made of resin from Asian sumac trees, and both methanol and isopropyl alcohols liquify lacquer, it stands to reason Mr. Nagao would suppose the ethanol found in all alcoholic beverages would similarly dissolve the resin secreted by a wounded Christmas tree. But plenty of scientists disagree with him, and I strongly believe in science.

There was one scientist of plant physiology, a college professor I found in my research, who admitted that, though skeptical, he was keeping an open mind because “biology is a complex and wonderful business.” While I am no biologist, I am certainly a huge fan of life, and whether biological or otherwise, its processes provide me with endless fascination. Consequently, I could not agree more with the open-minded professor.

Also hopefully worth considering on Mr. Nagao and my behalf is that old wives’ tales, like all folktales, often do contain a seed of truth. Like any seed, if rightly sown and given favorable growing conditions, a folktale seed can emerge and arise from where it was planted as something more. Something maybe even grand and evergreen.

After all, whether they be mythmakers dealing with lofty mysteries, like the origins of the universe, or old wives grappling with minor problems, like combating the common cold, folktale creators are not as different from scientists as one might think. Both are truth seekers and discoverers. Whereas scientists rely on empirical evidence and repeated testing, folktale inventors rely on poetic license and the subconscious.

Through artistic expression, folktales plant their seeds of truth and usually in a way that requires the receiver to do at least some, and sometimes a lot of intellectual exploring and interpretation on their own. Unlike the direct truths of science, a folktale truth tends to be veiled, like a bride with her face draped in tulle and lace. Who lifts that veil depends upon the giving of favorable growing conditions (the diligent and difficult work of love and commitment).

Despite this year’s Christmas tree embarrassing me by appearing sloshed and unable to stand up straight, I am not tempted to go for an artificial tree. At least not yet, but maybe someday. Because sometimes I do wonder if I am right to remove from its natural home and cut short the life of an innocent young tree just so I can brighten and freshen my dark, stuffy winter home with its warm, comforting light and clean, crisp scent so reminiscent of outdoor air. How in return for the balm it bestows, I dress its solemn, displaced, dying self in a gaudy December fashion, and then come January, strip naked its once-supple branches gone stiff with premature aging (or perhaps too much vodka), and toss the poor thing out into the cold to meet its untimely end alone and forgotten.

Then there are the environmental concerns and the question of which Christmas trees are more ecologically harmful, real or artificial. I have tried to do conclusive research on this topic, but it turns out the issue is exceedingly complex and dependent upon multiple factors.

As they grow, real Christmas trees consume significant amounts of water. They are often fed fertilizers and treated with pesticides and herbicides. None of which is good for the environment and us.

On the other hand, real Christmas trees support forestry and a continuous cycle of growth that captures carbon. On a Christmas tree farm, trees are typically grown for roughly ten years. As a result, for every tree cut down in a year, nine are left standing to soak up carbon, prevent erosion, provide a haven for nesting birds and a likely foraging site for wildlife.

Real Christmas trees also preserve the rural landscape. What’s more, there are purportedly people who have more direct contact with their real Christmas tree than any other forest product. That is hard for a nature lover like me to believe. Yet, I must admit it has been my own observation that too many people scarcely ever interact with the natural world. If real Christmas trees can help show them what they are missing and get them to care just a little bit more for the planet, I say, sorry for your sacrifice real Christmas trees, but your loss is Mother Earth and all life’s gain.

As for artificial trees, they do have the potential to be more environmentally friendly than their real counterparts, but only if they are reused for at least ten to twelve years and sometimes much longer. This is because artificial Christmas trees are normally made largely from plastic. The plastic is produced from the carbon-rich fossil fuel of petroleum during an industrial process that generates large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2). More industrial emissions occur when the tree itself is manufactured. Long-distance shipping on massive ships burning heavy fuel oil adds even more CO2 to the atmosphere.

And that’s not the end of it. Once the artificial tree is discarded and ends up in a landfill, it continues to pollute our world as it breaks down over hundreds of years. Furthermore, the oxygen-poor conditions of the landfill mean the tree decomposes anaerobically (without oxygen) which produces methane, a greenhouse gas much more potent than CO2.

In sum, during its entire existence, an artificial six-and-a-half-foot Christmas tree emits forty kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent (40 kg of CO2e). Larger, pre-lit, or pre-ornamented trees emit even more.

Whereas during its life cycle, a real six-and-a-half Christmas tree emits anywhere from 3.5 kg of CO2 to 16 kg of CO2e, depending upon how the tree is discarded. If the tree is dumped in a landfill, it too will decompose anaerobically, producing methane in the amount of 16 kg of CO2e. But if burned, left to rot on the ground, or chipped and used as mulch or compost, it will emit no methane and only 3.5 kg of CO2, the same amount it absorbed during its lifetime, making the tree carbon-neutral. This is likewise true for any tree of any size disposed of in an ecologically sound manner.

So, although the matter is complicated, odds are I will probably continue to choose real Christmas trees and, because I am lucky enough to live in the woods, keep disposing of them by burning on the summer solstice. Another one of my cordial traditions. While I understand it is better to leave my Christmas trees to decay and feed the soil with their nutrients, for some inexplicable reason, to give a warm welcome to June’s summer solstice, I feel compelled to make a fire of last December’s tree. It means something to me, although I have yet to discover what. Perhaps it is a letting go ritual. Or it could be an ancient lost rite of ancestors long dead that still lives on in my unconscious. Or my way of marking another passing year and reminding myself that, as the days grow shorter, so does my life, and I had therefore better get on with it.

Whether a real Christmas tree is burned or left to decay, not a bad way for any living being to go. Whether as ash or dirt, returned to the good earth from whence it came. Thus, I am spared Christmas tree guilt. Except maybe for overserving a certain lightweight. And, okay, also for removing trees from their native habitats and killing them off at a young age.

I gave that a bit of thought recently during a wintry evening hike as the group I was with crunched through fallen snow under a full December moon. Part of the land we went through had long ago been a Christmas tree farm. The remaining conifers have now grown giant and venerable. That night they stood dark, hush, and frosted with snow that shimmered with reflected moonlight. It was uplifting and wondrous.

Then I came home to my young and foolish evergreen and realized it was the same.

There is something life-affirming about a Christmas tree. Whether it be man-made or nature-made, lit by the Snow Moon, fairy lights, or even cheap vodka, a Christmas tree not only embodies hope, it symbolizes the enduring, evergreen quality of life that makes hope possible, even during the darkest of times. It is the promise of new beginnings and wishes coming true. It is the reassurance that peace on Earth and goodwill to all is a reachable reality.

So, I will not be discouraged from making the same wish I am always making. The crowning star of a wish that sits atop my list, however impractical and pushed back though it be.

Peace on Earth. Goodwill to All.

In the Wilds with the Supernatural

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 12:20:11 GMT

When I ask someone to describe the woods in one word, often that one word is “spooky.” Which astonishes me. Because my one word is “enchanting.”

Granted, “spooky” and “enchanting” can have overlap. Both can describe something that is magical and/or mysterious. Both can also refer to something that is captivatingly beautiful. But whereas “spooky” generates fear, “enchanting” generates wonder.

This is not to say, however, that I have never found the woods spooky. I have had numerous spooky experiences in the woods. Including here in the Alleghenian mountain hollow that is my home. Woods I have walked since I learned to walk and loved heart and soul ever since I can remember. Woods that during our time together have become my very essence. Now, as they are deep inside me, I am deep inside them. As long as I live, these woods will be with me, and as long as these woods are here, I will be here too.

After that, I do not know. But I would hazard to guess we will still be together.

Yet, for all that friendly familiarity and feelings of unbreakable attachment, there are moments when, with no warning whatsoever, these woods take on an eerie, surreal quality, like the bewitched forest in a dark fairytale, and I am afraid. To say the least, the paradox is baffling. Yet, these uncanny mutations also make some sense. After all, these woods are part of the Allegheny Mountains, a sub-range of the Appalachians, and there are no mountains on Earth more famous for being spooky than the Appalachians. Superstitious beliefs, supernatural sightings, unexplained phenomena, magic, and mysteries of all kinds abound here, and there are large volumes of accompanying folktales and legends to keep the otherworldliness of Appalachia ever alive and present, if only in the human mind.

Most Appalachia aficionados attribute the spookiness of its mountains to things like their extreme old age, violent birth that killed their mother, and lifetime of being constantly chipped away at. Also often given credit for Appalachian spookiness are the mountains’ frequent spells of fog-induced concealment, countless shifting shadows, slopes of twisted, tortured rock, and deeply hidden vales. Regularly mentioned too are the human tragedies that have taken place in the Appalachians, as well as the unsavory, even wicked characters who have secreted themselves away in the region’s isolated hills and hollows. All of which make the Appalachians a believable home for creepy beings, enigmas, sorcery, negative energy, curses, freakish curiosities, etc., etc. No wonder these woods can seem haunted.

Or maybe they really are. Who am I to say?

But if the Appalachians, including the Alleghenies, are indeed haunted, I don’t buy the reasons given as telling the whole story. These woods have mystical secrets yet to be shared. I am certain of it.

Because, yes, the Appalachians are ancient, but there are mountains all over the world that are older. And, yes, the Appalachians had an intense geological beginning, the result of a series of continental collisions, but other mountains, for example, volcanic mountains, have had rougher and certainly more explosive starts.

It is true as well that the procreator of the Appalachians, the Iapetus Ocean, ceased to exist in the world as the mountains emerged and were delivered. However, each thing that is of this planet ultimately gives up the ghost to clear the way for what comes next. Here on Earth, death births life.

Factual too is that, for the hundreds of millions of years since their creation, the Appalachians have been unceasingly subjected to the workings of wind, water, and ice. But these natural elements need not be considered ruinous batterers. Instead, I deem them devoted sculptors, the painstaking art of which has revealed the gentle, serene, and feminine nature of the Appalachians. Like so many women whom I admire, the Appalachians exude a quiet, but boundless strength.

As for being periodically shrouded in fog and buried in shadows, along with having contorted landforms and abysmal hollows so secluded they create the impression of being cut off from the modern world and in primordial time, I cannot think of any mountains with less intimidating looks than the Appalachians. Short, hunched, roly-poly, wrinkled, and rumpled, they remind me of little old soft-hearted, strong-minded grandmas, their forests bundled about them like thick, beautiful shawls of ever-changing colors, textures, weaves, and patterns.

Regarding the human part of the equation, tragedy has always been with us in all times and places. As have depraved reprobates and vicious thugs.

Then why do so many call the woods, and the woods of the Appalachian Mountains in particular, spooky? Moreover, why, in these Alleghenian woods I love and have known as my one true home since childhood, why am I sometimes spooked when there is no perceivable reason for being spooked? How strange that is.

Strange, yes, but hardly unique. Quite a few of the most seasoned outdoorspeople have reported incidences of groundless anxiety when in untamed nature. While there are modern psychological theories to explain such sudden, out of the blue, creepy, and bizarre states of mind, I don’t believe they tell the whole story either. I guess that is why I try to fill in the dissatisfying lack with Pan, the classical mythological god of nature’s wilds.

It is not an original thought on my part. The notion of an encounter with Pan in the wild being the cause of irrational fear was common among ancient Greeks. In fact, the word “panic” comes from the Greek panikos, meaning “of or relating to Pan.”

To the ancient Greeks, Pan was nature at its wildest, and so it is no wonder he did not fit the mold of the stunning deities who resided in golden splendor on Mount Olympus. Pan’s looks were so grotesque that at birth, his mother rejected him. Shame on her. Although I will concede the depictions I have seen of Pan, including the treasured statue that sits outside my front porch, are a bit unsettling. Whereas his upper body is that of a man, he has the shaggy bottom, cloven hooves, and tail of a goat, and on his head, he wears horns. Characteristics that when Christianity came along became associated with the religion’s devil. Which understandably caused a huge dip in Pan’s popularity. With some so eager to distance themselves from the disgraced champion of the wilds, they declared him dead. However, I have a sneaking suspicion he only went underground.

In addition to his outlandish appearance, Pan also differed from the Olympians because of where he made his home. For him, the gilded halls of a palace held no appeal. He chose instead to live in the remote mountains and forests of Arcadia. Yet, he was by no means a loner. Pan was intimately connected to the natural world and its inhabitants. He had many close relationships with shepherds and hunters, other rustic spirits, and all wild animals.

Nor was he a miserable grouch like several of his immortal colleagues. Pan was revered for leading a carefree life, made rich with music and merriment. He was as free a spirit as the wilds of his domain. And while Pan certainly had some huge, terrible faults, which I won’t get into here, I suppose that is why I like him so much. I can relate to choosing unsophisticated, but wonderful nature over the artificiality of gaudy grandeur and the freedom that choice bestows.

As to why Pan inflicted antiquity’s wilderness wanderers with unfounded jitters, as well as why I imagine him doing the same today to the likes of me, I can’t help but fancy him as the enduring guardian of lands yet unbroken. In my mind’s eye, Pan protects what is left of nature’s sacred grounds from further encroachment by careless, unappreciative people. And, for that, I have tremendous sympathy.

Because, let’s face it, we humans have a rotten history when it comes to taking care of the natural world. Just look at what some of us have done to vast swaths of the Appalachians, and merely for the sake of a gross amount of money. For centuries, grasping, ignorant, uncaring fat cats have relentlessly and ruthlessly savaged the Appalachians, overly logging these mountains for timber, inordinately mining them for coal, and unduly drilling them for oil and natural gas. It is like they have beaten the Appalachians broken, torn, and bloody over and over again. What’s more, I fear that if some of America’s current oligarchs get their way, the vile assault on these lovely gentleladies will soon increase and never stop until their every bone is fractured, their insides are irremediably ruptured, their lifeblood is completely drained, and they are dead.

Needless to say, but I will, it is not just the Appalachian Mountains that suffer the consequences of limitless greed. So do their inhabitants. Including humans. Specifically, those who are working stiffs and must labor to survive in the arduous, dangerous jobs of industries that most financially benefit the ultra-rich and in obscene amounts. While those of us who are not loggers or coal miners or steelworkers or drillers pay a high price to the moneybags too. Our air is polluted. Our waters are contaminated. Our soils are poisoned. Our wildlife is disregarded. Our landscape is desecrated. The end results are disease, despair, and untimely death.

Heaven save me from those who confusingly worship the dollar instead of what is truly almighty. And heaven save me too from those who are among the Appalachians’ unmoneyed masses but still want industries that have literally been killing their families for generations to remain and even return to kingship in their ancestral home. What are they thinking?

And since I am talking to heaven here, thank heaven for Pan who, by way of imagination, tries to help us humans to be humble, aware, and respectful of nature’s hallowed wilds. Even if it is by scaring the bejesus out of us every now and again. Because heaven knows, as we have made and continue to make a mess of our most precious resource, upon which our very lives depend, we need the fear of a potent, supernatural presence put in us.

I would love to meet Pan in person someday. But, of course, that is not going to happen. He’s a myth.

As if that were not enough to discourage me from tracking him down, for all my decades of wandering the Allegheny Mountains, other Appalachians, and different mountains around the globe, never once have I come face to face with what most would define as a supernatural being. Even Pennsylvania’s iconic cryptid, the squonk, has alluded me, and he is another favorite spooky entity I would love to meet. No matter he is apparently uglier than Pan.

According to folklore, the squonk is the world’s ugliest creature who currently lives solely in what little is left of Pennsylvania’s hemlock forests. He is described as about the size and shape of a pig, and his face, legs, and tail resemble a pig’s, but his skin is bulky and loose and lies on his body in unsightly, saggy folds. Worse, his skin is totally covered in crusty warts, moles, and other lumpy growths.

The squonk is well aware of his hideous appearance and weeps constantly in shame and humiliation because of it. He cries so much and with such vigor, evolution eventually provided him with webbed feet to keep him from drowning in his own tears. Before then, countless squonks died, their fossils discovered centuries later in the bottoms of lakes they themselves had made.

Also because of his revolting looks, the squonk spends the daylight hours, as well as all moonlit nights in hiding beneath the low-hanging boughs of hemlock trees, not wanting to risk accidentally seeing a reflection of himself in a pond or other waterbody. He only moves about in the twilights of dawn and dusk and the unlit black of clouded nights, leaving behind him a tear-stained trail that is sometimes followed by hunters. But the squonk is an exceptionally challenging trophy to win. If captured, he will dissolve himself in his tears until all that is left are bubbles. Which I would wager are real bears to taxidermy.

Now we come to the best part of the squonk’s story. Unsurprisingly, he is a made-up beast, straight from the human imagination. But what is astonishing is he was created to have the same effect on people as Pan. Consequently, he wields the same power for keeping the careless and unappreciative among us out of nature’s precious wilds.

Two foresters, William Thomas Cox, author of the 1910 book, Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwood , and Henry H. Tryon, author of the 1939 book, Fearsome Critters , were the squonk’s principal inventors. Although the squonk may actually have gotten his start a few years earlier with a group of lumberjacks.

In any case, while neither Cox nor Tryon were from Pennsylvania or worked in its woods, both witnessed and were disturbed by the mindless, avarice-driven timbering that destroyed an unfathomable number of America’s forests by the early twentieth century. Thus came their squonk to the rescue of the hemlocks, white pines, and various hardwoods that remained.

I sometimes wonder if Cox and Tryon used the myth of Pan as their archetype, altered to what they thought would save the virgin and old-growth forests they held dear. For this sort of purpose is what I relish about myths and folktales. Close relatives, both are like kaleidoscopes. You pick one up, hold it to the light, give it a little twist, and new patterns are created right before your very eyes. Essentially, myths and folktales are diverse designs of the same eternal, universal, and metaphorically truthful stories. Makes me think someone is trying very hard to tell us some pretty important stuff.

Anyhow, what William Thomas Cox and Henry H. Tryon did with their squonk worked, at lease in some measure. It promoted and achieved a certain amount of preservation of nature’s wild treasures So, bravo, you two. You are my heroes.

However, I wonder. I wonder if Mother Nature and we might be better off if now people were encouraged more and given greater opportunities to visit the wilds. It’s risky, I know, but it seems to me too many of us have grown apart from the woods and other wilds. You cannot care about and appreciate what you do not know. And being afraid of what you do not know can make for approval of and even participation in destruction.

Bless you, Cox and Tryon, but I think maybe it is time to boldly promote the woods as the wonderlands they are and thus have a shot of getting beyond as identifier in first place, “spooky.” And while “enchanting” may not work for everyone as it does for me, surely each person can discover an adjective of their very own that implies appreciation and caring. That is my desire and hope.

Although, granted, the woods’ off and on spookiness is natural and therefore will never be eliminated. This is a condition that must be accepted, braved, and respected. In addition, it is not entirely impossible that Pan and his panic will sooner or later contribute their two cents to anyone’s spooky emotions and experiences in one or another wilds. Though extremely rare, I have had brushes with Pan.

The closest encounter was decades ago in Idaho. I was hiking with someone who was, to put it mildly, an inexperienced hiker. As I have found to be occasionally true of inexperienced hikers, he was overconfident and seemed wanting to prove dominion over Mother Nature. Which I consider as foolish as it gets. Mother Nature has been around since the universe began. She has seen it all and knows it all. I don’t dare to ever invite competition with that most formidable of grande dames.

So, after some time spent walking mostly uphill, when I realized our trail map was wrong, that what it claimed to be a loop was not a loop at all, and it was further clear to me we were at risk of running out of daylight if we continued, I strongly suggested we turn around and head back. He refused. Which led me, after polite pauses of fifteen minutes or so, to keep repeating my suggestion, each time more fervidly than before. Still, he refused. And he continued to refuse until I knew it had become inevitable we were going to run out of daylight and be forced to spend the night in Idaho’s Pioneer Mountains. Without adequate provisions though we be.

Finally, at sunset, the trail dead ended on what I later learned was an old logging road. It was there my companion in outdoor blundering agreed to call a halt to our hike.

By this point, he was feeling unwell with leg cramps and nausea. This went on until it was pitch-dark, and I thought perhaps it would be beneficial for me to do a little exploring and see if I could find us some help. So, after tossing my backpack to my trail buddy – a backpack that contained our only flashlight, a few other emergency items I always carry with me when I hike, and some now empty water bottles – I got on the logging road and started walking, hoping that the road and I were bound for civilization.

As it turned out, my hope was in vain.

I don’t recall how long I walked that road. But my guess is probably no more than an hour. Bone-weary, I was in a bit of a daze, as well as distress. It was so dark I literally could not see my hand in front my face, and all sense of time was gone.

So I suppose it is no wonder I unintentionally wandered off the road and into the woods. To this day, I cannot begin to fathom how it happened. It was like I lost consciousness, and then all of a sudden, I woke up, and I was in the woods.

As I stood there trying to get my bearings, I heard hoof beats. They thundered right past me. Whatever animal it was, it came close enough that I felt a rush of air. Still, I couldn’t see what it was. It could have been an elk or maybe just a mule deer or a white-tailed deer.

The hoofbeats were so loud. They sounded like they belonged to something huge, and though extremely rare, moose have been known to travel through the Pioneer Mountains. However, my sensory perception was probably way off. It is just as likely those hoofbeats belonged to a baby fawn. Or, who knows? Maybe it was Pan, and they were the hoofbeats of a miffed goat.

I can almost believe they were. Because at that moment in total darkness, lost in a strange wood, I felt panic, and I nearly succumbed to it. I had the most overwhelming, irresistible urge to run. And I would have. But someone stopped me.

It was my uncle. The greatest woodsperson I have ever known. Who passed on to me his love of the woods, along with presumably some woods smarts. He stopped me right where I stood with these five little words: “Don’t be a damn fool.”

Obviously, my uncle was not there. Yet, he definitely was there, and he was as real as real gets. Although I could not see him any more than I could see the hoofed creature that had just galloped past me. But without a doubt, it was my uncle’s voice I heard. A voice I knew quite well, and the words and tone of that voice were characteristic of the man to a T. If that were not enough to convince me of his presence, I could feel the warmth radiating off his body. I could also smell his familiar scent, a sylvan mix of earth, roots, and tree bark with a whiff of woodsmoke thrown in. He was there, and he prevailed. He fought off Pan for me.

Afterwards, I somehow found my way back to the logging road. I don’t know how I managed that either. But I did, and I followed it to where I had left my partner in idiocy. There, we spent a very long, cold, and worrisome night. Nonetheless, what I will always remember more than anything is that, however belatedly, the stars came out and put on a show so amazing, my wretchedness was replaced with a confident peace.

The next morning, I took the trail in reverse to where we had begun our hike the day before. From there, I drove to a general store where they let me use their phone to call the local fire and rescue. Who promptly showed up, and together we made it to where my associate in misadventure still sat right where I had left him. Thankfully, he had kept his promise not to wander off in search of water as he had wanted to do. Thankfully too, he was in relatively decent shape and would be as good as new in no time.

As for me, ever since, I have been pickier about whom I go hiking with. No more cocky tenderfoots for this woodswoman. Although to be fair, the Idaho calamity was as much my fault as my friend’s. Even so, I am done forever with cocky tenderfoots.

My experience in the woods of the Pioneer Mountains is the spookiest thing that has ever happened to me in the wilds. What makes it spookier is that my uncle was not dead at the time. He was alive and home in Pennsylvania. It would be several more years until he died. That was no ghost who saved me that miraculous night.

There is an unsubstantiated phenomenon called bi-location, which is being in two places at the same time. There is another similarly speculative phenomenon called teleportation, which is basically traveling by spirit, and someone need not be dead to do it. Some people believe in either bi-location or teleportation or both. I don’t know if I do or not. This is not to say, however, that I think the notions are nonsense. I just don’t know.

What I do know is that the soul that stood by me that night in the total darkness of the wilds and defended me was my uncle. As to how he got to be there, I have my own theory. Which is I recreated his likeness in my mind and then brought that image out into the real world as a part of my reality. In other words, I manifested through the power of imagination a tangible, physical existence. If only for myself and for what was probably only seconds.

However, my above-stated explanation is merely a surmise. I cannot prove it. Nor do I know for sure it is true. Could be I am just full of it, and my uncle was all in my head. Where he stuck around without venturing out of immateriality and into concreteness. Although I also wonder if his being purely a cognitive process within me would have made him any less real. Anyhow, for what it is worth, my guesswork about how my uncle came to me right when I needed him the most is rooted in belief and faith.

My belief is in the human imagination. As the English poet, John Keats, wrote in a letter to a friend, “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination.” As well as what the Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso, declared, “Everything you can imagine is real.” While both Messrs. Keats and Picasso’s statements may be open to interpretation, their words effectively reflect my own belief.

I believe the imagination, especially when working in conjunction with the emotion of love, to be much more powerful and creative than we currently know. Just like the woods of the Appalachian Mountains, I believe the imagination has mystical secrets yet to be revealed. While the keeping of those secrets is wise. At least for the present. Because humankind is not close to being ready to command such incredible capability. Especially since it is one that could be used for as much evil as good. Particularly if not partnered with love.

But eventually, I have all the faith in the world we will be ready. I am positive that someday, very far away in the future, some of our descendants will make it to be the wholly glorious beings we have always been meant to be. And those yet-unborn generations are today’s inspiration to carry on.

Around two decades ago, I wrote the worst novel ever written. Thank goodness it was never published. Because it was awful beyond belief. But there was one line I wrote on its pages, the memory of which has recently been haunting me.

My protagonist was an eleven-year-old girl who is on an extraordinarily difficult trek in search of humanity’s soul. Unlike my Idaho hiking companion, she is not arrogant, oblivious, and disrespectful. She is frightened, hurt, and sad. At one point, her unlikely mentor and traveling companion makes a prediction about her. He says to her, “There will come a time when your faith in the family of man will be the only thing that keeps you putting one foot in front of the other.”

For many of us now, I think that time may be here. I feel we are in the wilds. The beloved country that only a short time ago was familiar and friendly has taken on a frightening, surreal quality, like a bewitched land in a dark fairytale. Likewise, many of its populace seem under an evil spell cast by a mad imperial sorcerer.

It is frightening, painful, sad, and so discouraging, it can be paralyzing. Even faith in the glorious beings yet to appear is not enough inspiration to keep moving forward. After all, those stars are extremely distant kin. Our connection is overly thin. Such being the case, it is only human to consider giving up and staying put.

But when that happens to me, another memory comes to haunt. It is of a teenage boy I crossed paths with so briefly I never learned his name.

The memory was made around the same time as writing the worst novel ever. I was living in Florida. When you live in Florida, there are always family members and friends, along with their five hundred or so tag-along guests who want to come visit. On top of that, once they arrive, they almost always want to go to Disney World. Not my favorite place. But in trying to be a good and accommodating hostess, I would typically be the tourist guide for Mickey and Minnie Mouse’s over-priced, plastic trap. However, after about a trillion trips to the Magic Kingdom, I had had more than I thought I could bear and was in a dark mood that sweltering summer day.

Not wanting to burst my guests’ Goofy bubble, I excused myself from repeatedly standing in line for as long as over an hour for a manufactured ride of several minutes and sat down on a park bench to people watch. Which I am sorry to say did not lighten my mood one whit. In fact, my mood got pitch-dark as I watched members of my species yank and yell at their kids, trade barbs with their spouses, give the finger to strangers, ram strollers into slow-moving seniors, litter while nearby trash cans sat empty, hock a loogie and spit it at my feet, and otherwise be generally obnoxious.

All I could think was, humans are surely creation’s ugliest creatures.

But then something wonderful happened. A teenage boy with four younger children in tow sat down on the bench opposite me. I’m not sure, but my hunch is they were Italian. At least, that is what the language they spoke sounded like to me.

Although I could not understand what they were saying, I watched, and what I saw was how tender and caring that teenage boy was with his charges. His every action was one of kindness, compassion, and selflessness. Observing him I realized I was witnessing living proof of love. Seeing him I got a glimpse of where our species is heading and whom we will ultimately be. It was like the stars had already begun to appear, and the sheer glory of being human was already here.

It was an amazing sight. While just as a few moments before I had thought of people as creation’s ugliest creatures, now I thought of us as also the most beautiful. With a beauty that I would bet my life comes from a higher realm. Absolutely, then, my wretchedness was replaced with a confident peace. My faith restored.

Such a simple, little, yet somehow supernatural encounter. At the end of the day, the gracious giving of all that is ever needed to keep putting one foot in front of the other. And the truth is, those simple, little, yet somehow supernatural encounters, they’re everywhere, ours for the taking.

Danse Macabre

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 13:19:09 GMT

It’s fall. Ghosts are rising up. Their hauntings inspirit and enliven me.

Each morning begins with a danse macabre (dance of death). As I watch transfixed, translucent, white, ethereal figures emerge from my pond and cavort upon the still water in a lively choreography that is part foxtrot, part moonwalk, part ballet, and part hip-hop. Performance completed, they vanish into thin air.

Of course, the ethereal figures are not really supernatural, otherworldly beings. In fact, they are as natural and of this world as anything can be. Composed of mist, they are due to the meteorological phenomenon of evaporation fog, which happens when cold air moves over warm water. The warm, moist air just above the pond’s surface mixes with the colder air above it. The mixing cools the moist air until it reaches its dew point (100% relative humidity), causing the water vapor to condense into visible droplets of mist. As the sun warms the air and water, the air’s capacity to hold moisture increases, causing the mist to rise in wispy columns. Turbulence created by the mixing of the air layers, as well as even the slightest breeze makes the columns change and move in distinct patterns. Gradually, the shifting shapes dissipate and evaporate into the gaseous state from whence they came, becoming as invisible as spirits gone home to rest in peace. But not before the phantoms of fog and mist do a vibrant danse macabre .

The idea of the danse macabre began in the Middle Ages, appearing first in some literary and dramatic works. Then, in 1424 and 1425, the first fully developed visual representation of the danse macabre was painted as a large mural by the same name on the exterior of the charnel house at Paris’ Cemetery of the Holy Innocents. It portrayed grinning, dancing skeletons escorting living humans from various social classes and walks of life to their graves, often appearing to mock and make light of those who had held prestigious positions. In 1669, the charnel house was demolished so that a road could be widened. However, the mural’s image was preserved though multiple wood engravings used in printing. Some of those print blocks still exist today.

For the remainder of the 1400s and the centuries that followed, the danse macabre was an oft recurring and reinterpreted art theme. It continues to be so even today and is now considered a classic motif. As recently as June 2025, artist Nicola Turner exhibited her own depiction of the danse macabre with a large-scale installation at Art Basel in Basel, Switzerland. Though to be clear, Ms. Turner contends she primarily took her inspiration, not from the Paris mural, but from a similar mural painted a decade or so later at Basel’s Dominican Convent.

Amusingly, in 1805, the Basel mural was unlawfully torn down by offended locals who declared it a disgrace. Which makes me wonder if the truth suppressors and fraidy-cats just couldn’t take the teasing about the inevitability of their fates. In any case, art lovers managed to salvage twenty-three fragments of the mural, nineteen of which still survive. In addition, Basel’s Danse Macabre was also preserved through woodcuts, copperplates, and watercolor copies. Further proof that death is not one to be killed in this world. The lone exception to an all-embracing rule.

Perhaps the most famous expression of the danse macabre is the symphonic poem of the same name, written in 1874 by French music composer, Camille Saint-Saens. In 1872, it began as a song for voice and piano, adapted from a poem by Henri Cazalis, “ Egalite-Fraternite ” (“Equality Fraternity”). Two years later, Saint-Saens expanded his song to be an orchestral composition.

Both Cazalis and Saint-Saens based their works, not on any painting, but on an old French folktale. The story claims that every year at midnight on La Toussaint (All Saints’ Day), Death plays his fiddle for the dead, causing skeletons to crawl out of their graves and dance until a rooster crows at dawn and the party ends with the deceased retiring to their final resting places for another year. Yet, like all artistic expressions of the danse macabre that came before, Cazalis’ “ Egalite-Fraternite ” and Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre are social commentaries, emphasizing the futility of worldly pursuits in the face of death. For death levels the social hierarchy and makes all people equal and united as one. The way I see it, it is as if death shows us what we should be in life. In “ Egalite-Fraternite ,” this recognition of human solidarity is represented with “The King dancing among the peasants.” As well as with the last line of the poem that reads “Long live death and equality.”

The danse macabre is fundamentally rooted in the concept of memento mori , a Latin phrase meaning “Remember that you must die.” As evidenced by the many creative works it has inspired, at its core, memento mori is a philosophical view of death as the ultimate egalitarian. Death does not bend the knee to anyone, regardless of their mortal rank and temporal status. Nor does death worship the unholy trinity of wealth, power, and fame.

Additionally, as a reminder of our shared kinship and collective spirit, memento mori is a warning against oppression. For the oppressor will one day be on the same standing as those they wronged. A line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet comes to mind. “A man may fish with the worm that hath eat a king and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.” (Although perhaps not before the worm plays pinochle on the king’s snooty snout.)

It is anyone’s guess how old the concept of memento mori is. The phrase memento mori goes back to the ancient Roman Empire. There a slave would periodically whisper the mortality reminder in the ear of a victorious general as the two of them rode together in a triumphal procession. The idea was to keep the vanquishing hero humble and grounded in his humanity, thereby protecting him from straying off the right-minded path and falling into narcissism. In essence, the slave was saying, “This is nothing but a fleeting moment of earthly glory. You are not divine, and your success is not everlasting. It is only moral goodness that is invincible. Thus, forsake vanity and live the virtuous life.”

Going back in time even further, though the words memento mori did not yet exist, the notion certainly was alive and well when the Book of Genesis was written. In both the Hebrew Bible and Christianity’s Old Testament, a mortality reminder, spoken by God to the first human no less, can be found at Genesis 3:19. “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Approximately a thousand years later, the Islamic Quran was written. Within its pages at Surah Taha 20:55 are similar words from God with the same meaning, directed once again to Adam.

If all that were not enough to grab my attention and make me take heed, the gist of memento mori is much the same as the individual guidance given me by three of the most influential people in my life. The first was what my mentor uncle imparted the last time I saw him. He was dying, and we both knew it. As we said our good-byes, his final words to me were “Make the most of it.” Similarly, one of the last counsels my mother provided before dementia began to steal her away was, “It all goes by really fast.” Then there was this pointer from my father, delivered after I had confided a dream I very much wanted to make come true “someday.” “Don’t wait,” advised my dad. “Don’t wait for ‘someday.’ Do it now.”

So I regard memento mori as a superior piece of universal wisdom, well worth living by. Because in no time at all, every soul on Earth will be doing the danse macabre .

Dog Days

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 14:39:01 GMT

August is coming to an end. The forest’s verdant green is dulling to drab. The large bird chorus that awoke me each dawn of May, June, and July is down to a small ensemble. The flower gardens that enlivened my days are fading, the fireflies that illuminated my nights are waning, and the frogs that lulled me to sleep with their mating chants are hushing. While the dog days of summer are already over and gone.

According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac , in the Northern Hemisphere, the dog days of summer run for forty days. Beginning on July 3 and ending on August 11, they are associated with the hottest time of the year. Although such is not always the case. The dates of the most scorching days vary from year to year. On the other hand, the dog days often do coincide with a period of high temperatures.

The name, “dog days,” is derived from the Latin “dies caniculares,” which means “days of the dog star.” The dog star referred to is Sirius (aka Alpha Canis Majoris), the brightest star in Earth’s sky, not including the Sun. On a particular summer’s day, right before sunrise and after over two months of invisibility because of being hidden by the sun’s glare, Sirius returns to visibility by seeming to rise in conjunction with the Sun. Because it rises low on the horizon upon its reappearance, the Earth’s atmosphere acts like a prism, splitting the Dog Star’s white light into different colors that appear to flash.

This rare display is called a heliacal rising. It refers to the first reappearance in the dawn sky of a star or a planet after solar concealment. (Though only the brightest stars and no planets flash with colors.) In ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, people believed that Sirius’ heliacal rising, so close in proximity to the sun’s, contributed to summer’s heat. In their minds, Sirius and the Sun combined forces to make Earth sizzle.

They were mistaken. However, I can attest that Sirius’ heliacal rising is a phenomenon worth seeing. Upon ascending to its culmination, the Dog Star is evocative of a bright, twinkly cosmic eye that looks out on the world through a turbulent atmosphere, shows its true colors, gives a knowing wink, and then disappears once again into the greater light of the Sun. A wonder that makes me wonder what Sirius comprehends that I do not.

When to see Sirius’ heliacal rising is dependent upon the viewer’s latitudinal location. This year in Lightfall Hollow it occurred on August 11, the last dog day of summer. Which confused me at first since, as I have already indicated, in ancient times, Sirius’ heliacal rising kicked off the dog days, rather than being their grand finale, as in my recent experience. But after some further research, I learned this role reversal is due to the wobble in Earth’s rotation. The wobble shifts the stars’ apparent positions and the Sun’s location among them. Consequently, the Dog Star’s climb in cahoots with the Sun now occurs several weeks later than it did in antiquity.

After Sirius’ heliacal rising, it arises earlier each AM. By winter, Sirius is a prominent evening star. Nowadays, in the Southern Hemisphere, it reaches its highest point in the sky around midnight on New Year’s Eve. Whereas in most of the Northern Hemisphere, it is also visible on New Year’s Eve, but in a much lower position. Nonetheless, all around the globe, Sirius is considered by many as a symbol of new beginnings, as well as a source of inspiration and hope for those new beginnings.

I am glad the dog days of Alpha Canis Majoris are over. High temperatures are something I do not tolerate well. Yet, in another way, for me personally, I hope the dog days are never over. Because when I wish upon Sirius, whether it be at dawn on a summer’s day or in the dead of a winter’s night, my wish includes that all my days be days with dogs.

My wish began with a dog named Scamp. Adopted from a local humane society when I was five, Scamp was a female Long-haired Dachshund with soft, shimmering waves of inky black fur, old soul eyes, floppy ears, and a funny little cropped tail. Built broad and low to the ground with short legs, I can still see her scampering along the hollow’s dirt road, kicking up billowing clouds of dust.

Like every dog I have ever known, Scamp gave me oodles of unconditional love, but turtle hunting was her passion. On practically every visit my family made to the hollow, Scamp would scout out and capture a box or wood turtle and proudly carry it to us as though it were prized game. She was gentle with her prey though. She never harmed or tried to harm a single turtle.

Be that as it may, I realize turtle hunting is not something one should promote for either dogs or humans. Box and wood turtles have a strong homing instinct. The territory they inhabit is usually between one and two acres. If removed, they will try to return, going so far as to wander about for days in search of home, and if home cannot be found, there is a fifty percent chance the turtle will fail at relocation and die. Not to mention, being seized and detained without consent is a wrongful ordeal for any living being.

I shall therefore add on my family’s behalf that Scamp was never permitted to stray out of our sight, and we invariably released the kidnapped turtle from her custody to what most probably was still the creature’s neck of the woods. As for Scamp, she was a dog, not a human blessed with a moral compass. We upright humans all know that to forcibly remove vulnerable innocents from their place of refuge and cage them is not only wrong, it is evil. This is why the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution exists for the protection of all people on American soil.

My first experience with evil was because of something that happened to Scamp. It took place when I was probably six years old. Scamp was heavily pregnant at the time. It was summer and hot. We had no air conditioning, and really no need of it since, back in those days in the Allegheny Mountains, heat waves were short lived.

For Scamp’s comfort, my mother had made her a bed in our cool unfinished cellar. All was well and good until the day the meter man showed up to read our utility usage for billing purposes. As was typical at that time and place in working class homes, he had let himself in through the cellar’s outside door. But his sudden and unexpected appearance must have startled Scamp, and she began to bark, loud enough to gain my mother and my attention as we sat upstairs in our kitchen eating lunch. As quickly as we could, we left the kitchen and came down the cellar steps. But not quick enough to spare a now cowering and yelping Scamp from being struck repeatedly with the legs of a stepstool. Something we both witnessed before my mother could get to the meter man and with some difficulty, wrestle the stepstool from him.

My mother had a terrible temper, yet I never saw her more irate than that day as she dealt with the meter man. But, no, she did not strike him with the stepstool. She did not need to. Because my mother was a warrior who was adept at weaponizing words. I do not remember the things she said to the meter man, but I do remember seeing him shrink before her swift, mighty sword of piercing language, and when she was done with him, I remember how he slunk away. If he had had a tail, it would have been between his legs. And though I have no memory of the cutting words my mother said to the meter man that day, I do remember the pointed truth she spoke to me upon his departure. “There is something terribly wrong with a person who would harm the defenseless.”

She was right. Although, as a mere mortal, it is not my place to declare such vileness unforgivable, I do have the right to state it is inexcusable, and I claim that right. It is also not my place to declare those who do evil are themselves evil, but like my mother, I do have the right to state that there is something terribly wrong with them, and I claim that right.

Still, I get it. It is one thing to claim rights. It is another to live up to the responsibility rights require. I wonder if I can do it.

For starters, I need to understand why some practice evil against the defenseless. My top hunch is simple. I believe it is due to a severe lack of self-esteem. That makes sense to me since ours is a culture driven by competition. It strongly and relentlessly advocates, not that each person be their best self, but rather that every individual be better than all others. Which is obviously an impossible goal. In addition, as we do what we are told and endlessly struggle to be the lone best, a whopping amount of needless isolation and loneliness is our booby prize.

So, from my perspective, we have contrived an environment where feelings of inadequacy and convictions of not being good enough run rampant. And when someone has been mercilessly pushed from a tender age to surpass all others, and they have failed to win the gold, it is not at all surprising to me that they might try to remedy their supposed impotency by harming others further down on the power chain than they assume themselves to be. Like a vampire that sucks blood for its power.

But in the end, bloodsucking does not work for humans. It is useless and pathetic. All the same, such ruinous villainy will continue to be with us until we rip out the root cause, and the root cause is a cultural value that prioritizes competing against one another over caring for one another. And the most pitiful, heart-shattering thing of all is that it exists and grows ever more monstrous in a country that in so many other ways is beautiful.

By the way, Scamp not only recovered from her beating, she also gave birth to a litter of healthy puppies, all of whom got good homes and lived happily ever after. Although, for better or for worse, nary a one inherited their mother’s ardor for turtles.

Since Scamp, her successors have also come to know the hollow, and each has loved it here. And why wouldn’t they? Lightfall Hollow is a canine paradise. Let’s see, besides Scamp, there has been Eric, Ginger, Holly, C-Jay, Anna, and at present, Ember.

Ember, a Shiba Inu, chubby bunny, and dire wolf, is here with me now. As she so often is when I write. Which is fortunate since she is a talented literary critic.

Makes no matter that Em cannot read. I share my writings aloud, as she listens attentively and does cute head tilts when she finds something interesting or curious. She has other feedback techniques as well. All of which are constructive and helpful. Albeit, wordless. But that is all right. We understand each other perfectly.

C-Jay, Anna, and Ember are the only dogs who have lived with me in the hollow full-time. Having already written about Anna and Ember, as well as just giving Em a booster shot of glorification (lest she gives me the old stink eye), I believe it is high time to tell about the dog days of C-Jay.

C-Jay was a Welsh Pembroke Corgi. He was built much the same as Scamp, broad-backed and low to the ground with short legs. He had the same funny little cropped tail too. But his ears were upright, pointed, and oversized in comparison to his stubby body. I assume because C-Jay talked with his ears. Meaning he was fluent in a language entirely composed of various ear wiggles and other fancy ear maneuvers. So, being the loquacious type, of course, he was big-eared.

C-Jay was also slightly wall-eyed, which made him look perpetually puzzled and somewhat goofy. But he had a luxurious fur coat of rich gold and ermine white fit for a king, and on the back of his neck, he had a marking in the shape of star. A symbol, an outward sign of what C-Jay truly was. Like every dog I have owned, or rather, like every dog who has owned me, he was a star, a shining dog star.

As far as I have been able to gather, C-Jay was born in an Indiana puppy mill and then sold to a pet store on the east coast of Florida. A hurricane came through and demolished the pet store. Afterwards, the surviving animals, including C-Jay, were transferred west across the state to another pet store in Tampa.

C-Jay must have spent several months in a pet store cage until one day an elderly gentleman of modest means came into the store with his little granddaughter, who immediately fell in love with the forlorn corgi and begged her grandfather to give him a forever home. Well, what grandfather can resist the sweet pleas of his little granddaughter? And, as it so happened, C-Jay was on sale right then at a greatly reduced price. Presumably, because of his wall eyes, the pet store had had enough of him and was anxious to get rid of him.

Unsurprisingly then, the elderly gentleman bought C-Jay and took him to his home where he lived alone in a trailer park that did not allow pets. While there, C-Jay learned to relieve himself only on newspaper and never to bark.

It must have taken incredible patience to have taught C-Jay not to bark, and when we met, there were other indicators as well that the elderly gentleman loved C-Jay and wanted what was best for him. Which is why, after a few months of living together, he put an ad in the Tampa Tribune , “Corgi For Sale.”

That’s where my family and I came in. Our yellow lab, Holly, was getting old. Santa Claus had delivered her as a puppy one Christmas Eve when my son was five, and dog and boy had become deeply attached. When Holly’s time came, I wanted a second dog in our home to help soften the blow, and my son had decided it had to be a corgi. So, by the evening of the same day of the morning we spotted the newspaper ad, we were the proud adoptive family of a regal, paper-trained, barkless, but ear-gabby, wall-eyed, shining star of a corgi dog named C-Jay.

Immediately, Holly, as elder dog in residence, took it upon herself to teach the newcomer the joys of answering the call of nature in the great outdoors, along with frenzied barking at anything that has the audacity to make even the slightest move there. She also provided expert guidance on how to fetch a tossed ball and then hold fast until it is pried from one’s tightly closed jaw full of razor-sharp teeth, dig up treasured flower beds, ignore all commands until bribed with a treat, refuse to budge until given a proper belly rub, unstuff stuffed toys, steal candy canes from a Christmas tree, breaking vintage ornaments of blown glass in the process, leave scratch and chew marks on doors, floors, and furniture, smear windows with snot and slobber, get overexcited and throw up in front of company right as dinner is about to be served, tear to shreds the pages of cherished books and photo albums, do the same to favorite hats and shoes, drag dirty underwear into the yard for a passerby to find, and, most importantly, feign innocence when accused of any wrongdoing.

Yep. C-Jay learned a lot from Holly, and they became not only partners in crime, but the closest of friends. To the extent I worried when Holly died, C-Jay would lie down and die with her. But that did not happen. When Holly died, C-Jay mourned, but he also accepted the change and got on with his life, and when a new yellow lab, Anna, became a fellow family member, he became the faithful mentor to her Holly had been to him.

A couple of years later, our family faced another difficult change. My husband and I divorced, and both my son and I left what had been our family home in Tampa. My son went off to college in Central Florida, and I moved back to the beloved Allegheny hollow of my girlhood. Upon my ex-husband’s request, my son took C-Jay with him, and I took Anna with me.

That arrangement lasted about a year, and then in early summer, my son and C-Jay came to the hollow for a visit, each with a year of college under their belt. It was then my son explained to me that caring for a dog is “an enormous responsibility.” (Duh.) “Could C-Jay maybe spend the summer here, and I’ll pick him back up in the fall?” was the question that followed.

Well, what’s a mother for anyway? Naturally, my answer was yes. Funny thing is though, fall apparently never came that year or any year thereafter during C-Jay’s lifetime. Which got me to finally figure out that C-Jay was on the endless summer plan.

I did not object. My son when he left C-Jay with me was still, in many ways, a growing boy. Now as a grown man, he is completely on board with the responsibility that goes along with having a dog, and his Cambria is the luckiest of dog stars.

Nor did I mind C-Jay living with me for good. Because at the end of the day, C-Jay was the lionheart who stayed by my side when I most needed a lionheart by my side. Though he was not the only one who saved my life during the darkest period of my life, he was without a doubt among those who did.

According to Welsh folklore, corgis are magical dogs, the loyal companions and trusty steeds of fairies. It is said riding upon their backs is the wee folk’s favorite mode of transport. Some of the tales go so far as to claim fairies created corgis for just such purpose. Which is why they have broad backs, exceptionally thick fur that is insulating and easy to cling to, and are built so low to the ground. Being a fan of folklore and therefore knowing this, I used to whisper in one of C-Jay’s gargantuan ears that I was positive the star on his neck was where the fairies, as they clung to his back, kissed him and then sealed their kisses with a sprinkling of fairy dust that took on the shape of a star. “True story, C-Jay, true story,” I would insist. And, you know, sometimes I think maybe it was.

Because it has also been asserted fairies send corgis to be the companions and guardians of children in need of comfort and care. Although I was no child even back then, I cannot help but fancy the fairies made an exception in my case and sent me C-Jay.

Four months after I left Tampa and eight months prior to C-Jay coming to live with me, my ex-husband died an unexpected and violent death. Feeling I had left my husband when he needed me the most, I fell into an abyss of guilt-ridden grief. That pit was so deep I had yet to hit bottom when C-Jay arrived in the hollow, and I was fast losing hope I was ever going to be able to climb up out of that hell.

During the day, I was able to keep it together enough to hold down a job, but at night I would fall apart and pace my cabin’s floor, sometimes into the wee hours, wailing, yowling, screaming, and making other anguished cries for which no words have been invented.

Because of the abuse she had suffered as a puppy before our family rescued her, Anna was frightened by my wild hysteria, and she would hide. I was alone with my pain. But then C-Jay came, and he would pace the floor with me. No matter how loud, demented, and scary I got, he never left my side.

After I had exhausted myself, I would hold C-Jay in my arms, my face buried in his neck, as though I were trying to extinguish his star with my tears. And maybe I was. Because I was at a place where I thought I only deserved darkness.

It took years, but with the additional help of several human angels who, like C-Jay, stuck by me when I was at my worst, I made the climb up through hell and back into the light. Even so, there are still times when I am haunted by what I refer to as my ghosts of guilt. But ghosts are all they are. They vanish when I am brave enough to look them in the eye.

C-Jay lived in the hollow for eight years. He grew old, feeble, and lame here, hobbled with arthritis and dysplasia. Yet, he never stopped being my constant companion and steadfast protector. When I would spend hours on end gardening, he would be right with me the whole time, and no matter how often I would tell him to rest and take a nap, he would remain alert, continually scouring our whereabouts for any possible threat.

Then came a day in April. Believing C-Jay was safely sheltered inside the cabin, I was working on cleaning up some forest debris across the then raging and roaring creek. But somehow that lionheart, maybe with his fairy magic, got out and came looking for me. He never did find me, but when I came back across the creek, I found him. Soaked to the bone, violently shivering, and utterly spent, he had braved all that churning, swirling, crashing, surging water not once, but twice.

It would be C-Jay’s last act of love and devotion. Ten days later, he died in my arms, my face buried in his neck for the last time, wishing upon that star of his that someday we meet again.

While dogs may not have a moral compass, they sure do know how to treat people. Just like Scamp, Eric, Ginger, Holly, Anna, and now Ember, C-Jay was the epitome of the way we all should be with one another.

I am not a scholar of religion. Nor am I particularly religious. But I have read at least some of the sacred texts of seven of the world’s major religions, and I have found within their pages remarkable wisdoms.

It is even more astounding to me that the greatest of these wisdoms are repeated in each of those different scriptures of different faiths. Granted, not with the same words, but the meaning behind whatever words are used is clearly the same sagacity. Which I find uplifting. The way I see it, as surely as the Dog Star rises, they cannot all be wrong.

One of those much-repeated wisdoms is what has been known to me since I was a little child as The Golden Rule. A version of it can be found in Judaism’s Tanakh (Leviticus 19:18), as well as in Christianity’s New Testament (Matthew 7:12), Islam’s Hadith (13), Hinduism’s Mahabharata (Book 13, 113:8), Buddhism’s Udanavarga (5:18), Taoism’s T’ai Shang Kan Ying P’ien (Lines 213-218), and Confucianism’s The Analects (15:24).

Such a simple rule. One could even call it no more than common sense. Although it does have its limitations. Not everyone has the same desires. However, extremely unusual and certainly not well is the person who does not want to be treated with basic decency and humaneness. Which makes The Golden Rule a supreme starting point. And if dogs can abide by it, I can’t help but believe humans can too. That’s my faith, and I’m sticking to it.

So, I will be up at first light tomorrow. If the heavens cooperate and are clear, I should be able to see the Dog Star rising and hanging low on the southeastern horizon.

Then I will make my wish. That all my days be days with dogs, and that I, along with all people follow the lead of dogs and live up to our humanity.

Snooze and Lose

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 13:45:51 GMT

It is raining cats and dogs. A common occurrence this summer. Almost every day, there is a downpour. The heavens open, a heavy curtain of rain cascades, and Lightfall is a waterfall.

I don’t entirely mind. While not my ideal weather, at least it is better than last summer’s drought. Weeks and weeks went by with no rain. My garden plantings drooped and died, the pond turned into a mud puddle, wildlife wandered about in a lethargic daze, and trees prematurely shed their leaves, as if trying to trick autumn into coming early.

I worried about forest fires, and too close for comfort, there were forest fires. A danger I never thought would exist to any serious degree in the Allegheny Mountains. But I was wrong.

Two things about this summer’s weather that are the same as last year’s are the high temperatures and humidity. In fact, steamy air has become a regular summer phenomenon. Every year now, it rears its ugly head, and the length and strength of its presence grows ever longer and stronger.

An atmosphere more of swamps than of mountains is another extremist newcomer to the Alleghenies. Up until fifteen or so years ago, any sultry heat wave that swept through this area usually broke in about a week, and even then, at night, it would almost always cool down and crisp up enough to open windows, curl up under a blanket, and sleep in utter contentment. I never thought I would need air conditioning. These days, I do not think I could live without it.

I despise this monstrous heat and humidity that has become a normal abnormality of summer in the Alleghenies. But at least this year the hollow is getting the rain I missed and hoped for last year. Shame on me if I ever again take for granted the wonderful sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste of rain.

Although rain in the Alleghenies is increasingly aberrant too. More and more, it comes in torrents fast and furious. While the slow soakers, known as farmer’s rain, are becoming few and far between.

Steady and gentle, a farmer’s rain can be fully absorbed by the soil, ensuring plants have access to moisture for an extended period. Whereas the deluges currently experienced happen with such intensity, the soil cannot absorb the rain quickly enough, and the water ends up flowing over the ground as runoff. The runoff then erodes and carries away the topsoil. Lost with the topsoil are most of the nutrients needed to grow everything from apples to zucchinis. To make matters worse, the runoff, as it spills across various surfaces, can and often does pick up pollutants. When the runoff eventually empties into a stream, lake, or some other waterbody, the pollutants reduce the quality of the water in that body.

Also because of inundating rains and their ensuing runoffs, the ground is not fully hydrated. Likewise, the underground aquifers and the above-ground reservoirs are not adequately replenished. Despite an overabundance of rainfall, the end result is a dearth of water for all living organisms, including plants and humans.

Contrastingly, the raging rains and wasteful runoffs overfill creeks and rivers. Floods occur, destroying land and life. Though it is true the Allegheny region has long been susceptible to flooding, flash floods, with water levels rising so rapidly people do not have time to prepare or flee, are happening more frequently and with increasing ferocity.

Fortunately, there are ways to keep these changes from becoming so overpowering anything we humans do to try to lessen them is useless. Furthermore, though it will take limitless optimism, tenacity, and thinking outside the box, along with an enormous amount of hard work and a time frame much longer than our own lifetimes, it is plausible we can get back the Mother Nature I and so many others now sharing Earth remember. With her, the world will be reborn, new and improved for future generations.

In Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s book, What If We Get It Right? , a Smithsonian Best Book of the Year, a good number of environmental solutions that are immediately available are presented and discussed with twenty experts. Included in the prestigious twenty are scientists, activists, journalists, policy makers, farmers, financiers, entrepreneurs, architects, and artists. Moreover, Dr. Johnson stresses, not only the above authorities, but every one of us as individuals and community members has a special and irreplaceable skill to offer in the creation of an environment made for wonderful living. She calls such abilities our “superpowers.”

I agree with Dr. Johnson. Everyone has a superpower. It just needs to be recognized, valued, and trusted by its owner. I also agree with Dr. Johnson that we should each polish up our superpower and put it to work post haste.

Still, I understand either any hesitancy for or downright dismissal of this proposal. Because addressing Earth’s environmental challenges requires an ambitious, multi-pronged approach. Not only do large-scale political and economic systemic changes need to be made, so do individual lifestyle changes need to be made, even to the point of sacrifice. And who likes sacrifice? I certainly don’t. As is human, I want an easy life full of nothing but lighthearted happiness, and sacrifice is hard, weighty, and solemn.

Yet, I am reminded of this. When I was a little girl, anytime I was faced with something difficult, I would take to my bed and sleep. In this way, I escaped the troublesome burdens of reality and lost myself in blissful oblivion. But upon growing up I realized, as I was losing myself in sleep, so also was I losing out on the most wondrous thing the waking world has to offer a person. I came to understand that unawareness may be good for closing the door on adversity, but awakeness is the key to actively engaging in life, and actively engaging in life is never always easy and happy. It is an adventure full of problems that, when confronted, result in a depth of existence that includes finding one’s meaning and purpose, and while not painless, such whole living transcends happiness to become a profound joy that endures through all challenges.

Long story short, I awoke.

Backyards

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 18:23:24 GMT

Backyard Reports are spreading like wildfire here. Started a few years ago by a Quaker (aka Friend) in the Pennsylvania highlands of Appalachia where I live, a Backyard Report is a written description of the natural wonders that exist near the report’s author.

The idea came to the Friend from a DJ on a New Jersey radio station. Once a week, the DJ would broadcast his latest Backyard Report and then invite his audience to give their own Backyard Reports. The Friend was inspired, and she shared her inspiration with her Meeting. (Meeting is a gathering of worshippers in the Quaker tradition.)

As luck would have it, the Friend’s spark of brilliance caught and grew from there. Now backyard reporters include not only Meeting members and attendees, but people outside Meeting too. There are even contributors who live elsewhere in the United States, as well as those who live in other countries. As Quaker worship is open to all, so is Friends’ backyard reporting.

Some Backyard Reports are from real backyards. However, since this is a rural area and many of us, including this backyard reporter, do not have what meets the literal definition of a backyard, Backyard Reports can and do cover any ground within plain sight. In my case, this includes Lightfall Hollow’s road, woods, and creek, along with my home’s gardens, pond, and sparse splotches of weedy grass that might pass for lawns, provided one is not at all picky about what a lawn should be.

As for those writers who are traveling when their muse comes to call, their Backyard Reports relate whatever Mother Nature is then showing off within easy view of their roving.

My own Backyard Reports have ranged from the reappearance of a whippoorwill in the hollow one evening to the daily morning scuffles between two city pigeons I observed while visiting my son in Brooklyn. I have written a few other Backyard Reports, but not a great many. Yet, they are important to me. Mainly because they have helped heighten my awareness of the countless wonders that are ever wherever I happen to be.

Equally extraordinary, this exhilarating expansion of consciousness has grown to include more than the natural wonders that are always in proximity. It also includes the constant, close wonders of humankind. Although I love to travel, Backyard Reports have taught me I need not go far to broaden my horizons. Limitless exploration, discovery, and personal growth can all be found right in my own backyard.

One backyard I have recently been scouting for wonder is the Pennsylvania state park a few miles from my home. Shawnee State Park contains approximately four thousand acres. It was named for Shawnee Creek, the stream that flowed through what is now the park’s center and was damned in 1951 to create the four-hundred-fifty-acre recreational lake that has been open to the public ever since for swimming, fishing, and boating.

Delightful to me is that the little baby creek, Tadg Run, that bounces through the hollow and past my cabin, entertaining me 24/7 with his gurgles, babbles, and giggles, has Shawnee Lake as the first destination on his long passage. Upon arrival at Shawnee, Tadg enters the lake via a “finger.” Which is nice. I imagine the little baby creek reaching for the lake’s finger like a human baby would make a grab for a person’s finger. (The Palmer Grasp Reflex, present in human newborns, encourages exploration of the unknown. Conceivably, an innate message that a voyage of discovery makes for a life well-lived.)

The travels of Tadg may begin with a hop, skip, and a jump to Shawnee Lake, but they sure do not end there. After the little one is picked up by the lake, his waters are carried through a downstream floodplain controlled by a dam outflow. Now borne in the arms of the Shawnee Branch and subsequently, the Raystown Branch, together the three tributaries join up with the Juniata River. The Juniata River then unites with the Susquehanna River, which couples with the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the United States, the water of which ultimately merges with the Atlantic Ocean.

Whew! That is one serious odyssey for a little baby creek. I’m just glad Tadg Run is in good, powerful company during his adventures as he journeys home to become one with something bigger and even more enamoring than himself.

While Shawnee Lake is at best medium-sized when compared to other lakes, it is tops when it comes to being picturesque. Not only is it nestled in the buxom Allegheny Mountains, but adding to the lake’s visual appeal is that it is not a simple oval or round body of water, but more attractively has the appearance of three, irregularly shaped ones connected by small channels. A couple of small, forested islands in the waters’ midst gives Shawnee Lake a romantic air, making it even more alluring.

The Shawnee Creek that created Shawnee Lake had been named for the Shawnee Native Americans who, after being forced from their land by invading Iroquois Confederation tribes and European settlers, migrated to, or at least through the area. Shawanese Cabins is said to have been their village, very near or perhaps even within today’s Shawnee State Park. My research sources vary on the exact location, as well as to whether Shawanese Cabins was an actual Shawnee settlement. Possibly, it was a European colony, only named such because of the Shawnees’ historical presence in the area.

What is certain is that, in 1758, during the French and Indian War, the troops of British Army officer Brigadier-General John Forbes marched through the park’s boundaries. The soldiers were en route to fight the French at Fort Duquesne, located in what is now Point State Park in Downtown Pittsburgh. Along the way, they built Forbes Road as a relatively quick and safe route through what was then Pennsylvania’s unbroken Appalachian wilderness, including the Ridge and Valley Province of the Allegheny Mountains where Shawnee State Park is located.

Interestingly, it is said that General Forbes ordered the construction of his road, not only to provide his army with a more direct route with fewer difficult river crossings than the alternative, more southern route of Braddock’s Road, but also to give Pennsylvanians an advantage for land claims to the Ohio Country that lay west. What is more, in doing so, General Forbes thwarted the Virginian land speculators a young Colonel George Washington favored. So it could be the construction of Forbes Road was additionally an act of rivalry, or maybe even retribution, since Forbes and Washington were competitors regularly at odds concerning military matters.

Meaning it is feasible that what Forbes did for Pennsylvanians with his road was not entirely cool. But at least from all I have been able to gather, the two officers engaged in their clashes without irresponsibly spewing out in an embarrassingly undignified manner the hateful insults, threats, and name calling that have become so common among leaders of all types today. Though Washington wrote multiple letters to the Virginia House of Burgesses expressing strong disapproval and criticism of Forbes’ chosen route, he never once resorted to maligning Forbes on a personal level. As for Forbes, the very worst he said about Washington was that it was “a shame for any officer to be concerned in” provincial interests.

How refreshingly restrained. Obviously spoken by a refined, self-assured, and self-controlled adult. If only some of our current kingfish would follow in Forbes and Washington’s footsteps and grow up.

It is further said that, if not for General Forbes and his road, the British may never have gained control of Fort Duquesne and therefore of any territory west of the Alleghenies. Consequently, the United States as we now know it would not have been formed.

However, I am skeptical that is true. Because a battle between the British and the French at Fort Duquesne never happened. By November of 1758, when Forbes’ army was about to reach Fort Duquesne, the French there were in terrible shape. They had been abandoned by the Native Americans who had allied with them and were down to a small garrison. Their supplies had dangerously dwindled, and the fort was literally falling apart. Although I know nothing of military strategies, it is apparent to even me there was no way the French could have come up with a winning plan to successfully defend their fort. They must have felt the same because, rather than surrender Fort Duquesne to the British, they set it afire and fled north to Canada.

In place of the destroyed Fort Duquesne, the British built their own fort. Which General Forbes named Fort Pitt in honor of William Pitt, the British Secretary of State and future Prime Minister who had ordered the Forbes Expedition. Similarly, Forbes gave the surrounding settlement the name it still bears today, Pittsburgh.

It is interesting too to note that General Forbes only stayed a week at the site of his army’s victory, um, as it were. He was deathly ill and had been during the entire expedition with what is now presumed to have been stomach cancer. Most of the expedition, he was physically unable to travel along with his troops and followed behind, sometimes by as much as several weeks. Less than four months after reaching the burnt ruins of Fort Duquesne and assigning British monikers to the area, General Forbes died.

Nonetheless, Forbes did get his road built, and remnants of that road can still be walked in Shawnee State Park. Still, it should not be forgotten the remains of Forbes Road in the park were previously stretches of the Raystown Path, a Native American travel route used by Shawnee and Delaware tribes well before Forbes’ army ever laid eyes on the Allegheny Mountains and had to figure out how to cross them.

Nor should it be forgotten that the Shawnee and Delaware people were probably not the first to walk the Raystown Path. Although there is no conclusive evidence that the trail was blazed by other, more ancient tribes of Native Americans, within several miles of Shawnee State Park, there are archaeological sites that indicate there were indigenous people present in the region as far back as nine thousand years ago. It is plausible then that the sections of the Raystown Path that were widened and improved to be incorporated into Forbes Road have existed for millenniums. After all, who more than indigenous people would know the best route through the challenging terrain presented by the long, parallel steep ridges and deep valleys of the Allegheny region? Who but its original natives would have had such intimate knowledge of the land that was their homeland first?

In any case, Forbes Road is a national treasure important to our American heritage, and I consider it a privilege to walk at least a bit of it in Shawnee State Park. It gives me goose bumps when I take that relic of a path where I am never alone. For alongside me walk generations upon generations of forebears whose lives laid the groundwork for my own life and who left behind a storied past for the valuable learning right in my own backyard.

I have been visiting Shawnee State Park since I was a little girl. During the summer months when we were in the hollow at my father’s hunting camp turned family cottage, I used to beg my mother to go swimming at the lake. I have vivid memories of sitting on the cottage’s front porch, eyes glued to the thermometer that hung there on a rusty nail, hoping and praying its red line would stop being so poky and fly up to seventy because seventy was the temperature my mother believed warm enough to allow me to swim.

In those days, the half-acre, spring-fed pond my father and uncle built in the hollow was only a few years old with silvery-green water and no muck. As such, it was available and much handier for my swimming pleasure than Shawnee Lake, and I frequently did take advantage of the swimming hole that was then for me just a short walk down the road. In fact, I learned to swim in that pond. And on it, to ice skate. And now that pond is my actual backyard.

Because of the pond’s initial color of silvern green when I was a child, I named her Emerald. Today though, through most of the year, Emerald’s color is that of mud. It is only in the early spring the jewel-like green with the silver sheen reappears, and Emerald is young again. Nonetheless, like with numerous trees here in the hollow, Emerald and I have grown old and muddied together. So I appreciate her and am content in her presence.

But when I was a little girl, to swim in big Shawnee Lake with its real sand beach and concession stand full of exotic treats, like cherry Popsicles, Nutty Buddies, Laffy Taffy, and Pixie Stix, well, in my innocence, that was high living. To my little eyes, Emerald just could not compete. So, I would beg my mother to take me swimming at Shawnee Lake and curse the porch thermometer for moving at such an agonizingly slow pace.

Those were the days when Shawnee State Park was often crowded. On particularly hot days, my father and uncle used to drive to the park in the early morning to save our family a picnic table. They would wait there and play cards until we arrived. Because otherwise, by the time a packed lunch was prepared and kids were rounded up and dressed in swimsuits, every single one of the many picnic tables generously scattered throughout the park would have been taken.

Not so now. Yet, the park is still enjoyed by many picnickers, as well as campers, boaters, anglers, including those who winter ice fish, together with swimmers and hikers like me. No doubt in large measure because the park is meticulously kept, thanks to the rangers employed by Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR). They do an outstanding job creating and maintaining a safe, pleasurable, and wondrous environment for Shawnee’s myriad of visitors.

The picnic tables, food grills, pavilions, benches, and swing sets are in good repair. The various restrooms are clean, and the beach’s bathhouse and concession stand have been modernized. Grassy areas are neatly mowed, and all the grounds are trash-free. Garbage cans and plastic bags for dog waste are provided. With home being so close, I have never camped at Shawnee, but I have heard good things about its campsites, cottages, yurts, and lodge.

What I do have personal experience with are the hiking trails. Over the past year or so, I have walked every single one on numerous occasions, and every time, each has been in excellent condition. Not to mention well-patrolled. It is not uncommon to come across rangers on the trails. They are always courteous, friendly, and solicitous. I am so thankful for all their hard work.

Truth be told, I cannot think of a more valuable public servant than a park, forest, or wildlife refuge ranger. They are the caretakers of the public lands that epitomize America’s rich natural history, majestic beauty, and abundant biodiversity. Rangers are also educators with a huge wealth of knowledge and sage counsel concerning the natural world. On top of that, they are first responders for any emergency that occurs in their area of responsibility, including forest fires and the rescue of lost and/or injured people. Rangers in general are so dedicated that, if need be, they will put their own lives at risk to protect others.

Although I did not have this experience at Shawnee, I remember well how looked out for and safe I felt when I walked with a ranger a few years ago on a winter waterfall ice hike in Pennsylvania’s Ricketts Glen State Park. The hike is mostly on a steep trail of stone steps covered in thick ice that goes past twenty-two frozen waterfalls. At the park’s insistence, anyone wishing to make the hike must be accompanied by an approved guide. Which is wise. Only the day before I took the ice hike at Ricketts Glen, a woman fell and died attempting something similar at Pennsylvania’s Glen Onoko Falls. Tragically, she did not have a guide.

True, my guide the day I accomplished the waterfall ice hike was not a Ricketts Glen ranger. Rather, he was a winter staff member of an outdoor adventure service. However, for the other seasons of the year, he was a ranger at South Dakota’s Wind Cave National Park. So, although he was not in the role of ranger during our hike, it was obvious he embodied the defensive, caring, and vigilant qualities that are typical of the ranger community. Rangers are brave, mindful souls who evidently have a passion for preserving life, whether it be that of Mother Nature or the likes of me.

Going back to Shawnee State Park, its most popular hiking trail is the one I have been walking since I was a young adult. The Lake Shore Trail goes around a large part of Shawnee Lake. It is a wide, easy, mostly gravel, sometimes paved three-and-a-half scenic miles that is perfect for a leisurely ramble. I often walk there, and if the weather is good, there are usually a fair number of other people doing the same thing.

But recently I have been venturing off the Lake Shore Trail’s well-beaten path to explore the park’s other, less travelled trails. Which is how I got to know the Forbes, along with several more trails I had never walked before.

From the Field Trail with its wide variety of wildflowers, butterflies, and birds to the Felton Trail with its regenerating grove of baby hemlocks and white pines to the Colvin Trail with its end at an historic covered bridge to an unnamed trail with its wizened, but enduringly enchanting hemlock forest, each holds amazing discoveries. And Shawnee has other intriguing trails too. All free for the exploring.

I have discovered a bounty of wonder in Shawnee State Park. Leading me to believe that everyone should have such a park right in their own backyard. In other words, nearby and conveniently accessible. Like with Shawnee and all of Pennsylvania’s state parks, as well as most of America’s national parks, there should be no fee charged for day use. While I agree not all public lands should be open to the masses, those public lands that are “open” should be precisely that.

Since the designation of Yellowstone in 1872 as America’s first national park and Niagara Falls in 1885 as our first state park, national and state parks, along with other public lands have productively served we the people, playing a significant role in enriching human lives and well-being. They uplift the spirit and do a body good.

Not a false claim on my part. Science backs me up. Research shows the natural world has a positive impact on mental and physical health.

Then there is the biophilia hypothesis. It proposes our species has a genetic affinity for all living things that is also a predisposition to seek connections with the natural world. This predisposition stems at least partially from a subconscious realization that human survival depends upon nature.

Add to the preceding the proven phenomenon that humans have an inborn desire for and appreciation of beauty, and it is no wonder that, for the approximately century and a half since the parks at Yellowstone and Niagara Falls were established, national and state parks have remained hugely popular with the vast majority of U.S. citizens. So much so that many of us have at least one visit to a particular park on their bucket list. (For me, it was Glacier National Park in Montana. Luckily, I got there. It did not disappoint.)

Our public lands are both our heritage and our legacy. They have been here long before us. They, along with all Earth’s lands and waters are life’s foundation, upon which all life is built, and if there is any environmental justice at all in this world, they will be here long after we are gone for future generations to cherish and gain by as we have.

The farcical treasures of the elite cannot even come close to trumping their majesty. Even the most extravagant opulence cannot outclass their grandeur. No amount of gilding can upstage their magnificence. Nature’s God-given riches reign supreme.

So my conclusion is obvious. Our public lands and their rangers, they make America great.

One Thousand Steps

Thu, 22 May 2025 15:20:59 GMT

I wondered if I could walk 1,000 Steps. I had before on several occasions, but the last time I did so was two years ago. Then last March I broke my ankle, and for the entire year that followed, attempting such a taxing trudge was out of the question.

But over the months, my fibula regenerated. As evidenced by a series of x-rays, both ends of the fractured bone grew towards one another until they met in the middle and fused together. A natural phenomenon that was fascinating and uplifting to see.

Yet, although it was clear my fibula had knitted itself back to one whole bone, I was uncertain my ankle had regained its previous strength, and I wondered if I could still walk 1,000 Steps. I knew if I could, I would be satisfied. Because while there are certainly much greater feats of physical prowess, walking 1,000 Steps is about as far as I want to go.

So, off I recently went to Huntingdon County to try to walk a short portion of the eighty-five-mile Standing Stone Trail (SST) that traverses Central Pennsylvania’s ridges and valleys and is part of the Great Eastern Trail that runs from Florida to New York. The mid-section of the SST has the 1,000 Steps I hoped to hike.

Ascending Jacks Mountain through a rocky wild of craggy scree slopes where scrubby rhododendron, mountain laurel, jack pines, other conifers, and various hardwoods somehow manage to grow among countless boulders, 1,000 Steps is a steep flight of stairs made of native Tuscarora sandstone. I have never counted the steps myself, but by all accounts, there are more than a thousand, with the total ranging from 1,036 to over 1,100 depending on who is doing the counting. I can understand the discrepancies since the steps vary quite a bit in size, depth, and the vertical distance between them. All are irregular and uneven, and some are slanted. It is therefore difficult at times to distinguish between a rock meant to be a manmade step and one that Mother Nature just happened to place within the trail.

1,000 Steps from bottom to top is approximately one-half mile with an elevation gain of 850 feet. That’s fairly precipitous. For comparison, the steepest mile of the five-mile ascent up Colorado’s Mount Elbert, the tallest peak in the Rockies, has an elevation gain of 1,400 feet. In my estimation then, 1,000 Steps is a respectable climb, not to be scoffed at. I was quite pleased with myself when, with my freshly mended ankle, I reached its lofty end. Once there and as always, I was further delighted by the idyllic views of the valley below known as Jacks Narrows, a deep gorge and water gap where the graceful Juniata River nudges her way through a stately crowd of Appalachian hillsides.

Jacks Narrows is not only scenic, it is historic. Thousands of years before European colonization of Pennsylvania, running through Jacks Narrows was a footpath regularly trod by numerous indigenous tribes as a travel route through the Allegheny Mountains. By the early 1700s, European settlers and fur traders were also using the trail. They named it Kittanning, taken from the Lenape Native American word “Kithanink,” meaning “on the main river.”

One of those 18th century European fur traders was Jack Amstrong. In 1744, local legend has it he stole a horse from Mushemeelin, a Delaware Native American who Jack claimed owed him a debt. In any case, a huge mistake on Jack’s part.

Mushemeelin tracked the presumed horse thief down on Kittanning Path and murdered him in the narrow river valley that ever since has been known as Jacks Narrows. As for the mountain sweeping up from the narrows, it too was given the name Jacks. I guess there must have been a lot of sympathy, or maybe it was more like mockery for poor, dumb, foolish Jack.

Four years later, in 1748, a nineteen-year-old William Franklin, the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin, wandered the Kittanning Path to gather information about the American frontier and its inhabitants for his father. One of his assigned tasks was to meet, along with the heads of other indigenous tribes, the chief of the Delaware nation. I cannot help but wonder if the then still recent, bloody story of Mushemeelin and Jack Armstrong gave the young man any pause. But it must have ended okay. Because as far as I know, the Alleghenies has no Williams Narrows, and Wills Mountain in Bedford County, PA is named for a Shawnee tribesman.

Moving right along, by the early 1800s, Kittanning Path had evolved into a stagecoach turnpike road. Around the same time, in the 1820s, the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal was built to connect Philadelphia merchants with Pittsburgh and the West. It too passed through Jacks Narrows. As did the Pennsylvania Railroad when it was constructed a few decades later. Eventually, the railroad replaced the canal.

Today, the Pennsylvania Railroad is gone as well, but its tracks are still used by other rail carriers. It is not unusual to hear train whistles and the rhythmic clickety-clack of their wheels from 1,000 Steps. While the sound of vehicles going by below on the busy William Penn Highway (aka U.S. Route 22) that officially began in 1916 and still runs through Jacks Narrows can now and then be perceived as well. Yet, rarely does the traffic’s low hum rise above a hiker’s huffing and puffing. Or at least not this particular hiker’s huffing and puffing.

Along Pennsylvania’s Route 22, on the westbound side between the towns of Mount Union and Mapleton, is the parking lot for 1,000 Steps. At its easternmost end is the trailhead. One third of a mile up a gentle ascent through the woods gets a hiker to the first step. Which is where things get really interesting.

What makes 1,000 Steps a tough climb is not merely its steepness. What additionally makes the hike challenging is that extra close attention must be paid to every step taken. Not only because of the significant variances among the steps, but also because ankle twisters abound on the trail. On top of that, when wet or icy, the sandstones are dangerously slick, and when dry and warm, they are a basking haven for timber rattlesnakes. (Though timber rattlesnakes are normally shy and nonaggressive, I know of no circumstances where stepping on a rattlesnake carries zero risk.)

That’s all attention-grabbing stuff. Nonetheless, just like with Jacks Narrows, what is most interesting about 1,000 Steps is its history.

1,000 Steps was built in 1936 by the quarry workers of the Harbison-Walker Refractories Company. The refractories (aka brickyards) of Harbison-Walker were in the town of Mount Union at the eastern edge of Jacks Narrows. The Harbison-Walker quarry, known as the Ledge Quarry, was located approximately halfway up Jacks Mountain. There, laborers wielding hand tools mined Tuscarora sandstone formed from the sandy bottom of the shallow sea that covered the area hundreds of millions of years ago. A fact that is evidenced by the many Arthrophycus fossils of marine worm burrows found on Jacks Mountain.

Also known as ganister, Tuscarora sandstone is an extremely hard rock rich in crystalline quartz and therefore its chemical compound, silica. Silica, because it can withstand temperatures of up to three thousand degrees, was, and still is the main component in the refractory manufacturing of fire bricks. Silica fire bricks are prized as essential, safe, and reliable liners for the industrial furnaces and kilns of various industries, including steel, iron, glass, ceramic, and cement.

For the quarry workers of Harbison-Walker Refractories, it was not an easy way to make a living. A typical day began in the dark before dawn with a walk of some miles to the foot of Jacks Mountain. As the sun rose, the laborers climbed to their workplace. There, for twelve hours, they unearthed and smashed into manageable sizes ganister and then loaded the rocks into small railway cars called dinkeys for transport down the mountain and across the Juniata River to Mount Union’s brickyards. They did this six days a week year after year, and presumably even at night when, like other quarry workers in the United States at the time, they probably used oil and gas lamps, oil-filled flashlights, and/or electric arc lights to illuminate their work. Add to all this that since each man’s pay was dependent upon the weight of the stone he produced, on any given workday, the quarrymen were under a good deal of pressure to dig up, break apart, and load hundreds upon hundreds of pounds of rock. It is hard for me to imagine anyone having that much stamina. Especially when it takes just about all the grit I have got to walk 1,000 Steps.

Prior to 1936, to ascend Jacks Mountain, quarry workers either walked a long, zigzag trail made up of numerous switchbacks or took a shorter hike straight up the dizzying inclines of the narrow-gauge railroad used to transport the ganister. Or sometimes they would hitch a ride on the dinkeys. A dangerous thing to do. The steel dump carts were not made for passenger transport. A man could be thrown to his death as the dumper dinkeys lurched up the mountainside, and unfortunately, some were.

So, I suppose it was partly lucky that, on St. Patrick’s Day in 1936, there was a flood that wiped out the bridge that was a vital part of the principal route for getting ganister rock out of the quarry and into Mount Union. Losing the bridge greatly slowed fire brick production, but rather than laying off their quarrymen, Harbison-Walker put them to work building a shorter, easier, and safer commute up Jacks Mountain. Thus, 1,000 Steps was born.

From then on until the Ledge Quarry closed in 1952, laborers walked the steps to work. According to interview accounts of former Harbison-Walker quarrymen, they typically mounted the steps in twenty minutes. It usually takes me twice that long. Forty minutes, and I feel invincible when I take that last step. Ha!

Plus, to think that not once have I ever lugged up 1,000 Steps a single pick, shovel, drill, chisel, wedge, crowbar, or sledgehammer. Nor after I gasped and panted my way to the stairs’ top have I ever moved, pounded to pieces, hoisted, and schlepped any rocks. Nor have I ever gone back day after day after day to scale Jacks Mountain all over again. Nor have I ever considered attempting 1,000 Steps in anything other than beautiful weather or when I felt ill. All of which those men did.

And it is likely they often felt ill. Silica, a compound of silicon and oxygen, is hazardous to health. If inhaled in large quantities, it can and frequently does cause lung cancer, kidney disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Undoubtedly, the quarrymen of Harbison-Walker, as they wielded their big, heavy-duty sledgehammers for hours on end over three hundred days a year, inhaled one hell of a lot of silica rock dust.

I do not know why, in 1936, the executives of Harbison-Walker chose not to lay off their laborers and instead had them build 1,000 Steps. I hope it was because they cared about their employees, and that might be true.

Be that as it may, because of the brutal physical demands of quarry work, it is also conceivable that, even during the Great Depression, Harbison-Walker Refractories did not have a gargantuan number of quarrier job applicants breaking down its doors. If that was indeed its predicament, the company administrators may not have wanted to risk perhaps permanently losing, at a substantial financial cost, their exceptional and extremely valuable employees. So, they came up with the creation of 1,000 Steps.

Of course, both reasons could be correct, and there might be other reasons beyond what I imagine as well. I have never walked in the shoes of the 1936 powers that be at Harbison-Walker, and consequently, I can only wonder as to why they went to such remarkable lengths to hold onto their rock breakers.

Nor have I ever walked in the shoes of those rock breakers. All I know about those quarrymen comes from my research, where the most telling fact I learned about them was that, like their fellow laborers in the brickyards below, the majority were immigrants. Several sources, including a 1993 report by the U.S. Department of the Interior, related they were primarily Eastern Europeans. I had to give a sad chuckle of derision when I got to the part of the Interior’s report that read “The sudden influx of so many people whose ways of speaking and living were literally foreign to long-term Mt. Union residents must have been disturbing . . .” The report then goes on to state that, in response to the newcomers supposedly “disturbing” Mount Union’s entrenched citizenry, Harbison-Walker Refractories tried to make the immigrants “less challenging and more controllable by uplifting them into a safe, more respectable social category.”

To my mind, it does not get any more patronizing than that. Or more absurdly intolerant either. Especially since Mount Union had been settled by immigrants less than one hundred years before.

Granted, as I already said, I did not know the immigrants of the past century who worked for Harbison-Walker. But it has been my observation that today too it is immigrants who most often take the physically tough jobs that very few American-born people are willing and able to do and that they work incredibly hard at those jobs, generally for pitifully low wages.

The example of this I have the most direct experience with comes from when I lived in Tampa, Florida. There, I observed hundreds of Hispanic immigrants. A number of those Hispanic immigrants I was lucky enough to become personally acquainted with, and I am forever grateful for them. They provided me with empathy at a time in my life when I very much needed empathy. They walked in my shoes.

The extraordinary thing about that is their living situation was so different than mine. The immigrants I am referring to worked on the backside at Tampa Bay Downs, the thoroughbred racetrack outside of Tampa in Hillsborough County. They were grooms, hot walkers, and exercise riders, the most subordinate positions in horseracing.

They were poor. They lived in grungy tack rooms where bridles, saddles, and other equipment are stored next to the horse stables. Typically, one or two boxes or bags held all their personal belongings. Most of the money they made they sent home to their families. They were always terribly homesick.

I realize horse racing is considered inhumane by many, and I won’t argue that valid point. But I will say that I never witnessed or even got wind of any of the impoverished track workers abusing a horse. Quite the contrary. From what I saw and heard, the people on the backside had a close, even tender relationship with their horses. It seemed to me that many of them could communicate with horses on a psychic level. All treated the horses under their care with affection, kindness, calm, patience, and dignity. The horses trusted them, and well they should have. For it was only some of the well-to-do owners and higher-up trainers who ever forced a horse to run that was not willing or fit, or mistreated a horse in some other way.

As for me, back then, I was married to a thoroughbred owner. My husband’s passion was horseracing, which he commonly and proudly referred to by its nickname, “The Sport of Kings.” I think he was understandably attracted to that elitist moniker because he had grown up working class, if not altogether poor. On his own since the age of sixteen, he was entirely self-made, and he had an unrelenting Midas touch.

So, we had a lot of money. A big, beautiful, expensive house on eight gorgeous acres of land in an exclusive equine community was our home. We had tons of other stuff too. I could buy anything and do anything that caught my fancy without even considering its price tag. But having all that money did not make me happy. It made me unhappy. As unhappy as the cursed Midas.

I could not find any wonder in it. All that glittering gold made me as dull as ditchwater, and I was drowning in that ditchwater. Fortunately though, before it was too late, I was rescued and went on to regain what having too much money had stolen from me.

I wish the same was true for my husband. He did not survive, and it is my belief that it was his love of money that destroyed him. Nonetheless, as I often say, in my heart and mind, he remains a good man, the loving father of my child, and one of the best friends I will ever have.

As far as being a thoroughbred owner goes, he invariably made certain his horses were well treated and that they got suitable homes after their racing days were over. He was also magnanimous to the low-level workers on the track’s backside. (Again, most of whom were immigrants.) Through its chaplaincy, he made large donations to help meet their collective needs and wants. He gave money to individuals strapped for cash and periodically brought home for dinner anywhere from one to quite a few. A couple of Decembers, he invited dozens to our house for a Christmas banquet, and they came.

He was a genuinely generous man. However, I came to comprehend that his generosity, albeit unfeigned, was also camouflage for his addiction to money. He shared his wealth, but he also could not ever get enough of it for himself. Money was his mean taskmaster, and he was its obedient slave. Which caused a whole host of problems, but to relate them here would be a needless painful invasion of our family’s privacy, so I won’t.

I never got into horseracing myself, but occasionally I would accompany my husband to the backside to schmooze, admire, pet, and feed the horses treats of one kind or another. They all had their favorite. There was even one horse who apparently thought life did not get any grander than having a sip of my beer.

Normally when I was on the backside, the workers were there, and I got to observe and interact with them a little. But it was when they visited our home for dinner, we formed real connections.

I remember those dinners with great fondness, gratitude, and wonder. I remember them that way because, though sometimes exhausting with all the cooking I did, they were ultimately fun, cheering, and inspiriting. Not once did I get even the slightest hint of an indication that those humble backsiders envied or resented our family’s overabundance of material riches. Without exception, they were gracious, helpful, and appreciative of what was, in the grand scheme of things, the tiny bit we did for them. They filled our home with fellowship, and they gifted us with their good will.

Most spoke only a bit of broken English. Yet, when dinner was over, and it was time for them to leave, they would approach me one by one, look me in the eyes, and say the three English words they all spoke perfectly, “God bless you.”

To this day, I can still hear the echoes of those immigrant blessings, and when I am feeling badly, they console and reassure me.

Finally, I remember those dinners with fondness, gratitude, and wonder because those dirt-poor, hardworking, overburdened Hispanic immigrants could have easily chosen to see me as only a rich, spoiled, American white woman without a care in the world. But it was clear to me that instead they made a much more difficult, much more humane choice and tried to look more deeply before they judged me.

I further maintain they succeeded. Despite the disadvantage of being on vastly unequal footing, they accomplished empathy. They felt my feelings as their own and perceived I was not entirely as I simply appeared. I swear those immigrants walked in my shoes. In doing so, they delivered me understanding, acceptance, comfort, and the human connection joy really is.

I wish more Americans, including myself, would follow in their footsteps and do for others and themselves what those immigrants did for themselves and me. How marvelous it would be if we the people would make it our habit to try to walk in shoes not our own. What a better world we could then build.

And the wonder of it is, all it would take is one thousand steps.

Snowdrop

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 13:54:04 GMT

Winter is dead and buried. Spring is born and blossoming. Her baby clothes of crocuses, pussy willows, and snowdrops have already been outgrown and packed away. Now she wears daffodils, forsythia, Lenten roses, spring beauties, and Siberian squill. But soon she will have another growth spurt and change out of those flowery garbs as well. And so it will go as spring grows up to be summer and ages until she’s fall and culminates as winter to “rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

If only we humans do not shackle her with carelessness, ignorance, and greed, she’ll win her battle against everlasting death, and spring will arise anew. Once more the snappy dresser, most lovely to behold.

But to behold requires looking closely. Which is the lesson I received a few weeks ago when the snowdrops were flourishing. Whether I truly learned that teaching or not remains to be seen.

The profusion of snowdrops outside my cabin’s door began sixteen years ago as a small clump friends dug up from their garden and gave me as a gift. They are always the first spring flowers to appear, typically as winter draws her last breath. Appropriately named, their dainty blooms are snow white and hang downward. As if that were not enough, in further accordance with their name, they can and often do survive a covering crush of fallen snow. When the snow melts, they reappear just as they were before, as though nothing untoward has happened to them, and perhaps it has not. For all I know, the snowdrops were throwing a subdued, but magical and fun going-away party for their namesakes.

During our sixteen years together, I have always considered snowdrops the simplest of flowers. Then this year, for some unknown reason, it occurred to me that I had never really looked at a snowdrop, and perhaps I should remedy my negligence. I did, and the attempt proved wonderfully worthwhile.

Before that moment of awakening, snowdrop exteriors were all I had bothered to see, and the outside of a snowdrop’s flower is entirely white. This is because its peripheral, bell-shaped whorl (circular arrangement in a flower radiating from a single point) is composed of three solid white tepals. These outer tepals are convex and both longer and larger than the three inner tepals they surround. (Tepals are a cross between petals and sepals.)

The surprise came when I looked inside the snowdrop at those three shorter, smaller, and upright tepals. I saw that their insides are delicately striped with a bright spring green that inexplicably and sweetly reminded me of the red strips on the candy striper pinafore I humbly wore when I was a teenager volunteering at a local hospital. In addition, the top of each inner tepal is notched and marked on the opposite side from the strips with a heart shape in the same bright spring green. In the middle of these three, tinier tepals stand six vibrant yellow stamens heavily fuzzed with procreating pollen.

So, as it turns out, snowdrops are not simple at all. Just like snowflakes, if looked at attentively, they are complicated, fascinating, and exquisite. I am so glad I took the time and effort to fully and honestly see a snowdrop. Never again will I ever take them for granted or look down my nose at them. Because now I appreciate how special and extraordinary a snowdrop is.

I wonder. Could the same be true for everything? People included. Do I too often make up beliefs that are based on views that are merely easy, lazy, sloppy? Makes me think I had better pay more attention.

Home Is Where the Moose Is

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 12:19:26 GMT

Back in the late 1950s, a stone’s throw up the hollow’s road from where I now live, the members of my father and uncle’s hunting club built their camp. Financially unable to purchase lumber, they tore down a long-abandoned log barn and reassembled it as a one-room cabin.

Not long afterwards, at the behest of my outdoorsy mother and a couple of the other wives, their men’s camp also became our family getaway. A twist of fate that greatly shaped my future. Because I loved that cabin. As a child, I saw it as my dream house, and I wished I could always live there.

Though there was no denying the cabin was far from perfect. Even little enamored, enchanted me could see the abode of my heart’s desire was not just humble, but also downright crude, cramped, dark, drafty, and dank. Not to mention, devoid of creature comforts.

I often got splinters from its unfinished floor and walls. Electricity and running water were nonexistent. A pot-bellied stove provided heat. Windows of cracked and wavy glass supplied the air conditioning. They were almost impossible to open and stuck when they did. Water came from buckets filled and hand-carried from a spring dribbling out of the ground a quarter mile away. One hundred feet from the cabin was the bathroom, a gag-producing one-hole outhouse.

It also reeked inside the cabin. This was partially because of the long, musty flannel curtains printed with humorous deer hunting scenes that divided the cabin in two. In front of the curtains was the living, cooking, and dining area. Behind the curtains were the sleeping accommodations, two massive, handcrafted bunk beds. Atop each of the four doubles was a worn-out, lumpy mattress that sagged in the middle and loudly squeaked every time a slumberer shifted positions. The lower bunks took up almost the entire floor space, and the top bunks, which were reached by climbing a rickety ladder, were dangerously close to the ceiling. Even as a little girl, I sometimes hit my head.

To top off the primitive decor, as well as to add to the bad odor, hanging on the wall above a curtainless window and between the two bunk beds was an old taxidermied moose head named George. There was nothing outwardly appealing about George. He had a crooked nose that wobbled when you touched it, broken antlers, cloudy glass eyeballs, and lopsided ears. Moths had long feasted upon his hide, leaving little holes and large bald spots, and his beard had been stolen by mice for their nests. What fur remained was dingy in color, covered in ancient grime, and blotched with a gray mold that made him smell like wet, grungy socks.

Despite his shabby looks and offensive reek, I was fascinated with George, and I felt a powerful attachment to him. Mostly because of the tall tale my uncle told me about the moose. My uncle’s story about George went something like this.

George was born in 1840 on a late spring day in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, and for the first seven months of his life that was where he lived with his mother. He might have remained there all his life, but like many Adirondack moose, George’s mother typically travelled south during the winter months to warm her bones in the milder climate of Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountains. So that December, off she went on her well-trodden trek to finer weather, and since she was a good mother, she took her baby calf with her.

Strange to think of moose as snowbirds. Yet even ages before George and his mother were among them, that is essentially what New York moose were. Stranger still to think of winters in the Alleghenies as sun-drenched and placid, particularly back then when winters were much colder and stormier. Nonetheless, in comparison to their native soil, a tropical paradise was how the Adirondack moose saw this land. From time immemorial, during the coldest months of the year, they visited these mountain ridges and valleys.

In those days, moose were revered as sacred creatures. Indigenous people and many post-Columbian immigrants to Pennsylvania referred to them as “The Original,” believing moose to be the ancestor of all deer, elk, and other cervine animals. Especially after Pennsylvania’s moose became extinct, the arrival of the New York moose was considered the high point of winter. Migrating Canada jays, known colloquially as moose birds, heralded their coming. When their flights touched down, the moose were almost certainly close behind, and the Allegheny populace was in eager anticipation. The people could barely wait for the chance to be in the awe-inspiring presence of the formidable forebears of so many marvelous, life-sustaining, and irreplaceable creatures.

Unfortunately though, the Adirondack moose were eventually hunted and land grabbed into extirpation (local extinction). They shared the same, earlier doom as Pennsylvania’s native moose. The New York moose were killed off by humans who either did not know any better, legitimately needed the moose for sustenance, or were in a feeding frenzy driven by an insatiable, destructive appetite for money. A common addiction and brain disease of our species that has always been the most tragic, delusion-inducing, and enslaving evil hell-bent on putting an end to humanity.

Believe me. I know. I know from personal experience. Because I once suffered from that disease. Yet, although the illness did real and lasting damage, its infection never spread to the bottom of my heart, and in time, the fever broke, and my lost consciousness returned.

I wish I could say I got better because my morality was stronger than my addiction. However, that would be a lie. What saved me were two stalwart defenders standing guard at the bottom of my heart: a ramshackle dream house and a dead moose.

But I digress.

My uncle said each sojourning Adirondack moose had a favorite Allegheny stomping ground. For George’s mother, it was Lightfall Hollow, and that is how George came to be here. Just like my uncle and me, George was wonderstruck by the hollow, and he likewise knew he had found his true home.

Perhaps then it was fortunate winter that year was exceptionally long. It was mid-April before the days grew warm, and spring returned. By now, George was nearly a year old, and in moose society, a year-old male “bull” is considered old enough to be parted from his mother and forge his own way in life. And that is what George did. As his fellow moose returned to the Adirondacks, George stayed by himself in the Alleghenies and made Lightfall Hollow his turf.

George was in his element here, living his best life. He was alone, of course, the only moose in Pennsylvania. But moose by nature are solitary creatures, and for what George lacked in close relationships with contemporaries, he made up for with his intimate connection to the land.

The hollow shaped George, and it came to define him. He belonged to the hollow, and the hollow belonged to him. He was content here. He was free here.

That is, until one day when a wealthy lumber baron wandered into Lightfall Hollow looking for more land to buy for more trees to axe to make him more wealthy, and he spotted George. At this point, moose had been extinct from Pennsylvania for about fifty years, and the New York moose were becoming more and more scarce. In fact, it would only be a couple more decades until they too would be hunted and land grabbed into extirpation.

This rapidly spiraling shortage of moose made George a rare find. The lumber baron further realized it made George worth some money. It did not deter the rich man that even the maximum amount of money he could conceivably make off George would add only the tiniest drop to his already overflowing, humongous money bucket.

Money was money. And according to the rich man’s mindset, as well as the predominant mindset of the society in which he lived, money was the creator and keeper of greatness. Like many of his fellow citizens, including those much less affluent and even flat-out poor, the rich man was convinced the more money a person has, the greater their life, and the greater a life, the more deserving of reward is that life. A vicious philosophy that hugely contributes to enormous income inequality between the elites and the masses.

By the way, gaining control of any addiction is tough, but it is exceptionally tough to take command of an addiction for which there is societal admiration. Sometimes to the extent of blind hero worship. I believe this adulation of the rich is because of two common misconceptions, along with a crucial contributing factor to a person’s financial situation that is rarely given any acknowledgement.

Common misconception number one is that exorbitant amounts of money and intelligence go together. They can, of course, and not infrequently do, but in my experience, not necessarily. Common misconception number two is that exorbitant amounts of money and tons of hard work go together. This too can be true, and a fair amount of time is, but not necessarily.

As for the unacknowledged crucial factor, it’s luck. Some get it, and some don’t, and whoever gets lucky has nothing to do with either their intelligence or work ethic. I have known and continue to know a wealth of people who, though both intelligent and hardworking, have never received their monetary due. People like my parents, my uncle, and untold others who have enriched and continue to enrich humanity with their minds, labor, and love. They remain unsung heroes. While the ultra-moneyed are idolized without question.

Still, who among us does not want to be looked up to and held in the highest regard? On these grounds, I do have sympathy for money addicts. At the root of their disease is society’s messed-up values.

At any rate, the rich man who had set his sights on George had no interest in controlling his addiction. All he wanted was for his life to be the greatest and most meritorious of all. Consequently, every penny counted, and there could never ever be enough pennies.

The rich man was insecure and needy. Moreover, he had stretched the human tendency to rationalize to an outrageous degree. Which is how he bamboozled himself into believing that he could give George a better life by capturing him and taking him away from self-reliance and independence in the wild to where he could be looked after and kept safe.

Poor George. He was so inexperienced in the ways of humans, he walked right into the rich man’s trap. Afterwards, he was sold to a travelling circus as an addition to their clown troupe. Since not only was George, as a moose, an increasing oddity and naturally goofy looking, he was also innately intelligent and therefore relatively easy to train. While his unique face with its wonky nose and lopsided ears made him an even more comical sight. Hence, a clown is what George became.

It was not that George was treated cruelly by the ringmaster, his fellow clowns, and other circus performers. He was well-fed, had a clean, cozy place to shelter, was regularly exercised, and received plenty of affectionate pats and even some occasional kisses on his wonky nose.

Plus, it is inarguable that, if it suits someone and their heart is in it, a clown can be as noble a profession as any other. But being a clown did not suit George, and his heart was not in it. He was out of place in the circus. George belonged where he was most himself plain and simple. He belonged in Lightfall Hollow. It was home, and George could not forget it.

An interminable decade passed, and George remained a clown. He might have died a clown, except that at long last the circus acquired a fortune teller and animal psychic. It did not take her long to see that George was horribly homesick. So homesick it was killing him before his time. Yet she also saw that there was still time for George to return to Lightfall Hollow and regain his priceless and immeasurable fortune.

The fortune teller was kind and honorable, and she could not have cared less about any sort of reward for her decency. She freed George, and he found his way back home, where he resumed living life to the fullest. Of course, ultimately, George did die. When the fortune teller got wind of his demise, she claimed his body, and for whatever reason (perhaps motivated by some possible future use seen in her crystal ball), she had his head preserved.

Which may sound appalling to some, but for me it became a good thing. Because many years later, the fortune teller’s granddaughter came to Lightfall Hollow, knocked on the door of the recently constructed, jerry-rigged cabin, and gave George, along with his story to my uncle. Once again, George had come home.

That was the story my uncle told me about the life of a dead moose. Afterwards, he gave me a searching look, as though he could see right through me to the bottom of my heart, and in an emphatic tone of voice granted me this wise and intuitive counsel, “Now don’t you ever forget how to find your way home.”

I did not. It took a long time, but in the end, I remembered George’s story, and I figured out what it was really telling me. I remembered the modest cabin of my girlhood. I remembered how at home I was there and in the hollow. I remembered how my best self lived in that cabin and in that hollow and that it was there I had received the priceless, immeasurable fortune for which financial opulence is a ridiculously poor substitute. I remembered all that I had lost, and I wanted it back. I wanted it back more than all the money in the world.

So, I threw off my chains, left unconscionable wealth behind, and found my way home. Now I live there. Though not in the original hunting camp/family cottage. That cabin is still here in the hollow, but over the years, it has been through numerous ownerships, renovations, and expansions. No longer is it a child’s dream house. That stronghold of wonder is gone for me. George is gone too. When he was removed and to where, I do not know.

My current cabin, although relatively small, unpretentious, and rustic, is not nearly so much so as the first, and it has all the modern conveniences. But just like the cabin of my girlhood, it is a quaint sort of house and far from perfect, but it is its peculiarities and imperfections that give it its charm, and it has charm galore. It is a stronghold of wonder. I would not trade my little, humble, curious, and imperfect cabin for the largest, most expensive, gorgeous, and perfect mansion money can buy.

And above my desk where I write this hangs a moose head named George. Unlike the first George, he’s beautiful. Made of plaster, he is also fake. Nonetheless, when I caught sight of him at a local flea market, I could not resist him. I had to bring him home to the hollow where he keeps the story of the real George ever close and inspiring hope.

What more could anyone want?

Clear Shade

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 15:08:25 GMT

One thing is for certain about me. No one in their right mind would ever call me an athlete. I have no natural ability for sports of any kind. I am clumsy, uncoordinated, and my gait bears an unfortunate resemblance to that of Frankenstein.

When I was a kid, I fit to a T the stereotype of the last child picked and grudgingly so for any team sport. I suppose that is at least part of the reason I eventually became a hiker and cross-country skier. Although my lifelong love affair with mountain woodlands was the primary impetus, by and by, I figured out that hiking and cross-country skiing would give me the freedom to go it alone with no witnesses to my ungainliness and propensity for falling.

It is true. I am not exaggerating. I really was and continue to be a graceless wonder.

I will never forget the time when, upon their request, I took two young women on their very first hike. At the time, I was in my mid-forties, middle-aged or maybe even old in their twenty-something eyes, and I was consequently determined to impress the tenderfoots under my direction and aegis with my hiking expertise and fearless leader skills.

Which is why I chose for our journey a relatively short, easy section of the seventy-mile Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail (LHHT) that runs between the Conemaugh Gorge near Johnstown, PA and the Youghiogheny River at Pennsylvania’s Ohiopyle State Park. It was a segment of the LHHT I had hiked many times. I knew it so well I was positive I could walk it blindfolded without once stumbling, much less falling.

Incidentally, the part of the LHHT I am referring to is also quite pretty. Mountain laurel thickets grow on either side of the trail with such exuberance that here and there their twisted branches meet overhead and form verdant tunnels. Going through those shadowed passageways, especially when the mountain laurels are in white and pink ethereal bloom, is like crossing the enchanted covered bridges of fairyland.

But, once again, it was not enchantment I was going after that day. I had other wants, along with a strategy to achieve them.

However, as they say, “the best-laid plans . . .” Because within thirty seconds and one hundred feet of hitting the trail, I literally did hit the trail. Meaning I fell flat on my face. I was physically uninjured, but so much for being a hiking guru and intrepid guide to wilderness adventures.

Adding to my humiliation, I had tripped on a perfectly flat, level, solid, dry piece of ground. Although I searched and searched, as did my two “protégées,” where I had taken my tumble, there was not a single exposed root or rock to be found. Nor were there any holes or depressions. Likewise, there were no fallen tree branches, soggy moss, mud, ice, or compacted snow. There were no empty beer cans or other trash. Nor were there any sunning turtles or snakes, lost or neglected baby animals, or wildlife carcasses. All hurdles I had already gotten to know up close and personal from frequently going splat atop them. Yet, on this hike upon a pleasant, nontaxing stretch of the LHHT, I had apparently been brought down by nothing other than my two left feet.

Or maybe, just maybe, someone, a fairy or some other supernatural power had blessed me with a mighty push, trying to teach me about the idiocy of false pride.

As for the young women, they were undaunted by my ineptness. They were further kind enough to pretend that they knew without a doubt I had fallen on purpose to bring a little jocularity to our jaunt. All in a selfless attempt to make their newbie selves less intimidated by my far superior prowess.

Wow! I had no adequate response. Well, other than to join my two charitable companions in a good laugh at my brainless mishap turned brilliant performance. Afterwards, we again set out and went on to have a lovely hike together, the entirety of which I somehow managed to stay upright.

And that brings back a different memory of another shared hike with another gracious, albeit brutally honest companion. The hike I am remembering now happened around twenty-five years ago. It took place on the Old Rag Mountain Loop in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park. My partner that time was a dear friend and native of the Swiss Alps whom, to this day, I consider the most agile and accomplished hiker I have ever known. It was she, following a strenuous climb up Old Rag, as we stood upon its boulder-strewn summit and looked out on its spectacular, panoramic, pristine view, it was she who correctly told me I walk like Frankenstein. Which, for me at least, made that hike forever memorable.

In response, no, I did not send my friend plummeting off Old Rag. Instead I asked, with admittedly some indignation in my voice, “Well, if that’s true, why in the world would you want to hike with someone who walks like a monster?” Without skipping a beat, she answered, “Because you have a beautiful respect for the mountain.”

That was one of the highest compliments I have ever received. So many tears welled up in my eyes, my vision became alarmingly bleary. It is by sheer luck I too did not take a tragic dive off Old Rag.

I just hope, in the many years that have passed, I have lived up to my friend’s estimation of me. I hope I have always given due respect, not just to any mountain, but to all land, fire, water, and air. They are my elders. Like my human ancestors, they shaped me long before I was born, and my fate is tied to theirs. Without them, I would not exist. Without them, I cannot live.

Since those two hikes of long ago, not much has changed. I continue to be an avid hiker and cross-country skier. I also continue to fall down on the trail from time to time. Nonetheless, experience has taught me never to be embarrassed by doing something I love. Even if I am not all that proficient at it.

So, I hike, ski, and fall on.

There are so many exhilarating hiking trails right here in the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia that I am unable to pick a favorite. However, I do have a favorite cross-country ski trail. It is the John P. Saylor Trail in the Clear Shade Wild Area of Pennsylvania’s Gallitzin State Forest.

It is a little confusing as the seventeen-mile John P. Saylor Trail is broken up into smaller trails with additional names. The way I normally go involves, I believe, three of those trails. You would think I would know for sure since I have been skiing Clear Shade for forty years. But I don’t. I guess because I have become so familiar with my chosen route, I no longer need to consult a map or trail markers. The names of the separate trails have thereby lost relevance and been forgotten.

What remains unforgettable though is Clear Shade in snow. On such special occasions, there is no place more heavenly, and there is no ground more hallowed. Its Eastern hemlocks are the living proof. Established groves of those lofty, solemn trees make up much of the wild area’s forest. In a fallen snow, with their trunks standing like columns, the snow decorating their branches like high relief sculptures of marble, their canopy soaring overhead like a vaulted ceiling, and the majestic hush sounding within their sanctuary, the hemlock woods are nature’s cathedral.

Another dazzling, while also dizzying feature of the John P. Saylor trail is the roughly sixty-foot swinging bridge that goes over the equally dazzling and dizzying Clear Shade Creek. Klutz that I am, it is always with some trepidation that I ski across that dangling, swaying excuse for a safe and solid footway. But fun urges me on beyond fear. I’m lucky that way.

Although I don’t know for certain, my guess is the creek is half the reason why both it and the surrounding wild area have the oxymoronic and curious name of Clear Shade. The creek is crystalline and appears sparkling clean. Trout, both stocked and wild, live within its waters, and all trout, while not necessarily in need of clear water, can exist only in clean, unpolluted water. They also need cold and highly oxygenated water.

My further hunch is that the forest canopy covering various lengths of the creek flowing through the wild area is the “shade” in Clear Shade. The recognition is well-deserved since trees on the banks of waterways contribute to the good health of those waterways. They filter out excess sediment, nutrients, and toxins before they can wash into the water. They reduce erosion and flooding. Their shade helps keep the water sufficiently cool. Shade also indirectly helps maintain adequate oxygen levels since cooler water can dissolve oxygen more easily, as well as hold more oxygen than warmer water.

While I only have guesses as to how Clear Shade got such a contradictory and peculiar name, I know it is the right name. Because essentially that is what Clear Shade is. Like any wild area, it is an open haven, a clear shade from the woes of this world. Something I think we all need.

In recent years, there have been entire winters when I have missed cross-country skiing. Lack of snow is the reason. Even when there is enough snow, more and more, there is less and less, and shorter and shorter is the spell it remains.

Naturally then, a few weeks ago when there was enough snow, I wasted no time hitting my favorite heaven on earth to cross-country ski. As is often the case, I had the wild area all to myself. Its trails had not been broken, and in the four hours I spent skiing through virgin snow, I saw not one other person.

Which was great. I love having Clear Shade all to myself. In the cathedral hush of the forest, positive thoughts and feelings flow freely, lightly tripping over and eroding the stones of despair, fear, and anger in my mind and heart. Hope grows as tall as the tallest hemlock. Bliss and serenity, pure as the driven snow, are mine, and I am in amazing company.

Still, I wonder. Where are all the people?

The Old Woman

Wed, 22 Jan 2025 18:27:52 GMT

With the new year has come the old woman. Outside my cabin’s windows, she clutches the gutters with long, icy, gnarled fingers that end in tips as sharp as the sharpest claws. Her windswept white hair flows over the roof and, like Rapunzel’s mane, cascades down and spreads across the earth.

Pure white too is her sweeping cloak of rumpled fur. Above her wrap, her face is craggy and covered in gray splotches. Beneath the gray is skin that ranges in color from a pale glacial blue to a bright cerulean. Her colorless eyes are often dull, clouded, and rheumy, sometimes spilling over with cold, crystalline tears that catch the wind and fly through the air in wild abandon. Landing, they coat whatever they touch with a frosty glaze that, with more tears, thickens into a heavy frosting.

The old woman’s bones creak and crackle. Her voice is raspy and hoarse. She mutters, moans, howls, and shrieks. Her bitterly biting breath stings the flesh and can come in gusts forceful enough to jostle people, swerve moving vehicles, rattle houses, and fell trees.

The old woman is harsh and fierce. Like the grande dame of all living, Mother Nature, she has a wicked sense of humor, and she does not suffer fools gladly. Yet, beneath the bedlam’s dark, unforgiving exterior is sheltered a tender, nurturing heart.

For the old woman is a reservoir of that which is essential for existence. Because of her, groundwater aquifers are replenished, and soil is watered gradually and therefore deeply without wasteful surface runoff. She assists in regulating global temperatures and keeping Earth’s surface cool enough to support life.

Because of the old woman, plants are made tougher, more resilient, and adaptable. While at the same time, she offers insulation from killing extremes in temperature and feeds vegetation with a gentle, natural fertilizer boost of nitrogen that she gathers and brings down from the atmosphere.

As she does with the flora, the old woman makes the fauna, including us humans, tougher, more resilient, and adaptable. Perhaps only for us, she brings sublime beauty into the world to amaze, awe, and fall in love with. She provides mystery to strengthen our powers of insight and intuition. If only we can and will cooperate, she grants us a time to slow down, quiet, rest, rejuvenate, reflect, plan, contemplate, have fun, and delight in her wonders. In her wisdom, the old woman does all these good things for us.

If it has not already become apparent, the old woman is none other than winter personified. Much of the above description of her is my own, but I am hardly the first to portray winter as a female. Not by a long shot. Numerous cultures from various countries and time periods have defined winter as being feminine. (Sorry about that, Old Man Winter and Jack Frost, but you, my dear sirs, are largely outnumbered.) My favorite, and what I have built upon for my own representation, is the Gaelic version where she is a giant and goddess called Cailleach. The name Cailleach means “old woman,” as well as “hag” or “crone,” “wise woman,” “creator,” and there are additional translations too.

I know some may take offense at the words hag and crone, but originally those words were intended to refer to an older woman who is superhuman and profoundly wise. Cailleach is only one of such females. Many others appear in much of the world’s mythologies, folklores, and religious scriptures. Take, for example, the goddess of old age, Elli, from Norse mythology who defeats in a wrestling match Thor, god of, among other things, strength. Or consider the fairy godmother in a fairytale. Then there’s the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible, along with the Old Testament of the Christian Bible where wisdom is described as a mystical female so ancient she was present at the beginning of creation and so transcendent she was made privy to divine mystery. (Proverbs 8.)

I personally think we ladies should take the words hag and crone back. Let us seize control from those who twist them to oppress us and have them serve instead as proud reminders of our rightful powers of wisdom and mystery. Superpowers that blossom with age that can and should be used to live up to what has always been known and expected of us.

According to Gaelic mythology, as a creator, Cailleach is not only winter’s inventor and perpetual provider, she is also responsible for having constructed the landscape of Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. It is said that where she pierced the ground with her staff, water sprang to the surface and formed rivers and lakes. Smashing the ground with her hammer, she made valleys and coastlines. With boulders she carried on her back or in her apron, she erected mountains.

I suppose it is because of my lifelong enchantment with my native Allegheny Mountains that I often wonder at Cailleach. Adding to my fascination is that my maternal great-grandfather was from Scotland. So it charms me that the Appalachian Mountains and the Scottish Highlands were once, hundreds of millions years ago, part of the same mountain range, the Central Pangean that ran through the supercontinent of Pangea. Eventually, the collisions of tectonic plates fractured Pangea and split the Central Pangean Mountains into separate mountain ranges that drifted apart atop their severed landmasses on the newly opened North Atlantic Ocean.

At least, that is the scientific explanation of how the Appalachian Mountains and Scottish Highlands came to be divided, and I believe it. However, I still cannot seem to stop myself from speculating about Cailleach and the mythic role she has played in the creation of the mountains I have loved since childhood.

One of the myths surrounding Cailleach claims she built the mountains as her steppingstones. Although when I look out at the low, softly rounded Alleghenies, I routinely liken them to either voluptuous women in repose, squat and stoop-shouldered grandmas, or the burial mounds of dead goliaths, it is similarly easy to picture them as the steppingstones of an enduring giant.

And while I know the Appalachians once rivaled the Himalayas in height, shape, and ruggedness and that it is the work of weather and water that has eroded them to the gentle, rolling ridges they are today, I can still visualize a towering, hoary, heavy-footed sage of a female immortal wearing them down with her roaming. Which inspires me to further imagine that after

the Central Pangean Mountains fragmented and the present-day Scottish Highlands and Appalachian Mountains moved away from one another, Cailleach began dividing her time between the two. Conceivably then, the Appalachians are her second home. And because I cannot fathom it being any other way, her beloved happy place. As it is mine.

In any case, I think Cailleach is wonderful, and I cherish all the old woman’s gifts. Gifts like the dramatic icicles that decorate my home, their reflective translucence brightening even the dreariest of days. Or the snow, the silent white that quenches, feeds, hushes, and cools the Earth and is so pure and magical I cannot shake the notion that it must have had its genesis in a child’s dream. Soon after and by some miracle, upon the child’s awakening, the snow dream came true.

Wonderful too the old woman’s skies that change like moods and her wind that invigorates by day and hums, whistles, croons, and belts out cradlesongs by night. Most wonderful of all is the wisdom and mystery she offers, even though one requires tolerance of hard, even brutal lessons and the other acceptance of the typically frightening unknown.

Of course, there is nothing factual or scientific about Cailleach. She is nothing but a myth. Be that as it may, I believe myths, as well as folktales hold tremendous power and subtle truths, and in an odd, paradoxical way, the outlandish, unbelievable fictions they tell make those stories more down-to-earth and relatable. The other beautiful thing about any myth or folktale is that it can evolve. Such a story is like a kaleidoscope. You pick it up, hold it to the light, give it a little twist, and the colors and shapes within form a whole new pattern.

In this way, old stories remain continually new, relevant, interesting, and pointing the way to ever higher truths. They grab out attention and get us to wondering and wanting to know more about the marvels of this world. They help us to appreciate and care for what we have on this, our glorious good Earth.

And for that, I am truly grateful to the old woman and her timeless clan.

Regular Old Traditions, Little Old Mountains, and Big Old Rocks

Sun, 15 Dec 2024 19:06:51 GMT

It’s December. The days are short, and the nights are long. I feel the age-old impulse to brighten up the darkest month of the year with lights, evergreens, and loads of other decorations that sparkle, glitter, and glow. Even though doing so seems ridiculous. What with living here in the woods with only my husband, not a neighbor in sight, and off a secluded dirt road where winter traffic is all but nonexistent.

Nonetheless, the impulse is a strong one. It harkens back to the ancient cultures of the Celtic, Norse, and Roman people, all of whom incorporated lights (candles), evergreens, and ornaments into their December holidays of Yule and Saturnalia respectively. Add to this that my immediate girlhood family was bonkers for Christmas decorating, and it becomes abundantly clear that I don’t stand a chance to not deck the halls come December.

The most blatant example of my family’s craziness for jazzing up domiciles at Christmas was my maternal grandmother who, upon seeing her sister’s home all decorated for the holidays, returned to her own abode in the company of the green-eyed monster. Consequently, Grandma then proceeded to smash a sizable hole through the floor of her family’s living room. Up through which she pushed a gushing garden hose, thus creating a “Parisian fountain” for the toy train on yuletide display to chug past.

While her children, including my mother, were thrilled with their mum’s creative cleverness, her husband was none too pleased. He appreciated neither the glaring inclusion of the hole of my grandmother’s smashing nor the warping from the “Parisian fountain” to the hardwood floor he had recently refinished by hand. Likewise, he did not consider it a good thing that the splashing water from said “Parisian fountain” rendered the motor of his prized Lionel train inoperable. (Luckily, my grandfather was a gentle soul head over heels in love with his wife.)

With such a grandmother, as well as other dead relatives who were also looney for embellishing their Noel digs, it is excruciatingly obvious to me that, even if I live to be a hundred plus years, I do not have a snowball’s chance in hell to ever escape decorating for Christmas. By God, it’s tradition! Accordingly, lest the ancestral ghosts of Decembers past come and terrorize me, I decorate like the mad woman progeny I am.

Familial custom strictly dictates that all Christmas decorating be completed by St. Nicholas Day, December 6. This inherited draconian rule means that I must begin decorating pretty much immediately after Thanksgiving. Time to wash up the greasy dinner dishes and store the heaps of leftover turkey and all its trimmings is allowed, but just barely. Rigorously forbidden is putting one’s feet up and relaxing for a spell. (Ghosts, especially those of family, are hard taskmasters.)

Post haste, up goes the Christmas tree, which I must admit, my husband and I have been lucky with the thirteen holiday seasons we have been together. Somehow, we always manage to pick out the perfectly formed Frasier fir that has enough agreeable Christmas spirit to stand straight in its stand with relatively little aggravating adjustment and no infuriating tipping over. (Knock on wood.) Upon it I then hang fairy lights, along with clear glass balls I stuffed with tinsel in a variety of colors thirty-odd years ago, candy canes slightly melted from their summer storage, a ceramic snowman my son painted when he was six, his name scribbled upon the back, my favorite hand-painted, flowered ornament from childhood, a little fabric doll dressed in red a beloved aunt gave me on the day I was born, etc. etc. All of which is fittingly topped with a garish plastic star.

Next, out come all the ceramic Santa Clauses my mother and I painted together for years. They are not the most elegant or sophisticated way to decorate a home, but they remind me of my mother and the fun we shared painting those figurines, which are supposedly representations of how Santa is portrayed in different countries around the world. Though the truth is, someone took a lot of liberties with their artistry.

Not elegant or sophisticated too are the glitzy wreaths and all the additional gaudy shiny stuff I hang and place about the cabin. The saving graces are perhaps the vintage lighted Santa Claus and angel I have had in my life all my life. They are both made of cheap plastic and not in the best shape, but they are timeless, and they have a sweet, soothing appeal.

Once the inside of the cabin is decorated, it is time to go outside to untangle, fiddle with, and string lights until my fingers either go numb or bleed or both. After that, there are more artificial wreaths and other Christmas goods galore to unpack, drag out, and find just the right spot for each to show off in all its man-made glory.

I sound like I hate Christmas decorating, but I do not. Despite its frustrating, time-consuming, and tiring aspects, I cherish it and all the merry, celebratory memories that go along with it. It makes me feel like my grandmother, parents, and other missing loved ones are still with me. We are together again in the season of togetherness.

Y et, I could decorate my fingers to the bone, and I still would not come even close to giving Mother Nature a run for her money. Even in the dead of winter, for dazzling adornment, she will always be the champ.

As it invariably does, that reality became obvious recently as I hiked a short section of the 250-mile Tuscarora Trail, a spur of the Appalachian Trail. Starting from Pennsylvania’s Cowans Gap State Park in the Buchanan State Forest and heading south, the trek soon requires a significant amount of somewhat tricky boulder scrambling, but, wow, is it worth it. The forest along the trail in Cowans Gap is exceptionally beautiful with lots of various evergreens and good winter views of the mountains. I was particularly delighted to spy Pyramid Point, aka Sidneys Knob or Henry’s Knob, a markedly atypical Pennsylvania mountain. Whereas virtually all Pennsylvania mountains, with their soft, voluptuous curves, are what I see as feminine in form, Pyramid Point is conical in shape. I would not exactly call it phallic, like the mountains out west and in other places around the world, but in my view at least, Pyramid Point does have a bit of masculine charm. Which I laughingly imagine causes quite an amorous stir among the surrounding ladies.

In about four miles, Big Mountain, the highest point on the Tuscarora Mountain Ridge, is reached. Its overlook, also accessible by car via Tower Road in Fulton County, cannot be beat for an expansive and stunning scenic view. Standing on the overlook’s rock outcropping, spread out below is the vast Path Valley. Its Cococheague Creek leads to the Potomac River. Also included in the panorama are mountains like Hogback, Kittatinny, Little, Broad, Cove, and Parnell Knob, along with the highest point on Blue Mountain Ridge, Clark’s Knob. While appearing with exceptional distinction is the gentleman of my silly whimsy, Pyramid Point. All in all, an extraordinary display of Northern Appalachian lure.

Even more than the breathtaking, bird’s-eye view from atop Big Mountain, amazing is what can be heard there. It is a voice. The clearest, most calming, reassuring, encouraging, and honest voice there is. The voice of silence.

It is a voice I am afraid I often fail to honor. But I’m only human. So there. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Another wonderful, recent Pennsylvania visit was to Columcille Megalith Park on Blue Mountain in Northampton County. Recognized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum as a cultural heritage center, Columcille contains seventeen acres of mountainous woodland with walking trails that pass by ninety-some megalith settings of giant rocks. Practically all these colossal stone beauties were harvested from the Blue Mountain area. (The exceptions being several cut granites from Minnesota which were gifted to the park.)

Columcille’s largest megalith is a twenty-foot-tall boulder weighing forty-five tons. Other megaliths range in weight from four to fifteen tons. There is also a hexagonal chapel, a cylindrical bell tower, and what looks to be a portal called the Celtic Eye. All three are made of uncut native stone.

The park was inspired by a dream its founder, William H. Cohea, Jr., had when he was visiting Scotland’s Isle of Iona. Iona’s rugged landscape is thought to be made up of some of the oldest rocks on Earth. The Celts believed it to be a “thin place” where heaven and earth seem to touch. Today, as it has been for almost fifteen hundred years, Iona is a pilgrimage destination, principally for Christians.

The creation of Columcille was further influenced by the many prehistoric megalithic structures found in the British Isles, probably the most famous being Stonehenge. As is now presumed true during Europe’s New Stone Age, or Neolithic Period, the purpose of Columcille’s massive standing stones is to connect people with the energy of the earth and sky, thus promoting renewed creation of the human spirit. Additionally, the park provides a sacred place for meditation, reflection, and obtainment of comfort and tranquility. As it certainly did for me.

From the trilithon, Thor’s Gate, to the Mannanan Stone, named for the Celtic god of the sea and king of the Otherworld, one of the things that struck me about the megaliths of Columcille is the uniqueness of each. Every boulder is different and special in its own way. All have various fascinating colors, shapes, textures, and markings. Although I cannot rightly claim that any of the stones talked to me, it was easy to feel each has an incredible, adventure-filled story to tell. If only I knew how to listen in their language.

There is something else about the megaliths of Columcille. It is something for which there are no wholly adequate words. The best way I know how to get even close to describing it is a quote from the children’s classic tale, The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery. In the book, the solitary airplane pilot who has crashed in the desert and is stranded there says “I was surprised by suddenly understanding that mysterious radiance of the sands.”

Which is what is instinctively recognizable about the standing stones of Columcille Megalith Park. They have a “mysterious radiance.”

It makes no real sense, but there it is. The megalithic rocks of Columcille have a “mysterious radiance.” Not exactly a light, but a light of sorts. A different kind of light that is both serene and benevolent.

Speaking of peace and goodwill, I am reminded of the ending I wrote last December in my musing, “Yes, Virginia.” It was “Peace on Earth. Goodwill to All.”

Neither has happened. Countless conflicts of all types yet rage across the globe. Still exceedingly rare is the person who, unlike me, ever extends kindness and generosity towards everyone. No exceptions.

I am not surprised. I knew when I wrote those words last year, my wish was a fanciful one and the ultimate example of hoping against hope. As it is every year. Year after year.

To keep it up with no happy fulfillment in sight is disheartening and heartbreaking.

Yet, Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All is possible. It can happen. Surely not for a long, long time. But it can happen.

So, what the heck. I will take my clue from some regular old traditions, little old mountains, and big old rocks.

Peace on Earth. Goodwill to All.

Thanksgiving for Hard Frosts, Honorable Hunters, and a Cat

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 15:28:36 GMT

A hard frost has finally visited the Alleghenies. I am smitten by the way it makes each fallen leaf, fading blade of grass, drooping fern, and other languishing ground covers common here in November stand out and look as special as they are. Endearing to me is how hard frost paradoxically softens outlines with a white, feathery frill and sprinkles interiors with ice crystals so dainty I imagine them as speckles of fairy dust.

I am thankful for the hard frost. I am thankful for the striking beauty it creates of the often overlooked failing lowly. Additionally, as a gardener, I am thankful for the downtime it bestows the plants and therefore me. As much as I enjoy my gardens, come autumn, I am more than ready for a break. I can hardly wait for a hard frost to kill off all the rampant burgeoning of flora both wild and cultivated, wanted and unwanted. Hence, in this month of thanksgiving, I give thanks for the hard frost that grants me a revitalizing breather.

November in the Alleghenies is further associated with another kind of killing. The regular firearms deer hunting season for white-tailed bucks and does traditionally begins shortly after Thanksgiving Day. (Regular firearms include rifles, handguns, and shotguns that meet certain requirements.)

I know there are plenty of people who are opposed to deer hunting, but I grew up with it, and so it could be I understand it better and can more readily perceive its good. My dad, uncle, and a number of our family friends were hunters, not only of deer, but of other Alleghenian wild game too. When I was a young girl living in my working-class parental home, I ate deer meat, or as they call it in fine restaurants, venison, on many occasions and relished every bite of the food the deer and my father or uncle had provided. In those days, I also ate rabbit, squirrel, wild turkey, and grouse.

Bears were rare in these parts then. If not for the Pennsylvania Game Commission closing the bear hunting season in 1970, 1977, and 1978, there probably would have been an extirpation (local extinction) of the black bears native to the Alleghenies, but the population recovered and has consistently grown since. I had my first (and last) helping of bear meat back in 2008 when a dirt-poor friend gave me some as a Christmas present. I did not care for the taste, but I was touched the way only a gift from someone who lives hand to mouth can touch me. Like the modest, handmade offerings of a child, such gifts are pure and most truly define what it is to be generous.

I have never hunted. In my pre-teen and early teenage years, I wanted to learn, but no matter how frequently I asked him to teach me, my father would not hear of it. “You’re not built for killing things.” That was the only explanation I ever got from him.

My father’s words could be interpreted as sexist, but I do not think them so. For one thing, it was always hugely apparent my father was proud of me, and the fact that his only daughter was a tomboy did not faze him in the least. For another, up until his death when I was in my fifties, my dad told me time and time again that I could “do anything.”

I do not think my father was being misogynistic. Rather, I think my father intuited something about me I did not yet know about myself. After all, that is one of the vital services parents perform for their young children. They know their offspring before the kids are fully equipped and freely willing to know themselves.

Now I have no interest in hunting. Adding to my apathy is somewhere along the line, for no reason I can point to, I became afraid of guns. Today, even seeing a gun makes me nauseous, and I break out in a cold sweat. The couple of times the adult me tried to shoot a gun, my hands shook so badly it was impossible to take aim. So, maybe my dad was on to something.

Yet, as much as I loathe guns, I am grateful for hunters. Well, okay, let me clarify that a bit. I am grateful for certain hunters. I am grateful for those who hunt with humility, respect, appreciation, gratitude, and awe for the natural world and all its inhabitants. Who see the animals they hunt as fellow members of Earth’s family and revere them as the sacred creatures they are.

Please spare me those hunters who hunt with a sense of entitlement. Who puff out their expensively camouflaged chests, strut, swagger, and wave their guns about like they are some brave and vanquishing hero. In my opinion, shooting at something that cannot shoot back does not a tough guy make. So, spare me those hunters who believe they are the masters of Mother Nature when anyone with even an iota of consciousness can see Mother Nature has no master. She can certainly be abused, gravely so, to the place where human and other life on Earth is no longer possible, but she cannot be conquered. The ultimate survivor, she is more powerful than all of us mere mortals put together.

Since ancient times across our globe, hunting has traditionally been considered a spiritual act. Common to numerous hunting cultures are rituals, ceremonies, prayers, and songs hunters offer to the animals they have killed. At the heart of all these various expressions is a paying of respect and a giving of thanks for animal sacrifice to human sustainability. Even more impressive, in some of these same cultures, it is considered sacrilege to take only the meat and not put to productive use every other part of the killed animal.

While I am pretty sure none of the above-mentioned acts of respect and gratitude are currently practiced in the Alleghenies, I do believe the honorable hunters here have a deep understanding and appreciation for the natural world and the interconnectedness of all life. I believe them to be intimately tied to the land. I believe strong moral principles and values guide them in their hunting.

I further believe these hunters serve an important role in maintaining an ecological balance. They keep wildlife populations in check. They are managers, protectors, and conservationists. We need them.

I know we need them because, living as I do deep in the woods, I have had the sad winter experience of seeing deer starve. I have also witnessed deer with chronic wasting disease (CWD), an always-fatal neurological illness. Both starvation and CWD are associated with deer overpopulation. Neither is a good way to go. The deer suffer.

I am thus grateful for ethical hunting and the spiritual transcendence it can award the hunter. As for the slain deer, at least they have had a free and natural life. How much better their lives then than the lives of a great many other animals whose meat ends up indifferently displayed in Styrofoam and plastic under the florescent and LED glare of a white-bread grocery store.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission has stated deer hunting is now in decline. Which agrees with my own observation. I wonder how worse it will get for the deer if this trend continues. As it probably will.

Deer overpopulation is also bad for humans. The more the deer population increases, the more deer-related car accidents happen. According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), deer kill an average of one hundred twenty people per year. Compared to one person a year for bears, alligators, and sharks. Hard to believe, but these statistics reveal deer as America’s deadliest animals. With the vast majority of deaths they cause due to unavoidable car accidents.

I know from three personal incidents that there is no way to dodge a deer when they suddenly appear out of nowhere and run directly in front of your moving vehicle. All three of my deer-related collisions were horrifying, particularly because each time the deer I hit was not killed instantly, but stumbled off to presumably die a slow, agonizing death.

But what can be done to solve this ever-increasing deer overpopulation problem? Although I do not have the expertise to know one way or another and count instead on the professionals at the Pennsylvania Game Commission, I wonder if the state should bring back the top two deer predators that were once prevalent in the Alleghenies. The gray wolves, along with the cougars Pennsylvanians customarily refer to as catamounts (cat of the mountain) lived here for hundreds, if not thousands of years until they were wiped out due to habitat destruction and overhunting. Not only did they keep the deer population under control, they also routinely killed sick animals, thereby keeping disease from spreading and herds healthy.

Even so, I can’t be too hard on those Pennsylvania hunters of centuries past who hunted wolves and catamounts into extirpation. Since a great deal of the overhunting was done by people hard up for money and in dire need of the bounty paid for killing the generally feared, hated, and maligned predators. Though not what I would call an admirable way to provide for one’s self and one’s family, I do acknowledge that pride, for any of us, is kissed goodbye when there are hungry mouths of beloveds to feed.

Obviously, reintroduction of gray wolves and catamounts could be dangerous for humans. Hardly any of Pennsylvania, including the Allegheny Mountains region, is the wilderness it once was when apex predators at the top of the food chain made it their home. Now there are people living practically everywhere throughout the Commonwealth. And then there is me and my fellow unarmed hikers and woods wanderers. What about us?

Although the number of attacks by wolves and cougars occurring in North America over the last one hundred or more years varies from data source to data source, all agree wolf and cougar attacks are exceedingly rare, and fatalities from those attacks are substantially rarer. They occur much less frequently than fatal snake bites, lightning strikes, bee stings, dog attacks, and deer-related car crashes.

Since I seem to be moving in the direction of advocating for wolves and catamounts here, in the interest of full disclosure, I will admit the nearest I have ever gotten to a wolf was on the other side of a tall fence at the Wolf Sanctuary of Pennsylvania in Lititz, PA. Although a visit to the wolf sanctuary is quite worthwhile, it hardly qualifies as a close encounter.

I did once have a close encounter with a cougar. It was not, however, a Pennsylvania catamount. This particular cougar was a Florida panther. Same species, different name. In fact, cougars hold the Guiness record for the animal with the highest number of names.

My face-to-face with a cougar happened in 2006 when I was hiking the Ocala National Forest in North Central Florida. It had been a long, full, sweaty, gorgeous day of wilderness wandering. The sun was beginning to set, and I was finishing my hike along a grass and scrub pine savannah, enroute to where my car was parked nearby, when a cougar appeared out of the thick woods bordering the savannah. It trotted towards me as I immediately and stupidly forgot everything my uncle and the greatest woodsman I have ever known taught me about what to do in such a situation.

My heart was pounding so hard I thought it was going to come out of my chest, and my breath was coming so fast, I felt dizzy. My violently shaking legs were of no help either in keeping me upright. It is incredible I did not collapse into an easily assailable heap.

But by some miracle, I stayed standing as the cougar came closer and closer. Then, when it got about thirty feet from me, it stopped, turned around, sat down on its haunches, lifted its head to the now sunset-colored sky, and, as long moment after long moment passed, remained unmoving in the same spot and pose.

I swear that cat was watching the sunset. And what a glorious sunset it was. The entire visible sky in front of both the cat and me was crimson and orange, and those vibrant colors lit up the sky for what seemed like forever. As if their brilliance was so strong, the dark could not take over the world.

Finally though, the sunset did end, and thanks to the now unenthralled cat, I thought maybe I was about to end too. But that is not what happened. What happened was the cat slowly turned its head over its shoulder and looked straight at me. It didn’t make a sound, but somehow I knew, although I don’t know how I knew, but somehow I knew that cat was telling me to be grateful for the sunset. It was telling me to be thankful for the world’s boundless wonders and the wonder of my life on which one day the sun will set. It was telling me to never miss any of it and to always give thanks for all of it.

And with that, the cat stood up and walked away. A short time later, it disappeared into the woods. Still shaky, but also awakened, I too went home.

So, it’s true. I have a thing for cougars and mountain lions, Florida panthers and Pennsylvania catamounts. Same as I do for hard frosts and honorable hunters, I have a thing for the world’s fourth largest cat. Well, at least I have a thing for one of them.

And that thing. It’s called thanksgiving.

Companions

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:06:40 GMT

It is November in the Alleghenies, and the leaves of the deciduous trees have mostly fallen. Having changed color yet again, now to a reddish-brown, they make the forest floor look like it is covered in rust. I wonder if the ground wishes for snow to soon come and give it a silvery polish.

Rust is associated with disuse and deterioration. While fallen leaves symbolize death. Yet, I cannot think of anything more utilized, growing, and teeming with life than rusty fallen leaves. Just as admirable, they’re fun.

As J.M. Barrie wrote and Arthur Rackham illustrated in the book, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens , “There is almost nothing that has such a keen sense of fun as a fallen leaf.” I think of that Barrie quote and Rackham’s accompanying image every time I walk through fallen autumn leaves, reveling in the happy sound of their swish, crackle, and crunch beneath my kicking feet. And who among us can see a freshly gathered, big pile of leaves and not feel the urge to jump in? For how exhilarating it is to land in the earthy embrace of those who have lived in the sky.

The proper term for fallen leaves lying on the ground is leaf litter. But how very different leaf litter is from the human litter that trashes the land. Unlike human litter, leaf litter is not destructive, but productive. Extremely productive.

A pile of fallen leaves provides a cozy home and nutritious food for a wide variety of numerous creeping, crawling creatures. These creepy crawlies range in size from those that are barely visible to the naked eye, like certain mites, to some that are several inches long, like various centipedes.

Most people are not terribly fond of creepy crawlies, and I confess I am one of those people. I find them gross, and they make me squeamish. However, they are a critical source of food for the birds of the Allegheny Mountains and surrounding regions, especially in winter when other food sources are scarce. Our birds would starve without creepy crawlies to feast upon, and I do not want to live in a place without birds. Even though I am a long-time fan of silence and solitude, my life would be insufferably bleak and lonely if there were no birds for me to hear and see.

Birdsong is my favorite way to wake up in the morning. Although it’s true there are some AMs when I wish the birds would begin their rousing concerts at a more civilized hour than dawn’s first blush. While in the gloaming, bird chants are my choice of choral evensong.

Not only at sunup and sundown, but during every time span in between, the chirps, whistles, trills, warbles, twitters, and caws of birds create of dead air a living thing, and I am energized. Then when night falls, the hoots and screeches of owls remind me that, even in the dark, life goes on, and I am calmed.

As to the wonders to be had by seeing birds, the first thing that comes to mind is something my father used to say. “There is nothing prettier than a cardinal in the snow or a woman in a red coat.” Which is why even now when there is snow, I am on the lookout for a cardinal. And a red coat will always be an essential clothing item in my winter wardrobe.

In spring and summer, I watch birds build their nests and raise their young with all the exuberance of those two seasons. If I am especially lucky, I also get to see the little feathered ones figure themselves out and fly straight away. At such magical moments, I swear I have further observed empty nester parents puffing out their chests, as though their avian hearts were bursting with pride.

In any season, whether it be the flitting and fluttering close to the ground of a sparrow or the soaring and gliding high in the sky of a hawk, a bird in flight is an amazing sight. “How do you do that?” is invariably my question. “I want to do that.” is repeatedly my plea.

In addition to their entertainment, companionship, and inspirational value, birds are imperative for human survival. A significant number of bird species are pollinators needed for plant reproduction. While many more spread seeds through their droppings, often to a new area some distance away from where they ate the seeds. Such seeds typically have a head start on germination because when the birds eat the seeds, they scratch the seed coats. Then too, the birds’ waste matter, or guano, in which the seeds are immersed, is an excellent fertilizer. For these reasons, birds are considered the world’s most reliable and successful dispersers of seeds for plants that provide us humans with food, medicine, and timber.

What’s more, birds pigging out on creepy crawlies in leaf litter, as well as on similar critters residing elsewhere, protects farm crops, garden plants, and every outdoor space there is from being overrun by a population grown out of control and harmful. And, by the way, this is an animal group that includes insects, like mosquitoes, that cause disease in humans and other animals.

We have a lot to thank the birds for, and it therefore follows we have a lot to thank creepy crawlies for too. Nor should we forget to thank the trees that produce the leaf litter, which is not only a habitat provider for creepy crawlies, but additionally a supplier of nesting material for birds. As for the trees, if I were them, I would be grateful for the creepy crawlies. Because a good many creepy crawlies eat the leaf litter, breaking the fallen leaves down to tiny pieces for fungi and bacteria to further decompose into the soil nutrients used as food by trees. And around and around it all goes, the spinning of an infinite, yet fragile web of interconnection and interdependence.

Walking through a forest’s leaf litter gives me an inner peace like none other. My soul is not even slightly disquieted by the fact that, during my woodland walks, I am probably crushing and killing at least a few creepy crawlies. This is because some of them are not only small, but slow-moving, making them vulnerable and their escape from my big old, tromping feet difficult.

My lack of remorse is understandable. After all, there is a gigantic abundance of creepy crawlies. On any given forest amble, the path I cut through the leaf litter is likely home to millions upon millions of creepy crawlies. The smattering I might kill will not be missed by the birds, and their decaying corpses will add to the health of the soil and thus the forest.

However, although I never feel even the teeniest shard of guilt for bumping off creepy crawlies, I am sometimes pained by the conundrum of why life is like this. Why all these perpetual predator-prey relationships? Why all these dominator-subordinate associations? Why all these never-ending competitions that pit us fellow earthly companions against one another? Why is so much of an individual’s life a struggle for survival that ultimately is at the expense of other living beings who are also just trying to survive? These miserable facts make no sense to me, and they go against every spiritual truth I hold dear.

Even the turkey vulture, a bird I have lauded because, until recently, I thought they only ate what is already dead. Which is why Cherokee Native Americans refer to them as Peace Eagles. Well, as it turns out, according to the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Association, an internationally recognized leader in global raptor conservation, although turkey vultures almost exclusively eat carrion, they do on rare occasions kill and eat sick, as well as young mammals and birds. The suffering sick dying an excruciating death I could make an exception for as mercy killings, but the young and even members of their own kind? It appears turkey vultures, however infrequently, are in between the same rock and hard place as the rest of us.

These inconsistencies between physical existence and spiritual being do disquiet my soul. Yet, I would rather deal with the pain that comes from pondering their dark mysteries than make myself carefree and numb. Blissful oblivion comes at too high a cost. Instead, I choose to keep my human ability to think about everything and to think for myself, to imagine and create beyond reality’s limits, to be fully conscious of the prevailing good in this world, to feel unwavering wonder for life’s countless miracles.

To keep me going on my chosen path when the going gets agonizing, how blessed I am that, along with the rest of humanity, I have been granted the always free and available companion of hope. I know chances are impossibly slim that I will ever come even close to solving the dark mysteries of this world. I will certainly die without possessing complete understanding and peace. But for as long as I continue to accept its open invitation, I have hope to be with me. Like the trees, the birds, and even the creepy crawlies, hope keeps me wonderful company.

Hope walks with me, holds my hand, and tells me the true story of the future. That there will come a new day. When exactly it will dawn is not known, but it will definitely be a very long time from now. I will not live to see it. But that does not matter. What matters is that there will come a new day when the world’s dark mysteries will be brought to light, and life itself will turn out for the best.

So, in this present, partly cruel world and brutal life, it is with hope as my constant companion I keep putting one foot in front of the other.

October Leaves With Halloween

Mon, 28 Oct 2024 15:05:58 GMT

It is October in Lightfall Hollow, and autumn is here in all its glory. Although, to be honest, many of the current leaves are not painted in the dazzling hues of their predecessors. Their reds, yellows, golds, and oranges are less pure, more muted, and they have ugly brown splotches.

Autumns in the Alleghenies have become increasingly warm. Warmer fall temperatures reduce the amount of leaf sugar available for the creation of the anthocyanin pigments responsible for red foliage. Warmer fall temperatures can also slow the breakdown of the green chlorophyll pigment that exposes the underlying leaf carotenoid pigments of yellow, gold, and orange.

In addition, summers have become not only warmer, but more humid, and more and more, summer’s humidity is lingering through the first weeks of autumn. Too much humidity causes leaves to drop off before the chlorophyll completely breaks down and they can develop their full fall colors. While the brown splotches are from a disease caused by fungal pathogens that thrive in moist environments. To make matters worse, extremes of heat, extended droughts, and inundating rainfalls stress the trees and make them more susceptible to such fungal infections.

Nonetheless, there is still plenty of glory in an Alleghenian autumn. There are still trees with October colors that seem to pulsate with ardent life, their leaves of flamboyant red, glowing yellow, burnished gold, and vibrant orange. One of my favorite ways to savor fall is to find such a tree, stand beneath it, and look up. It is like being inside a candle’s flame. Another is to climb up on a ridge and look out at mountains covered in fiery colors, the brilliantly gleaming treetops like the paint-coated brushes of some impassioned artist.

October is the eye-popping beauty of leaves departing in a blaze of glory. As I watch them drop, I can’t help but wonder if they are also dropping a hint that their way of leaving is a magnificent way to go.

How odd it seems, but perhaps it is not, that bright, vivid October culminates with Halloween, a holiday that celebrates the dark and unseeable. Could it be another hint? A suggestion that the unknown is not as dark and hidden as we make it out to be?

In any regard, October with its Halloween is a time for stories about extraordinary spirits. So here are two of mine. One is about a haunted house and happy. The other is about an unhaunted house and sad.

Some years ago, I asked my husband to build me a root cellar. Not that I needed a root cellar. Although we live deep in the woods, a grocery store abundantly stocked with root vegetables, as well as apples and other fruits suitable for root cellar storage is less than a half hour drive away. Not to mention, never has there been an occasion when we needed groceries but could not make it to the grocery store. Even after a heavy snow, our ever conscientious township invariably plows the hollow’s road within twenty-four hours of the first flake falling. We can always get out. Also not to mention, it is just my husband and me living here at Stone Harvest, and we certainly do not eat the massive quantity of vegetables, fruits, or even canned goods that would justify having a root cellar.

Despite all that, I wanted a root cellar. I thought it would be cool.

My husband complied. He dug out the side of the hill across from the cabin and built within that space a quaint little structure of stones from our creek, complete with a rustic wooden door that has antique iron hinges, bolt locks, and a circular door pull. To add to his whimsical artistry, my husband fashioned a little stone ledge alongside the root cellar’s door. He said it was a landing pad for fairies. As I had recently begun the mighty struggle of writing fantasy tales, folkloric stories that included fairies and what would ultimately become The Fairytales of Lightfall Hollow, I took it as a silly, but sweet gesture of encouragement, as well as an expression of my husband’s faith in me.

Once construction of the root cellar was complete, as a final touch, on its rounded rock roof, my husband scattered spores of moss. While on the surrounding ground, I planted English ivy. Both have done well. The roof now has a plush mantle of sunshiny green moss, and shadowy green ivy vigorously climbs the cellar’s stone walls.

Behind the root cellar and up the steep hillside the entire way to the hollow’s road, I planted the bare roots of a hundred halcyon hostas, along with a hundred half-grown lady ferns I transplanted from the woods. Once both hostas and ferns were fully grown, I had visions of them cascading down the hillside and around the root cellar, a tribute to one of my favorite places on Earth, the waterfalls trail at Pennsylvania’s Ricketts Glen State Park.

It kinda worked. Although not as dramatic or as reminiscent of a waterfall as I thought it would be, and this past summer the deer totally devoured the hostas, as well as trampled to dirt many of the ferns in their greedy process. Yet, it kinda worked, and the hostas and ferns will return next year, and this coming summer perhaps the deer will have better manners and be less self-serving. (Hope springs eternal.)

Whereas my intended waterfall of hostas and ferns is somewhat of a disappointment, I must say, the root cellar is even cooler than I had dreamed.

There is only one problem. It is way too cool. Meaning the root cellar’s interior does not stay warm enough during freezing weather to store any kind of food there without it becoming frozen.

To our credit and in the name of good spirits, my husband and I tried to adapt to this harsh reality. So, the root cellar became the cava cave.

Cava is the Spanish answer to French champagne. It is the favorite wine of my husband and me. So, we figured we would stock up on cava, and because the alcohol in the wine would prevent it from freezing, store it in the root cellar now cava cave and have a wonderful winter.

However, it turns out the temperature in the root cellar cava cave gets low enough for even wine to freeze. And, oh, explode too. Hmm.

Still, as much as my husband’s creation failed both as a root cellar and cava cave, it is a remarkably successful work of imagination. And while I do not believe fairies physically exist but are instead the personification of the abstract force I feel present in all of nature, it is hard for me not to believe some fairy, in one supernatural form or another, proved just that.

Because as I struggled to write fairytales, I got to a place in a certain story, “Glamour and the House of Gold” where I was trying to describe a fairy’s dream house, but my mind’s eye kept closing on me. That happens sometimes, and when it does, my usual attempt at a solution is to go outside and get some fresh air. Well, when I exited the cabin, I looked over at the root cellar cava cave, and there sitting upright on its fairy landing pad was a stone unmistakably in the conical shape of a simple hut. Where a door would be was an indentation, as if the hut had an open door.

As to how that stone in the shape of a hut got there, I do not know. There is no way it could have rolled down the hill behind the cave, over the mossy roof, and down the ivy-tangled stone wall to perfectly land on the little, narrow front ledge. Nor do I believe a stone could have jumped up and onto the ledge from the equally ivy-tangled ground in front of or alongside the cave. Nor had my husband and I had any guests that day or for several preceding days who might have placed it there as a practical joke. And, besides, no one, not even my husband knew what I was trying to write right then. But that is how the dream house of the fairy Gold in The Fairytales of Lightfall Hollow came to be a simple hut with an open door.

It is a house that has haunted me ever since. It is a happy haunting, and I feel blessed. But by exactly what, I do not know. It’s a mystery. As it should be.

The fairytale, “Glamour and the House of Gold,” is particularly important to me because it is the yarn dedicated to and inspired by my husband. It is based on a question he once asked that I found indicative of incredible insight. Which leads me to the sad story of the unhaunted house.

It began when my husband and I were visiting a famous house that was once a private residence but is now open to the public. There is no denying that the house is impressive, stupendously gorgeous, and an architectural wonder. Yet, as we were touring its rooms, I kept getting the feeling there was something missing, and its absence had deconstructed the house to be foundationally cold, sterile, gloomy, and inhospitable. Yet, I could not figure out what it was that was missing.

But then in a disenchanted voice, my husband asked the tour guide a question. “Have children ever played here?” That question hit me like a lightning bolt, and I knew what was missing. However, it was not flesh and blood children. Rather, what was lacking was even a wisp of a haunting by a childlike spirit. In other words, in that glamourous, perfect abode, there was no presence of the fun-loving, playful, even silly essence that makes a house comfy, charming, cheerful, and welcoming.

To obtain the blithe haunting that rules in a home sweet and lovely, a house needs less glamour and more simplicity. And imperfections are a must. Because perfection is lifeless and not for humans. Peculiarities make a house interesting. Wear and tear creates a home well lived in. While the ravages of time are the keepers of the precious memories of the home’s inhabitants.

There is nothing sadder than a house not haunted by a childlike spirit that, yes, messes things up, but also breathes life into a house and makes living in such a home wonderful.

Well, anyhow, those are my October leaves and Halloween stories. They may not be scary, but they are true. So there!

Boo!

The Trees and Me

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 21:46:12 GMT

I came across some amazing facts about honey the other day, and that made me think of Olga Olinda.

I have mentioned Ol-Ol before, but perhaps she bears repeating. She is the oak tree who stands on the side of the road close to the entrance of Lightfall Hollow. A battered, gnarled, and hollowed-out oldster, her gaping trunk and bony limbs arch backwards so drastically, she looks like she is in hysterics. Whether crying hysterically or laughing hysterically depends upon my mood. But one thing is ever certain and the same. Ol-Ol is my oak tree, and I love her.

When I was a girl, Ol-Ol’s hollow trunk was my sanctuary to curl up, observe Earth’s spinning with its skies of day and night, wonder, and dream. I must have dreamed ten thousand dreams while nestling inside Ol-Ol.

Afterwards, upon departing, I would press my face against Ol-Ol’s rough bark and give her a good-bye kiss. She always smelled of buckwheat honey.

So eventually I named her Olga Olinda. Olga is the Slavic form of the Norse name, Helga. It means “holy one.” Whereas Olinda in Latin means “fragrant one.” While in Spanish, Olinda means “protector.”

Olga Olinda suits her then. Because Ol-Ol has certainly been all three of those things for me.

Although these days no matter how hard I press my face up against her, Ol-Ol no longer smells of buckwheat honey. It makes me worry about her. It makes me worry about me even more. Have I really grown so far apart from the sensitive child who was wholly aware, perceptive, and had perfect rapport with the natural world?

It is a depressing question. Yet, I take heart from the fact that Ol-Ol is now home to honeybees. They have made their hive in the wood of her hollow. I like to think this means that Ol-Ol has fulfilled her destiny, and although it also means I can no longer curl up inside her, lest I interfere with honey production and get stung in the process, the thought of Ol-Ol completed cheers me.

There will never be another Ol-Ol. None can take her place. Nonetheless, there are other trees here at Stone Harvest and Lightfall Hollow whom I have personified, imagining them as though they have human qualities and are my friends.

There’s Mabel. I wrote about her previously too. She was the big, old maple tree outside my cabin’s front door who was downed in a windstorm. All that remains of her at present is a jagged piece of empty trunk, the shape of a heart embedded in the bark. Which is proof enough for me that the best part of Mabel is still here lending support.

I’ll be decorating Mabel for Halloween soon. Two life-size, ivory skeletons in brightly colored wigs posed to look like they are climbing out of Mabel’s dark void and having a rollicking good time doing so. The wigs and merry poses are because I do not do scary decorations. Halloween is the one holiday when a person gets the chance to make light of death, and I refuse to miss out on such a wonderful opportunity.

Wilton is another of my tree friends. He is a weeping willow. My mother and I planted Wilton when I was toddler. We did so by sticking two tiny sprigs my mother had cut from a friend’s city tree in the soggy ground at the far end of the pond.

The urban shoots took to country life with a passion, growing in wild abandon. Somewhere along the line, I named both as one. Together, they became solely Wilton.

I don’t know why I did that. They are obviously two individual trees. Perhaps my naming them as one reflects some inner longing for oneness. As well as an intuitive understanding that all things are essentially one.

In any case, Wilton grew to be a magnificent giant. He became my strong and handsome Heracles (aka Hercules). Like the hero of Greek and Roman mythology did for the Titan, Atlas, Wilton has carried, however briefly, the weight of my world upon his broad shoulders. True to both our natures, we have wept together, and our closeness has comforted me.

Wilton and I have had our happy times too. Years ago, I hung a hammock between his two trunks and thereafter spent many a fine hour swinging in time to the wind and the swaying of Wilton’s long, slender branchlets of silvery green leaves.

But no more. Today, Wilton is well past his prime. His appearance is no longer magnificent. Piece by piece, he is falling apart. The thick, sturdy limbs I hung my hammock from are gone. As are quite a few others. Once strapping Wilton is now scrawny. Once elegant Wilton is now a mess.

When one particularly massive hunk of Wilton fell, it was caught by a black walnut tree named Liam. The impact caused the ground covering the roots of Liam to push upwards and form a heap, like a burial mound. A grave reminder that time grows short.

Be that as it may, all is not lost. Growing near Wilton are three of his offspring. All are doing well. It is feasible that someday they will be as magnificent as Wilton. It is even more feasible that, as children are inclined to do, they will surpass him.

The three little Wiltons remind me of what I tell myself when I get frightened and despairing about present bad happenings and the evil they could bode for the future. That life, since life began, has always existed on the brink of chaos and extinction. Yet somehow life goes on.

A younger tree friend is Ruby. She is a red maple. Several decades ago, I brought her homes to the hollow as a sapling from a local nursery. I planted her on the bank of the pond, about one hundred feet from Wilton. She has done well there and is currently a full-grown, shapely beauty. Although her posture is not the best. Ever since I can remember, Ruby does not stand straight but leans forward in Wilton’s direction. Realistically, this is because she is trying to get as much sun as possible, but I like to pretend it is because she is keeping a concerned and protective eye on my beloved Wilton.

Closer to the cabin, standing in between the back deck and the pond, is a shagbark hickory named Hickman. He is a lovely tree, but at this time of year, I consider him way too close for comfort. Because in the fall, Hickman typically releases the hundreds of hickory nuts he has been producing since spring. The nuts, encased in a hard husk about the size of a golf ball, hit the deck with a loud thud. Many a knock on the head I have had thanks to Hickman’s indiscriminate liberations. Many a sleepless night I have had thanks to his rackety emancipations.

On the contrary, the squirrels love Hickman. Especially in autumn when they gorge themselves on the fruits of his labor. In fact, this fall hardly any intact hickory nuts bombed the deck. They were picked and eaten within Hickman’s branches before he could set them free.

To the unenlightened in the wicked ways of squirrels, this new development in Hickman’s story might be considered good news. It is not. Since, as I have sadly discovered, squirrels are sloppy chewers. As the careless rodents feasted for days on end this past month, torrential downpours of nut crumbs fell on my freshly power washed and weather protected deck. Countless of those nonchalantly spat morsels tightly lodged in between my deck’s wood boards where the only way I know to remove them is to dig them out with a steak knife. Which I have not yet done. But I guess I had better lest, come this winter, a scurry of hungry squirrels decides to dine on their fall leftovers and as hors d’oeuvre, munch upon my deck.

Moving past those ever-pesty squirrels to around the corner and outside my front porch, until a couple of years ago, standing shoulder to shoulder were two lanky spruce conifers, their branches gently touching, like they were giving each other affectionate pats. I named them Bruce and Spruce. They had been planted in the fifties by a member of my father and uncle’s hunting camp. Like Ol-Ol, Mabel, and Wilton, they were trees I grew up with and played beneath. When it was obvious their time had come, it was hard to let them go, but when they went, I took solace in that they went together, like the inseparable companions they were. We should all be so lucky.

Stone Harvest’s only conifer now is Sherwin. Sherwin is an eastern hemlock tree. He was a birthday gift from a dear friend ten years ago. My husband planted him in my secret garden, and except for voracious deer stripping him of his lowest branches one winter, he is flourishing mightily. He has grown tall enough that I can spot him from my cabin’s front windows, a particularly stirring sight during snowstorms when Sherwin bows like a gentleman, takes the snow in his branches, and dances through the storm. Again, we should all be so lucky.

Sherwin is also my trace of pristine Pennsylvania before lumber barons robbed the state of most of its hemlock and white pine forests. While now we are losing large numbers of hemlocks to the woolly adelgid, a non-native, invasive insect. What a horrible thing it will be if hemlocks become extinct in Pennsylvania where they have been the state tree since 1931.

As for the eastern white pines, they too are under attack. A weevil, along with several kinds of fungi are killing many. I wish I had a white pine at Stone Harvest to cherish and, like Sherwin, take me back in time. But I don’t. So I visit them at Pennsylvania’s state parks. Shawnee State Park has some that are surely as towering as the colossi of old, and Laurel Summit State Park has a forest with many small but growing white pines in its understory. Some of the taller hardwoods in that forest have been cut to allow sunlight to reach the white pines. This is because, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, white pines tolerate shade when they are seedlings. However, as they continue to grow, they will eventually die if not “released to the light.”

I found this fact about white pines fascinating, and I can relate. In my mind, it is analogous to raising children. Good parents shelter their young children in a protective shade. But great parents ultimately release their kids to stand in the light and grow to their full potential.

Although I have not come even close to naming every Stone Harvest and Lightfall Hollow tree, they all mean something personal to me. I think of them together as my guardian angels. Like all guardian angels, at least to my way of thinking, they do not protect the part of me that is physical. Rather, they protect my spirit. They breathe new life into me, and they keep hope alive. Not because I am special. But because I am human.

I believe what I recently read on a StoryWalk put on by the Bedford County Library in Shawnee State Park. (StoryWalk is a program that displays book pages along outdoor walking trails.) The quote comes from the first line of a children’s book, Outside , by Deborah Underwood. “Once we were part of outside and outside was part of us. There was nothing between us.”

Trees are a big part of my outside. And my inside too. That’s what my naming, personifying, pretending, wild imagining, and making up tall tales regarding trees is honestly all about. I’m trying to get back to the soul of a child.

Why? I’m not sure. Could be I just want another whiff of buckwheat honey.

Grandmas and Godmothers

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 16:46:32 GMT

Everything in the natural world has something to teach. Take, for example, the Allegheny Mountains that surround Lightfall Hollow.

The Alleghenies are part of the Appalachian Mountain Range that spans the eastern United States and Canada. Geological determinations as to their exact age vary, but all agree they were formed hundreds of millions of years ago. Although certainly old – well, at least by human standards – they are not even close to being the oldest mountains on Earth. That distinction goes to the Barberton Mountains of South Africa. Also known as the Makhonjwa Mountains, they are truly ancient at 3.5 billion years, formed just one billion years after our solar system began and in conjunction with life first arising on Earth in the single-celled microorganisms that are the building blocks of all living beings.

In addition to the Makhonjwa Mountains, there are numerous other mountains around the world that are at least one billion or more years old. While some of the youngest mountains are still growing. In the United States, these include the Sierra Nevada, Adirondack, and Rocky Mountains. Elsewhere on the planet, mountains still growing include the Alps, Andes, and Himalayas.

As for the Alleghenies, they quit growing quite some time ago. At their peak, they were as tall, steep, and savage as today’s Himalayas. But once the mountains stopped growing, the forces of erosion took control. For eons, ice, water, and wind have worn down the Alleghenies until what now remains are short, rounded, and gentle elevations that some see as no more than uninspiring hills.

I would beg to differ. Because I find the Alleghenies fascinating. With their current images like squat, stoop-shouldered, wrinkled old grandmas and their dense forests veiled in shadows, there is something mystical about the Allegheny Mountains. As if they are the all-knowing keepers of ancestral wisdom. Within the dark shelter of their woods, hiding secrets we humans are not yet ready to learn.

The Alleghenies are also friendly mountains. Mellowed with age and placid, their rolling highlands are open and accessible. Not only to a rich abundance of diverse flora and fauna, but to people too. Here in the Alleghenies, we don’t just live around our mountains on the flat ground at their base, we live in and on our mountains. Here, we get to know our mountains up close and personal. They become a part of us, and we become a part of them. Each essential for the completeness of the whole.

Though I admit the Alleghenies are not the most breath-taking mountains in the world, I see them as enchanting givers of breath. They somehow magically comfort, heal, nurture, and inspirit. Fairy godmothers incognito.

It is because of the Allegheny Mountains that I believe there is something to be said for being vulnerable and at the mercy of erosion. That there is goodness, beauty, and authenticity in becoming humbled, timeworn, and old. Such are the lessons my Alleghenian grandmas and godmothers have taught me.

Ember Walks With a Broken Ankle

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 13:08:51 GMT

I broke my ankle this past March. It was night, sleeting, and I was walking on the dirt and gravel road that runs through Lightfall Hollow. My little dog, Ember, was my only companion.

I have no memory of the fall. My best guess is that I slipped on the sleet’s ice pellets. Nor do I have a memory of tumbling past the road’s shoulder and down the hillside. All I remember is one second I was walking on the road, and in what seemed like the next second, I was lying on the ground twenty-five feet down a hillside. I know it was twenty-five feet because Ember was on a twenty-five-foot leash, and when I became aware I had fallen, she was still on the road, while the leash between us was stretched to its full length.

When I discovered I could not walk, I dragged myself up to the road by pulling on the underbrush growing on the hillside. Once I got to the road and realized I still could not walk, I scooted on my bottom the half-mile home with Ember by my side, nuzzling me on. When I finally made it to my cabin’s driveway, I was soaked to the bone from both sleet and sweat. My cat, Pia, must have noticed my discomfort because she came and sat in my freezing, perspired, totally sodden lap. Perhaps she is not entirely the pain I call her.

Eventually, my husband joined in on the family rescue and helped me crawl into the cabin and bed.

I often walk after dark without human company or even a cell phone. No matter what the weather, I am drawn to the night, and I prefer to experience its mystery in uninterrupted contemplation. I am drawn to the night because, as Louis Armstrong sang in “What a Wonderful World,” the night is sacred.

What is sacred inspires awe – wonder on a higher spiritual level – and the complex emotion of awe contains an element of fear. So, naturally, I am always at least a bit uneasy when I walk at night. But the awe that integrates my severed, small self into the ineffable whole makes my jitters worth it.

I remember the first night I was afraid while walking in the dark. I was fifteen. I was on the hollow’s road that time too, but I was not without human company. I was with my boyfriend. We were holding hands. I was hoping for a kiss. It would not have been my first kiss, but it would have been my first kiss where I did the Hollywood style “foot pop” I had been practicing all week.

A foot pop is when a kisser, traditionally a female, lifts and holds backwards with a bent knee the foot and calf of one leg during a kiss. At fifteen, the foot pop was my idea of the ultimate in sophisticated passion. Now, however, it mostly reminds me of the only way you can stand, generally with the help of crutches or a walker, when you have a broken ankle.

Anyhow, the evening I was all set to do my very first movie star foot pop was a beautiful, crisp, moonlit autumn night. The moon cast shadows on the road, its shoulders, and in the woods on either side. The shadows were in curious shapes, and the wind made them shudder. Despite the romance of the moment, I was on edge.

Then I became truly frightened. Because one of those shadows leapt up from the ground and lunged at me, screaming like an angry, malevolent ghost that had broken out of its interment, still shrouded in the deep dark of the grave.

Well, as it turned out, it was only a man, a guest staying overnight at my family’s cabin. He had decided it would be fun to try to scare my boyfriend and me.

I never looked at my boyfriend during the prank, and we never discussed it afterward, so I have no idea if he was frightened or not. I know he did not break into tears and shake like a leaf the way I did. It is possible fear froze him. It is also possible he was not at all afraid and did not so much as flinch. I just don’t know.

All I know for sure is that I sobbed and shook like a leaf, even after we returned to the cabin and its light.

If the man who was the cause of my fear was embarrassed or sorry, he never said so. Instead, his words of what he perhaps thought qualified as assurance were that I had nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed about, that my fear proved me “feminine,” and that it was “attractive.”

Uh huh.

Even to the unworldly teenager I was back then, his words struck me as untrue. Not to mention bizarre.

Sometimes I wonder if those erroneous, weird words is what got me walking at night. If so, I suppose I should be grateful to the mere man who got me started on the road to divine awe.

In any case, I have made it my practice to walk at night ever since. Despite not being brave. Bravery is not mine because bravery belongs to those who endure uncurable pain. It belongs to people who struggle to escape intolerable conditions. It is the possession of those who fight oppression.

Bravery is not mine because I am one of the lucky ones who has never had to make the choice to be brave. I do not know if I have what it takes to make that choice. I do know I would be very afraid. Especially since something as minor as a broken ankle has frightened me. During these months of recovery, I have feared my broken ankle might keep me from being the same old me. And, wow, was I ever right! Thank heavens.

Because, once again, fear has led me to wonder. Well, fear and a little dog named Ember.

Ember is a Shiba Inu. According to a 2012 study by National Geographic, the Shiba Inu is the breed of dog genetically most closely related to the Asian Gray Wolf. I believe it, and although Em is a relatively small dog and an altogether sweetie pie, I sometimes think of her as my dire wolf.

Now extinct, dire wolves were exceptionally large canines that lived 125,000 – 9,500 years ago as one of Earth’s top predators at that time. Which is really saying something since the last millenniums of the Pleistocene Epoch (aka Great Ice Age) were also the years of saber-tooth tigers and when other hyper predators, like bears, lions, and hyenas, were one-third to twice the size of their modern-day relatives.

So it is no wonder Em is a superior hunter. Although her prey is primarily mice and moles.

She is also the only dog I have ever had that cannot be trusted off the leash. Apparently, Em, who is a chubby, spoiled, helpless big baby, still hears the call of the wild and will run to answer it if not leashed.

It irritates me that I must keep Ember on a leash for every single one of our walks. Even when we are deep in the woods, and the leash is getting tangled in briars, wrapped around trees, and caught up on roots, rocks, and fallen branches, I dare not unclip it.

Even more annoying is how slow our walks are. This is because Ember consistently stops and gives much of what I would heedlessly walk quickly past her closest, unhurried attention. Something I have found quite aggravating.

But not so much so since I broke my ankle. Having to take more time for a walk has given me the opportunity to wander and wonder more like Em. It amazes me how much I have been missing. Even the hollow’s road, which I have frequently walked for close to seventy years and have long figured held no further surprises, is now an uncharted territory of countless new wonders.

Of course, I worry about getting physically out of shape as I walk my new walk, and I do have to work on meeting that challenge, but I would bet my life that taking every opportunity to exercise the soul is even more crucial for good health. At least that is what a broken ankle and a little dog named Ember have led me to believe.

So when people ask me these days how my ankle is doing, I always give the same correct answer. “Wonderfully,” I say, “Wonderfully.”

And now I am going to take a slow walk in sublime dark on an old road ever anew with wonder and maybe even go so far as to get awed.

Essence of Daylily

Sat, 20 Jul 2024 19:57:03 GMT

Here at Stone Harvest, hundreds of daylilies are blooming like there’s no tomorrow. Their impulse is correct. A daylily flower lives for only one day. When night falls on that day, its petals contract and tightly close around its fertile center, ending any chance for further creation. By the next morning, all that is left of what the day before was a glorious, prospering, living being is a wilted, mushy corpse.

I always feel a little sad when I pinch off the dead daylilies and drop them in the dirt. Their existence was no more than a fleeting beauty. But that’s life.

I also feel grateful. I feel grateful because the fleeting beauty of daylilies makes the world more enduringly beautiful, and I am convinced humanity needs nature’s beauty to survive.

I likewise appreciate the daylilies’ quality over quantity lesson. One that comes with a warning that tomorrow is not a sure thing.

It is ever amazing to me how much plants have to teach. I guess that is why I can never seem to let go of the kooky notion that the flora among us are intelligent, conscious beings.

Whether smart and aware or not, daylilies grow like crazy for me.

Currently, I have daylilies blooming in colors of buttery yellow, creamy white, delicate pink, deep rose, soft peach, radiant coral, intense apricot, eye-popping scarlet, a purple so rich it is almost black, a velvety maroon, and a classy mauve splashed with violet.

In addition, there are daylilies with petals of fiery orange striped with a burnt orange. Others have petals that begin as bright yellow, move on to royal purple and end as dirt brown. That doesn’t sound beautiful, but it is beautiful and somehow a bit human as well. Yet, the daylilies I most wish to emulate are the ones with sanguine petals and centers of gold.

Much as I would prefer the word heart, according to the American Daylily Society, the center of a daylily flower is called a throat. While daylily throats do come in other colors, most of mine have throats in shades of gold, yellow, or chartreuse. All have fuzzy-tipped stamens, anthers coated with pollen, that extend from their centers to almost beyond the end of their petals. They make the daylilies look like they are sticking out their tongues.

So, when the daylilies and I get together, I stick out my tongue too. Silly, I know. But it is how I relate to the daylilies. It is how I imagine together we mock the painful brevity of our lives. And I must say, my childish sauciness makes me laugh, and I am happy!

Of the many daylilies that flourish in my gardens on the slope of the pond and alongside the creek, the one that is my favorite is not a cultivar like the others. It is a wildflower. It is often called a tiger daylily.

Which is not to be confused with a tiger lily. Since a tiger lily, according to botanists, is a “true” lily. Like all true lilies, it sprouts from a bulb. From its throat through the tips of its petals, the tiger lily is a vibrant orange speckled with dark spots. Its petals curve backward to such an extent the whole blossom droops downward. Blooms last for a week or more, making the tiger lily an excellent cut flower.

(Apparently, at some point, someone decided the orange true lily with dark spots resembles a tiger’s fur, and that’s how it got its name. Be that as it may, every tiger I’ve ever seen had no spots. They had stripes. Go figure.)

As for the tiger daylily, like all daylilies, it grows from tuberous roots. Its petals too are a vibrant orange color, streaked and highlighted with an even more striking red-orange and coming together in a center of autumn gold, usually streaked with a bit of spring green. Its petals curve only slightly backwards. The blossom is upward facing. For the reason I hope I have by now made clear, the tiger daylily, while as beautiful as the tiger lily, makes a disappointing cut flower. Howbeit, on the upside, though a tiger daylily’s life is short, it typically lives safe and sound in its own home.

The tiger daylily is also referred to as a ditch lily or outhouse lily. Names that appear to lack dignity. However, ditch lily comes from the fact that the plant is so robust, it will thrive almost anywhere, even in otherwise barren roadside ditches.

As to the other, even less distinguished moniker, in the past, outhouse lilies were planted around privies so that visiting ladies could easily find a toilet without the embarrassment of having to ask. How both amusing and sad it is to think of women being ashamed of what is natural, healthy, and normal for every member of humankind. I cannot help but wonder if the strong, bold example provided by the outhouse lilies growing around those privies subliminally pushed us ladies to toughen up and get a tighter grip on our bodies.

Whether outhouse lilies playing a role in women’s progression is an actuality or a product of my imagination, I have no way of really knowing. I will additionally admit that if there is one thing I know about imagination, it is that it is always reaching for something to connect with and build upon. Because, of course, not even the most powerful imagination can create from nothing. Consequently, in its exuberance, it often overreaches. Nonetheless, I like how imagination stretches the mind, loosening it up and leaving it more flexible. Comparable to a yoga session that afterwards makes the body feel, as a friend of mine describes it, deboned.

Not just tiger daylilies, but all daylilies are exceptionally drought tolerant, and for this, I am also grateful. Even now, as Lightfall Hollow is experiencing unrelenting heat and drought so horrendous large numbers of my summer flowers, other plants, and even some of the trees are bending to the weather’s will and fading fast, the daylilies continue to stand hale, hardy, and blooming like crazy. As I witness every day of this accursed weather, they are an oasis for the nectar-thirsty and pollen-hungry pollinators that make human, as well as all other terrestrial life on Earth possible.

Thus, in more than one way, daylilies are doing their part to help us and our planet. Even if it’s only for a day. But what a difference that day makes. Surely then, it is not an overreach to imagine that if another type of living being is given a more generous helping of time, the positive differences they can make are as many or more than all the days of their life.

Chase Devil

Thu, 27 Jun 2024 13:10:50 GMT

Like everywhere else in the Northern Hemisphere, late June in Lightfall Hollow is marked by the summer solstice and the longest day of the year. Shortly thereafter, the ancient holiday of Midsummer arrives. During both occurrences, it is alleged magic is at its peak.

I couldn’t agree more. There is nothing more bewitching than a night illuminated by the mating ritual of fireflies. Nor is there anything more enchanting than a dark forest brightened by the ethereal blooms of mountain laurel. And there is not another thing in this world that has more power to charm than a dappled fawn.

The word “solstice” is based on an erroneous assumption made in the Roman Republic during the first century B.C.E. It comes from the Latin “solstitium,” meaning “sun standing still” and is the consequence of the sun’s noontime position changing so little for a few days before and after the solstice that, when viewed with the naked eye, it appears to be the same.

The word “midsummer” comes from several European words for the middle of summer. Although late June may not seem like the middle of summer to us, apparently the old Anglo- Saxon calendar only had two seasons, summer and winter. The name midsummer then makes sense, the last third of June falling midpoint between the vernal equinox of March and the autumnal equinox of September.

Similarly, according to the old Celtic calendar, summer begins on May 1. Therefore, midsummer falling in the last third of June would again be correct.

The holiday of Midsummer began as a pagan agrarian festival that in many countries featured bonfires. After the summer solstice, people noticed days get shorter. The bonfires of Midsummer were intended to help the sun, to augment its strength so it could do its work for the remainder of the crop season, a bountiful harvest the happy result.

Since the days getting shorter does not equate to the weather getting colder, it would have seemed to our forebearers that their bonfires worked. Which, like the notion the sun stands still around a solstice, probably encouraged the many more magic-related traditions that have become associated with the summer solstice and Midsummer.

Included in these traditions is the belief that on Midsummer Eve, spirits can easily cross over from their otherworld to our human world and that many take the opportunity to do so. Some of these spirits are evil fiends. While others, like the fairy, Puck, in William Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, are only mischievous rascals.

Consequently, people began jumping over their bonfires. This perilous custom arose from the belief that jumping over a bonfire – the higher the better and best of all if done multiple times both forwards and backwards – keeps away vexing spirits and brings good luck. For the life of me, I cannot fathom why anyone would think such an absurd thing. I can only theorize that perhaps Fairy Puck is the one who got it right. “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Another age-old, midsummer tradition to keep away troublesome supernatural spirits is to gather certain herbs and flowers. Among these, chase devil has long been regarded as exceptionally powerful.

The plant is a sun-loving herb. It is found in temperate areas across the globe, including all of Pennsylvania’s counties and much more of the U.S. It typically grows one to three feet tall and is in full bloom at the summer solstice and Midsummer. Bright yellow, five-petaled flowers flourish in clusters at the top of branched, leafy stems. The blossoms have numerous long, golden stamens that shoot out from their centers like rays of the sun.

Perhaps this is why the ancient Celts believed chase devil contains the energy of the sun at its strongest on the summer solstice. It therefore gives ample protection to those who gather it and either wear it or place it in their homes. While at the same time, chase devil cultivates courage and makes possible the inner peace obtained by a brave heart. In short, chase devil shoos away demons both external and internal.

These days, chase devil is more commonly known as St. John’s wort. Because of its active ingredient, hypericin, it is mostly used in folk medicine by herbalists to treat mild depression and anxiety. Thus, even now, the herb is kept busy defeating demons.

As for the name change, it happened when Christianity arrived in Europe, and its followers converted Midsummer to St. John’s Day to commemorate the birth of John the Baptist, who is said to have been born six months before Jesus. Since chase devil was so closely linked to Midsummer, it got swept up in the religious metamorphosis and became St. John’s wort. (Wort is an old word for plant.)

Adding to the herb’s newer religious association is the red stain that issues forth from the hypericin when the leaves and flowers of the plant are crushed or immersed in alcohol or oil. Although Christianity does not regard the phenomenon as magical, it is acknowledged as a symbol of the blood of St. John when he was martyred.

Yet, evidently even for some Christians, a bit of chase devil’s old magic remains. One example among others is the notion that if you put a bloom of St. John’s wort under your pillow on St. John’s Eve, that night St. John will appear in your dreams with a blessing that will prevent your death in the coming year.

For many years now, I have made it my practice in late June to harvest St. John’s wort and bring it into my home, placing sprigs of the herb above my door and window frames. There they remain until the next midsummer when I pick from a new crop. Not because I expect the little, lowly verdure to keep pandemonium and death at bay. Although I sure wish it were that easy. But rather I guess for the same reason I plant flowers on my parents and other family members’ graves, as well as keep trying to grow my mother zinnias as I related in “Garden.” It’s an act of love, respect, and appreciation for those who have laid my foundation and a continuing connection to them and life as a whole.

There is another comfort in it as well. When people befuddle, disappoint, and anger me, and I find myself agreeing more and more with Puck’s analysis of us, my chase devil reminds me that it is human nature to reach for the fantastic. We have powerful, wonderful imaginations, and they make possible great creations. However, they can also produce beliefs that are naïve, unfounded, irrational, fear-filled, and even dangerous. False fabrications of which I too am guilty. Me being only human and all.

Regarding the answer to such a challenging paradox. I don’t know. It’s a mystery. So, I guess I should just take the bad with the good and hope for myself and all others as well a generous reap of chase devil .

Garden

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 14:02:39 GMT

A friend once advised me that a garden is a work of art that is never truly finished, and she was right. I began work on Stone Harvest’s current flower gardens thirty-eight years ago, shortly after I purchased from my father, two uncles, and four other gentlemen the land in Lightfall Hollow they had jointly owned as their hunting ground and family retreat since I was a toddler.

It is astonishing to look back now and realize those seven men were then about the same age I am today. At the time, I thought they were old, and that was sad. But now, as I hurtle toward seventy, I see advanced age as when the pieces of the puzzle that is any person’s life begin to come together. The last season of earthly existence a golden opportunity to achieve great insight, spiritual depth, and, if one is both extraordinarily lucky and hardworking, maybe even wisdom. Provided basic human needs are met, and there is love, beauty, and living in relative peace, comfort, and dignity, the autumn is a wonderful time to be alive.

Anyhow, thirty-eight years ago, the seven gentlemen were ready to let go of Lightfall Hollow, and I was given the privilege to have more wholly in my life the mountain woodland hollow I had fallen in love with from atop my father’s shoulders. I put it that way because I know I do not truly own this land. Whatever is the power that originally created and subsequently creates anew this piece of heaven every moment of every day and night is the rightful owner. I am simply the caretaker.

I take my job very seriously. Although sometimes I wonder what, not only the seven, now deceased members of the hollow’s original hunting camp, but also the indigenous people who hunted here for centuries prior would think of all my flower gardens invading their wilderness. But I have received no hauntings from angry ghosts, so I assume everyone is okay with my makeovers.

When I began my floral transformation thirty-eight years ago, the only humanly planted flowers here were the daffodils that still bloom each spring on the steep hillside between the hollow’s road and the pond my dad and uncle built. It was just those cheerful, yellow daffys and, oh, yeah, those wretched multiflora rose bushes. Their dense, impenetrable thickets were everywhere. They smothered the woods and made the banks of the pond I swam in as a little girl impossible to walk.

Those horrible excuses for flowers were intentionally planted by my dad and uncle back around 1960 or so because the state of Pennsylvania was handing them out for free, and the two unwitting men thought the plants, them being roses and all, would make a lovely surprise for their wives. I can still hear my father’s voice, “Your mother will be so pleased.”

Well, maybe she was. However, what a mistake those multiflora roses turned out to be. Pennsylvania had not done its homework. The plant the commonwealth thought would provide erosion control, restore wildlife habitats, and make living fences for livestock turned out to be an exceedingly invasive, noxious weed that has ever since ravaged countless acres of idyllic countryside.

For years, I spent long days hacking away at those rosebushes from hell. By evening, I would be covered in bloody stab wounds. Eventually, I got the nasty devils somewhat under control, but not eliminated. Every winter, I still go on a search and destroy mission, cutting down and ripping out those godawful multiflora roses.

On the upside, when my dad and uncle were still living, their rosy blunder gave me an excuse to lovingly kid and trade friendly barbs with two men I adored. Even now, when I hack away at the multiflora roses that still rear their wicked heads upon this divine piece of Earth I am honored to call home, I cannot help but remember my dad and my uncle, and despite the pain of

wounds and loss, I smile a fond smile.

Many of the other flowers here in Lightfall Hollow, both those that are wild and those that I cultivate, are also bearers of warm memories. Lilacs and violets evoke recollections of my mother. It was always a toss-up which one of the two was her favorite. While the only flowers I remember her growing were a Peace Rose, a pussy willow, and a small plot of zinnias. I suppose that was because our family home, a nondescript suburban duplex, had as its only green space a tiny backyard. Sandwiched in between the characterless house and the dilapidated garage, it was a meager, blah patch of hard, bare dirt.

Yet, my mother turned a good half of that lifeless, little backyard into a vibrant garden of Peace Roses, pussy willows, and zinnias. It bothers and disappoints me to no end that I have never had much luck with either tea roses, pussy willows, or zinnias.

Tea roses, I can understand. They can be greedy spoiled brats. On the contrary, pussy willows and zinnia should be child’s play to grow.

Except I learned a long time ago that I do not get to choose the flowers that will grow in my gardens. Rather, the flowers that will grow in my gardens choose me. Apparently, tea roses, pussy willows, and zinnias are not all that crazy about me. I don’t know why, and when I ask them, they remain silent.

Luckily, fairy roses, Robin Hood roses, and even a climbing Queen Elizabeth do seem to like me. Then there are the slippery willow shrubs my husband and I planted along our creek as a restoration measure. Their catkins may not be as big and fluffy as the fur-like buds on my mother’s pussy willows, but they are still sweet and kitteny. As for the zinnias, this year I am giving them one last try. Although I say that one last try thing about me and the zinnias every year.

Despite multiple failures, I keep trying to grow those many-petaled, vividly colored, spicy fragranced, statuesque flowers because they remind me so much of my mother. Zinnias are strong, resilient, tough. They persevere under even the harshest of conditions. My mother was like that too.

She was also the most difficult person I have ever known.

Yet, the thing is, I also learned a long time ago that a difficult personality is one of the ways an indomitable spirit manifests itself. And my mother was an indomitable spirit. Truly brave. She never gave up. I am so lucky she was and will always be my mother.

So, of course, I keep trying to grow zinnias. It’s a matter of praise. A grateful homage to a beloved.

Which is a fair piece of what the flowers in my gardens are. They’re living commemorations. They bring back memories and celebrate people who helped and will always help me know life as the wonder it is.

Included among these flowers are the ones gifted me by fellow gardeners. I have many, and they are particularly special to me. Which brings up another memory.

When I was living outside of Washington, D.C., at the intersection of two busy streets in Annandale, Virginia, I gardened there as well. One autumn day, as I was tending my garden, an older gentlemen appeared at my side. He didn’t say much. As abruptly as possible, he told me his wife had died of cancer the year before, and now he too was dying of the disease. Then he shoved a dirty paper bag in my hand and said, “Here. These were my wife’s She loved them. Now, I want you to have them. I figure you’ll know what to do with them.” Then he turned and walked away.

The bag contained tulip bulbs. He had not stored them properly, and they were rotted. I planted them anyway.

The next spring, a single red tulip bloomed.

When I left Annandale, Virginia, I did not take that one live bulb with me. And here at Stone Harvest, I don’t even try with tulips because the wildlife eat them as fast as I can plant them. Nonetheless, each spring, when I am down on my knees, digging in the dirt, luxuriating in the good earth’s rich, warm smell and feeling its vitality cleansing my gloveless hands, I recall that sole red tulip. And I remember too the brusque gentleman of few words and his wife whom I never even met in person, and I feel like they are with me, and we know each other well.

Another example of how people, as it is with my mother, are like gardens. Works of art that are never truly finished.

Lion's Tooth

Thu, 02 May 2024 15:31:00 GMT

My hands are stained with dirty gold. Which is how I know spring is in full bloom. Because when my hands are stained with dirty gold, the dandelions are in full bloom, and when the dandelions are in full bloom, so is spring.

My hands are stained with dirty gold because, every day for these past two weeks, I have been picking dandelion flowers with a vengeance. I pick them, and then I trash them. Because they are out of control, aggressively spreading over the earthen canvas that the demure blooms of violets, spring beauties, and Quaker ladies are exquisitely embroidering in purple, pink, and blue.

Dandelion plants are merciless invaders. I know picking their flowers does not kill them. I also know I may be making their roots and leaves stronger by redirecting their energy. Nonetheless, eradicating dandelion flowers does keep the plants from propagating, and the last thing I want is more dandelion attacks on innocents.

In medieval France, the dandelion was called dent-de-lioun, which translates into English as “lion’s tooth.” The plant was supposedly so named because its serrated leaves resemble the jaws and teeth of a lion. However, I cannot help but wonder if the moniker has roots that go back another two thousand years to one of Aesop’s fables, “The Lion’s Share,” where a lion does not share with his fellows, but helps his imperious self to all of what should have been equitably apportioned. Because that is what dandelions do. Even today, long after dent-de-lioun was colloquized to the more innocuous sounding dandelion, rather than share, dandelions devour.

Dandelions evolved thirty million years ago in Eurasia. Folklore has it they finally madeit to what is currently the United States in 1620 when immigrants aboard the Mayflower transported them from their native England. Whether or not that is true, it is a well substantiated fact that dandelions were cultivated for both food and medicine in American colonies of the 17 th century. As they were throughout Europe and Asia for most of recorded history.

Even now, dandelion roots, leaves, buds, and flowers are used by cooks as highly nutritional ingredients in a wide variety of foods and beverages, as well as by herbalists for many therapeutic purposes. To say nothing of the blossoms used by vintners to make the much celebrated and one-of-a-kind dandelion wine.

Then too, honeybees and other insect pollinators apparently have a potent thirst for dandelions. When I do my plucking, there are always insect pollinators there with me, getting a buzz guzzling dandelion nectar. Even though I realize pollinators are necessary for human survival, with over 35% of our world’s food crops requiring pollination by animals, I don’t feel guilty cutting them off. Lightfall Hollow, including the yards and gardens of my Stone Harvest home, are full of spring ephemerals.

Spring ephemerals are so called because they are the first wildflowers to bloom, like the violets, spring beauties, and Quaker ladies embroidering my lawn, and it is their nectar that is best for pollinators. So, when I remove dandelion seducers, I am actually benefiting pollinators by promoting a healthier diet.

Yet, I will admit, with their stunning gold color and lavish raylike petals, dandelion flowers are beautiful. And there is no question beauty has tremendous value. Beauty is essential. Without beauty, hope and humanity are lost.

Furthermore, at the risk of irking those more scientifically minded, I can’t help but wonder if dandelions are intelligent beings. When they bloom, their stems throw the flowers high in a blatant attempt to tempt weak-willed pollinators. But when flowering is finished and their bracts close up to shelter developing baby seeds, dandelion stems go limp and fall. Which keeps the vulnerable seeds safely out of sight. Once the seeds mature, the bract folds back, and up go the stems again to catch the wind and get those seeds dispersed. Seems pretty smart.

Even if dandelions are devoid of any intellectual capabilities, they have certainly captured a lot of hearts. For many, they are symbols of endurance and resilience, representing persistence, stamina, and the innate power to overcome hardship to triumphantly stand. In addition, they are the subject of many fine poems, lovely children’s books, great literary references, and treasured folklore.

Dandelions are said to grant wishes, carry thoughts and dreams to loved ones, as well as indicate whether two people share a romantic attraction. My favorite piece of dandelion lore proclaims their three life stages of golden flower, silvery sphere, and aeronautical seeds mirror the sun, moon, and stars. Heaven brought down to Earth.

Like many people, I have a sweet memory of being a child blowing on dandelion puffballs and seeing the feathery pappus parachutes floating through the air, an individual seed hanging on for dear life to each one. How enchanting that was.

Like many mothers, I have an even sweeter memory of my child gently picking a dandelion flower, like it was the most precious of gifts, and giving it to me, a look of wonder on his face. How tender that was.

If only dandelions would learn to share! However, they don’t, and so I yank at them until my hands are stained with dirty gold that is almost impossible to wash away. Only to find them back in full force the next day. Picking dandelions is like building a sandcastle at the ocean’s shore. By dawn, all your efforts have vanished. It can easily be seen as senseless work.

Especially since a dandelion flower produces anywhere from 50 to over 150 seeds. While a dandelion plant annually yields up to 5,000 viable seeds, and they stay viable for up to five years. With the wind’s ferocious contributions, dandelion seeds can travel miles, claiming more and more territory as their own.

Dandelion plants can live for many years. It is quite possible those presently invading my Stone Harvest home will still be living here when I am dead. Perhaps over time they will entirely take over. The spring ephemerals dead then too. The exquisite purple, pink, and blue embroidery of violets, spring beauties, and Quaker ladies ripped apart and destroyed, devoured by the

rapacious Lion’s Tooth.

But perhaps not. You never know, and there is always hope. And that’s a wonderful thing.

Mabel

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:50:29 GMT

It was a year ago when I looked out my cabin’s window and saw a good friend fall and depart earthly life. My beloved Mabel, dead and gone. Spirited away by an invisible force.

Well, except for her heart. Her heart, Mabel left in Lightfall Hollow.

Mabel was a maple tree. It is quite probable she lived in the hollow for several centuries. Certainly she had her home here much, much longer than I. Until last spring, when she was taken by the wind.

Mabel was old, and her giant body leaned precariously from a life spent trying to stand and grow in the light. Her limbs were scraggly, like the thin, bony arms of a seasoned centenarian, and her bark was rough, wrinkled, and sprouted peculiar growths, like a grandmother’s well lived in and holy skin.

My first memory of Mabel is from my childhood. I was alone and lost in the woods. I was crying and panicked, blindly tearing through the trees and underbrush with no idea where I was or where I was going. But then a familiar being appeared. It was Mabel. I stumbled to her and sank down on the earth beneath her branches. Sitting with my back hugged against her ample trunk, I realized I was neither alone nor lost. I was connected and found.

A couple of decades later, when I was a young adult, my cabin and current home was built with Mabel just outside my porch door. She became my receptionist, my charming and impressive first greeter, my home’s ambassador of good will and welcome. Over the years, I planted snow drops, hostas, ferns, and astilbes around her. Across from her on either side, but still within her shadow’s long reach, I planted bleeding hearts, daffodils, crocuses, Lenten roses, ivy, and more hostas and ferns. The wild geraniums, violets, spring beauties, Quaker ladies, and trout lilies sharing her ground, I took pains not to disturb.

Along with the flora, at some point I placed at Mabel’s feet a stone statute of Pan, the ancient Greek god of nature. Sometime later, I propped up against her a massive rock, retrieved from the nearby creek and carved with the words my husband and I chose as the name of our home, “Stone Harvest.” A name chosen in acceptance of the bad times in each of our lives that have left us both broken and resolved to gather those stones and use them to build something good and solid. For it is true every stone of pain endured can become a rock of strength.

In most autumns I knew her, Mabel’s leaves would turn a brilliant orange. They were so brilliant they would make my eyes ache, like how your teeth ache when you eat something extraordinarily sweet.

During winter storms, she would catch snowflakes, and they would snuggle against her as they rested from their dance. Afterwards, when the sun again shone, Mabel would look like a benevolent queen, cloaked in flowing white velvet and crowned in sparkling crystal.

Spring would come, and Mabel would leaf out anew and give birth to seeds called whirlybirds, helicopters, or wings. Maple tree babies of bright green, the color of hope. Then, with summer’s arrival, Mabel would launch her children, and they would fly away to perchance find their place in the world to grow and be.

I had known for some time Mabel was dying. Her autumn leaves were no longer brilliant. They were dull. Even when dressed in winter’s snowy finery, she looked tired and worn. While each spring, she gave birth to fewer and fewer maple tree seeds, and each summer, the whirlybirds she launched were puny and brittle, and their wings were poor fliers.

Then last spring, Mabel was taken by the wind. Spirited away by an invisible force. Afterwards, the broken, rotting wood of her dead remains was carried off to be returned to the dirt that had borne her. Hence, as the whole of creation had been blessed with Mabel’s living, so would the whole of creation be blessed with Mabel’s dying. In the end, the only apparent part of her still rooted in the hollow was a snaggy piece of trunk, looking like a big, old hand, its index finger pointing skyward.

Yet, here is what I wonder upon. Sometime later after Mabel was taken by the wind and most of her temporal remains removed, I noticed something I had not noticed before. I saw what appeared to be an imprinted shape in the bark of her sundered remnant. It was a heart. As though Mabel had left her heart in Lightfall Hollow. Like she was fixing it so that her very essence would always be here in the place where she had known life on Earth for all her time on Earth.

I am glad Mabel’s heart continues to be where it always was, and I am grateful Mabel’s heart stays close to me. But I don’t need any reminder of her. Because I will never forget when I was a child alone and lost in the woods, Mabel found me.

Nor will I forget to keep Mabel as my revered symbol for standing and growing in the light, even when standing and growing in the light requires a precarious leaning.

And when I fall and depart earthly life, I hope I too am spirited away by an invisible force.

Though my heart I shall leave in Lightfall Hollow.

April Fool

Wed, 03 Apr 2024 16:06:03 GMT

Here in Lightfall Hollow, the spring beauties are spreading across the forest floor. Tiny, ground-hugging, star-shaped wildflowers with delicate pink petals streaked by a hot pink, they make the earth look as though it is blushing. I imagine in anticipation of the romantic season the spring beauties begin with their blossoming.

In my secret garden, the Siberian squill are up. Another dainty, low-growing flower of early spring, they make the sunless slope where I planted their miniature bulbs light up in electric blue.

Ablaze in vibrant yellow is most of the land immediately surrounding my home. A giant forsythia bush drapes itself over an ornamental bridge and then borders one side of the narrow path that ends in my secret garden. Several more towering forsythias line the path’s other side and stretch out along the pond’s edge, further hiding the garden and adding to its mystery. Although forsythia flowers are flashy, clusters of sunny florets shooting like sparks from bowing branches, even in April when the shrubs bloom in brazen abandonment, the forsythias are what make my secret garden secret and ever a surprise. Like the enticingly wrapped gift any garden is.

It equally delights and amazes me that my garden’s dense thicket of lofty forsythias began as one small, sickly plant that I bought on sale years ago. At the time, I was uncertain it would make it, but it did, and over the years, I took cuttings from the shrub and planted them to hopefully grow near their mother, and as luck would have it, they followed suit. While their mother grew and grew to become the golden giant she is today.

A most interesting plant, that giant. She grew in such a way that she formed a cave-like interior, much like the grapevine shelter I used to play in when I was a child and mentioned in the previous post, “Wending My Way.” It’s silly of me, I know, since I’m now a grown woman of advanced age, but sometimes I crawl inside the forsythia as I once crawled inside that tangled mass of grapevines. I don’t pretend I’m a wolf cub anymore, but I do believe I have more creative thoughts when I’m hunkered down in the middle of the forsythia’s lush oasis. Or perhaps I am simply a fool.

But moving on to the narcissuses, aka daffodils, that each April adorn my corner of paradise in the same showy yellow as the forsythia. How fitting it is that their hearts are trumpets. Since a daffodil is as blaring and attention-getting as the brass musical instrument. While it is also easy to picture a daffodil, with its tear-shaped petals, as the beautiful youth of Greek mythology, Narcissus, who fell so in love with himself that he pined away and died.

Yet, I must confess I too am in love with the narcissus. Over the years, I have planted hundreds of daffodil bulbs. Many a chilly, damp hour in autumn I have spent on my knees, getting both them and my hands cold, muddy, stiff, and sore, digging abodes for daffodil bulbs, wondering who is daffier, the daffodils or me.

In winter, however, I begin to feel differently. I dream of my daffodils sleeping beneath the frozen earth and simply knowing they are there, where I tucked them in, comforts and heartens me. I wonder if they are dreaming too, wishing for brilliance and grandeur. On the off chance that’s true, I send my presumably expectant bulbs subliminal messages, encouraging them to hang in there, that their time to shine is coming.

Then spring does come, and daffodils flare up in dazzling profusion. They fringe the sweeping curve and both ends of the undeniably low, shoddy, and amateurishly made stone wall I built that runs along the hollow’s creek from the western woods to the woodshed. Down in the secret garden, other daffodils encircle the four stone cairns I likewise built that stand as entry portals to a fairy circle. I’m not sure why I raised those cairns. They’re something that crawled out of my subconscious.

One day, for no reason and without any plan, I started stacking rocks from the creek in four circles that eventually became four columns of stone. Though admittedly no more stonemason professional masterpieces than the stone wall, I am proud of my cairns. Since ancient times, cairns have been erected by people all over the world for a wide variety of purposes, including to mark hiking trails. Which makes me wonder if my subconscious is trying to tell me to stay on the path, and I’ll be okay. I’ll be on track to successfully reach trek’s end.

Additionally in the secret garden are daffodils in a long and double row along the creek and in front of another, even more pitiful stone wall of my humble engineering. And most fortunately for me these days, a hundred-plus daffodils bloom outside my kitchen window. That daffodil patch is one lucky break since I am presently stuck indoors nearly all the time, waiting for a broken ankle to mend, getting only a teeny peek at 99.9% of the hollow’s current flowers when my husband drives me to and from doctor appointments.

Still, I can honestly say it is enough to know those bloomers are there, even without me. It’s odd, but there’s tremendous solace and peace in that thought.

As for the daffodils outside my kitchen window, when I gaze at them, they always have their cheery faces turned toward me, brightening my homebound day, and now and again, they nod, as if to assure me that I will soon be back on my feet and in the great outdoors once again.

Bunches and bunches of daffodils grace my home, and I am grateful. Yet, none of the aforementioned are my favorites. My favorites were not planted by me. They were planted more than sixty years ago by a woman I barely knew. She was the wife of one of the seven members of the hollow’s original hunting camp and joint partner in the cabin that was also the vacation cottage of the members’ seven families, including my own family.

That woman is long dead, but I think of her and admire her each early spring when her daffodils bloom in a line a hundred feet long on the steep, rocky, arid, and otherwise practically barren hillside between the pond and the hollow’s road. She must have been as tough and tenacious as her daffodils. She must have had the strength and tenacity that grows with undying hope.

Moreover, to plant her daffodils where she did, she had to have been daffy. She had to have been a true April fool.

First off, when I say the hillside between the pond and the road is steep, I mean really steep. To have clung there and repeatedly dug down into the rock-filled soil a good six inches per bulb, she had to have put herself in a precarious position. She could have easily lost her balance, fallen, tumbled down the hillside, and broken something. Maybe even her neck.

But she did it, and all these decades later, her daffodils still bloom.

Secondly, in those days sixty-odd years ago, Lightfall Hollow was much more secluded than it is today. Add to this that, though this woman was obviously a gardener who would have known that daffodils grow facing the sun, she planted hers where they are virtually invisible, blooming with their backs turned to the road and looking into the woods. So, I wonder. Who in the world did she think would ever see her daffodils?

Yet, the wonderful thing is, I do see her daffodils. They inspire me. She inspires me. Inspires me to try to be strong and tenacious. To attempt the improbable and never lose hope. To be as daffy as a daffodil and a true April fool.

Wending My Way

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 14:46:48 GMT

Neighboring Lightfall Hollow are additional lands I have walked since I learned to walk. Countless times for what is now getting close to seventy years, I have rambled my home’s adjacent forests, their hollows and hills. Often, I have followed their timeworn creeks, abandoned logging roads, and active deer trails. While far more frequently I have sauntered their silvas on my own unbeaten, solitary paths.

But increasingly these days, the woodlands I have walked, known, and loved since I was a little girl are off limits. More and more, “No Trespassing” signs, surveillance cameras, electric fences, and locked gates forbid me to traverse my lifelong stomping grounds.

One of the places I can no longer wander is the middle of a wild nowhere, where there sits what little remains of a home from pioneer days. It is a forlorn relic of a house that I have always thought of as a haunted house. Although never once did a ghost appear to me there.

It was more like I was the ghost. Because I felt soul-bound to frequent the ruins of that house, stand within its crumbling stone foundation, and look out at the idyllic landscape that would have been seen by its long-dead dwellers every day. In this way, I came to imagine the house when it was whole and full of life.

I guess you could say that my phantasm haunted that house back into being. I doubt it or its dead minded. At least, I hope not. Because I am still with them in spirit.

Another site I can no longer roam is an old, forsaken cemetery of Black Americans that rests on a small hilltop deep in the forest. Quite a few of the graves are those of people who lived in the 1800s. While the last person buried there was John Berry, who died in 1945. He must have been a U.S. veteran, perhaps dying in combat during World War II. I surmise this because, when I visited the cemetery, there was always an American flag planted upon Mr. Berry’s grave, and it was replaced every year with a new flag, by whom I do not know.

The last time I laid eyes on that Black American cemetery, John Berry’s headstone was still standing, its inscription legible, but otherwise the graveyard was filled with memorial markers that were broken, leaning, sinking, and fallen, the words upon them made mostly unreadable by the ravages of weather, lichen, and fungi. While weeds covered the earth, and briars formed dense thickets, heavy with thorns.

A couple of times I came with my gardening tools and tried to clear the overgrown, tangled, shameful mess, but the task proved too difficult.

Despite my failure to give the dead their due respect, I always got the friendliest feeling in that old, neglected graveyard. There was, and I fathom yet is, a solace there I can only describe as holy.

Another pilgrimage I can no longer make is to a towering and perfect climbing tree that, when I was a timid tween, my scallywag uncle dared me to climb, said I couldn’t climb because I was “just a girl.” So, of course, I climbed to that tree’s highest branch. While as I climbed, my uncle cheered me on, knowing full well I could meet his challenge and so many more that life would surely bring me. When he died and his body cremated, I climbed that tree again and sprinkled a few of his ashes upon its loftiest limbs.

Yet another walk I can no longer take is the last one my dear dog, Anna, and I shared the day before she died. I can’t walk either where my father and I picked wild blackberries together and took turns tossing those berries, like miniature basketballs, into the hoops of each other’s mouths. I can also no longer walk where my mother taught me, and later my son, the self- confidence and freedom that comes with soaring on a grapevine swing over a steep, seemingly unconquerable downhill decline. Nor can I walk where I remember a sort of lean-to constructed entirely of grapevines, Mother Nature its architect and builder. When I was a child, I spent a lot of happy hours in that grapevine shelter, playing and pretending it was a wolf den and I was its cub.

I have no idea why I imagined myself as a wolf. (Other than it gave me an excuse to howl.) Even when I was a young girl, there were no wolves in Pennsylvania. Although gray wolves in particular used to live in these woods. But they got pushed out of their habitats and into extinction. As did the bisons, elks, mountain lions, and many other wild animals that were once native to this region.

Sharing a similar doom were the indigenous people who, centuries ago, lived nearby to Lightfall Hollow and, judging by the arrowheads that used to be found in the hollow, had a hunting ground here. They too were ultimately parted from their and this territory.

I grieve for those extinct animals and exiled humans. Their communities were brutalized and killed into departure and separation from the land to which they belonged. Whereas I only experience some disquiet and sadness as I am sundered from the same sacred spaces.

But I understand. Land is becoming more and more developed at an ever-accelerating rate. Woods wanderers like me, along with modern-day hunters who grew up with the age-old, venerated, and environmentally valuable tradition of hunting that lives on in these hills and hollows have fewer and fewer backcountries open for quests. Unsurprisingly then, some of those amongst us, including myself on occasion, become overpowered by homesickness, and we trespass on private ground.

Trespassing is disrespectful, intrusive, and aggressive behavior. Which understandably often results in property owners becoming additionally protective. It is a vicious, ever-tightening circle and, as both a woods wanderer and woods property owner, a dilemma of which I am on each side. Yikes!

It is difficult to stop journeying through woodlands that have gifted me with wonder, imagination, and tranquility. It is challenging to say good-bye to haunts where I have found refuge and courage. It is heartbreaking to leave behind where my dearly departed loved ones have loved me.

Nevertheless, I have my wonderful memories. And I have some other wonderful woods wandering spaces too.

I am so grateful and gratified that relatively close by to Lightfall Hollow are a good number of Pennsylvania’s state parks, wilderness areas, and hiking trails. All of which I can freely wander to my heart’s content. And I do.

Maybe such public spaces are not the answer for every forest lover, but they are for me, and I sincerely admire, respect, and appreciate the people whose hard work preserves the natural world for its own most worthy sake, as well as even for the likes of me. Because of their diligent care of the great outdoors, there are still wild spaces open and free for all.

As much as my old stomping grounds have defined me and will always be a part of me, my new stomping grounds are providing further interpretation. What’s more, as it turns out, I haven’t really lost or left behind a single beloved hallowed place or being. All my marvelous teachers are still with me. Spirit guides, as I meander the woods of my life and wend my way home.

Moon Bath

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 14:06:09 GMT

I had hoped for February to bring silvery days covered by snow. It did not. Nonetheless, what the month did deliver were ice-colored nights blanketed by the Snow Moon.

February’s full moon was dubbed the Snow Moon by indigenous, Algonquian-speaking tribes of what is now northeast and northcentral United States. It is a vast territory which includes Lightfall Hollow. The area’s Native Americans named February’s full moon the Snow Moon because it was their experience the heaviest snowfalls typically fell in February. They also called it the Hunger Moon since their food sources and supplies were usually scarce by then. While other indigenous tribes in other regions of the Americas gave the Snow Moon different names.

Likewise, across the Atlantic Ocean, the native tribes of the Celtic people called it the Moon of Ice. Centuries later, in medieval Europe, it was referred to as the Storm Moon. In other places, cultures, and times around the world, February’s full moon was given still more names. As were the full moons of the other months of the year.

What all these many and various names have in common is that they establish a relationship between humankind and the moon. Because that’s what naming does. It triggers bonding and attachment. We feel closer to that for which we have a name. Particularly if the name is special, individualized, and something to which we can assign meaning and perceive familiarity. Such a name makes the named thing significant to us and further strengthens our connection.

I certainly feel a connection to the moon and especially when it shines upon me under its numerous titles. I always have. But never more so than this past February when I spent four blissful nights luxuriating in the Snow Moon’s glow, letting it spill through my open bedroom window and bathe me, warmly soothing my weary, aching, and worried self to sleep. A salubrious sleep from which I awoke refreshed, relaxed, and in high spirits to begin the new day.

Now lest you think I’m off living on another planet, I do realize a full moon is normally known as only a one-night event. Although, if we are to simply focus on the hard facts of the matter, that is also a bit of a distortion. As the moon is in constant orbit around the Earth, a 100% full moon technically lasts for only an instant, and that instant often comes during daylight hours. Be that as it may, in my way of seeing things, a mere technicality.

Because another reality is, to human eyes, the moon can appear fully illuminated for as many as three days/nights. As for that fourth night I had bathing in the light of the Snow Moon, all I can say in my defense is, to my wondering eyes, the moonlight shone so brightly that night too, it might as well have been radiating from an actual full moon.

What is equally extraordinary to me is this past Snow Moon was a micromoon. The moon was at its furthest point from Earth. But it felt so close. As though it were truly with me. As though we wholly connected on some deep, ancient level.

Taking moon baths is an old ritual of mine. Admittedly, what I write next is basically a fanciful notion, and of course, I could always be wrong, but I honestly believe moonlight has healing power and is healthful. My whimsy even makes a speck of rational sense to me since moonlight is reflected sunlight, and though sunlight beaming straight from the sun is curative and conducive to good health, it can be harsh and too much of it can cause harm.

Whereas moonlight, as a lighter version of sunlight, is gentle. Again, I could be indulging in nothing but false fantasy and be categorically wrong, but it is hard for me to imagine getting hurt by wallowing in too much moonlight.

In any case, I am willing to risk it. That and the sheer lunacy of sleeping beneath a widely open bedroom window on a cold winter’s night.

Hmmm. You don’t suppose . . . ?

Wild Life

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 15:51:57 GMT

Here in Lightfall Hollow, it’s a wild life.

Squirrels are eating my house. And I mean that literally. Every day, a family of gray squirrels and a lone wolf of a red squirrel gnaw upon the pine board and batten of the cabin’s exterior. Although my and my husband’s home is a modest one, it is not at all uncared-for, and it has a warm, hospitable charm. But the squirrels are demolishing both its wood and charm. Those twitchy, incessant nibblers with the revoltingly orange, chisel-shaped teeth are bringing my house down and making it ratty.

While their rodent relatives, mice, ransack its interior. Many an expensive roll of toilet paper I have had to toss because some pilfering mouse decided to shred off and spirit away several of its tissues to line their squatter’s nest. Many a costly food I have had to trash because some freeloading mouse decided to stuff their greedy snout with my toothsome grub.

Although, truth is, I honestly wouldn’t mind mice and their thieving ways so much if only the balloon-eared, twinkly-eyed, wiggly-whiskered, and really pretty cute little moochers were housebroken, but they are not. What’s more, they apparently are not even willing to give potty training a go. I have concluded this on the just grounds that not a single one has ever once taken me up on using the miniature, mouse-size pan replete with kitty litter I have periodically set out for their private and intimate use.

Perhaps it is just as well because, in addition to being indiscriminate excreta depositors, I have read from reliable sources that mice can carry a number of harmful diseases directly transmittable to humans. While they are indirect spreaders of Lyme disease. Since mice are often the first hosts for tick larvae. Mice then frequently infect the tick larvae with the pathogens that cause Lyme disease in humans and other mammals.

Even more vexing, squirrels and mice are not the only bad actors in Lightfall Hollow. Deer devour my prized mountain laurel, English ivy, hostas, daylilies, and one and only hemlock, a birthday gift from a dear friend. While rabbits and porcupines strip the wood’s baby hardwood trees of their protective bark and sweet little growing twiglets. Moles tunnel through the tubers and roots of my flower gardens as chipmunks dig up my bulbs. Turkeys tear up the lawn, and groundhogs scoop out ankle-twisting holes. Raccoons, opossums, and foxes invade the storage shed, overturn the garbage bin, along with another can filled with koi food, and help themselves to both household table scraps and pet fish kibble.

Snakes curl up in the wood pile. Birds somehow find their way into the screened-in porch and rip holes in the fine mesh with their beaks and talons. A blue heron and a kingfisher steal bluegill, crayfish, frogs, and salamanders from the pond. (Fortunately, the koi are too big for them to abduct.)

A cardinal throws himself against the cabin’s windows, ostensibly attacking his own reflection. The cardinal will do this for days on end, from sunup to sundown, over and over again, driving me crazy. So crazy that I have, on a few occasions, in a moment of complete insanity, pounded on my side of the window and shouted out to him, “Hey, if you really hate yourself that much, why don’t you change?” (Luckily, there are no neighbors here in the hollow to report me to the mental health authorities.)

A skunk has its home underneath the back deck. Every evening, it comes out and parades around the cabin’s perimeter, polluting the pure mountain night air with its overwhelming stink.

Coyotes and bears roam the encircling hills, causing our little house dog, who would not last a minute on her own in the wild, to jump up on the easily marred leather furniture, clawing at the leather and barking in a frenzied fit that goes on long after the coyote or bear has moved on. While also sending the poor cat into terrified hiding and driving me as crazy as the

aforementioned crazy cardinal.

It’s a wild life in Lightfall Hollow.

And thank goodness. Because here’s the other truth. As exasperated as I can become with the hollow’s wildlife and our endless war over property ownership, more often than not, I am grateful for the wonderful woodland creatures who share their home with me. They supply so much of what is needed for the survival of this land that I love.

Animals fertilize and aerate soil, enhance plant decomposition and the getting of organic matter deeper into the soil. They transport nutrients, spread seeds, reduce plant dominance, help with shaping the terrain’s plant composition and the creation of plant diversity. They keep animal populations, including pest populations, under control. They dispose of carrion. In sum, they keep the hollow alive, healthy, and growing, and they give more than they take. I wish I could be certain the same two things are true of me.

What’s more, animals are a vital part of what makes Lightfall Hollow beautiful, fun, and a place where there is always something interesting to learn and appreciate.

Take for instance the mice and squirrels. Wild things that I sometimes falsely refer to as “good-for-nothing beasts.” Not only do both mice and squirrels contribute numerous positives to the ecosystem, they provide tremendous amounts of astonishing, captivating, and hilarious entertainment.

When it comes to jumping, climbing, and balancing, mice are in the acrobatic big leagues. They can jump vertically three to four times their own height and do so without a running start. When jumping horizontally, they can span two feet in a single bound. Which is at least six times the length of their body, not counting the tail.

Mice can scale almost any wall and shimmy up and down poles. My son claims he recently saw a New York mouse tenaciously attempting to do a handstand, and I believe him. Mice may ordinarily be known for their timidity, but what they have much more of is spunk.

As for squirrels, I shall never tire of watching their death-defying leaps from swaying tree branch to swaying tree branch or observing them scamper headfirst down a tree trunk. (This extraordinary feat made possible by the fact that squirrels’ back ankles can rotate a full 180 degrees.)

I have also seen squirrels stretch themselves into poses that would make a master yogi jealous, execute tumbling moves that would give a professional gymnast a run for their money, and perform gravity-mocking twists, spins, flips, and suspensions in the air that would put the greatest trapeze artist to shame. Squirrels may at times frustrate me to tears, yet they never fail to

make me laugh.

On the whole, I like and admire mice and squirrels. However, to be completely honest, I do kill mice. Initially, I didn’t. Not that mice were ever whole-heartedly welcome in the cabin. But when mice first became a problem here, I tried repellents. I tried repellents of all kinds, both store-bought and homemade, including ultrasonic devices. When none of those worked, I tried humane traps, where the mouse is caught alive and then relocated by its human trapper. But what that meant for me was, every time I caught a mouse, which was usually in the middle of the night, I had to immediately drive the trapped mouse to another location, and since mice have a strong homing instinct, that location had to be at least two miles away as the crow flies. As to why the trip had to be taken immediately, as I sadly found out with the first mouse I humanely trapped, a mouse will kill itself by relentlessly slamming up against the walls of its humane trap with all its might, trying to escape. As one would expect, here in Lightfall Hollow, humane mouse traps got old very quickly.

Currently, I am going through a similar dilemma with the squirrels. Once again, I am trying every recommended repellent, store-bought and homemade. Nothing is working. So, I ordered a humane trap. But then it occurred to me that I had better research Pennsylvania state law concerning the trapping and relocating of squirrels. Well, I didn’t get very far with that

because I happened upon some information letting me know that almost all relocated squirrels die. Even more disturbing, given my past, ignorant behavior, the report further said most relocated mice die as well.

Which, once I thought about it, makes perfect sense. Because relocation is just a polite word for displacement. Moving any living being to a place where they don’t know where to find food, water, and shelter is putting that living being in extreme danger. It is cruel, and doing so knowingly desecrates the wonders of the human heart.

So now what do I do? I guess I’m going to try something crazy. I know it probably won’t work. I know I am probably naïve and a fool for even trying.

Be that as it may, I am going to try to give the squirrels something besides my home on which to gnaw. (By the way, gnawing is something squirrels must do. Their teeth grow throughout their entire lives. If a squirrel doesn’t gnaw, their teeth will eventually grow through their skulls, and they will be unable to eat. If a squirrel doesn’t gnaw, sooner or later, it starves to death.)

Therefore, I have made a list of alternative things on which, according to my research, squirrels like to gnaw, and I am going to try them one by one.

I know. I know. I’m a crazy person. But the squirrels are nutty too.

It’s a wild life we share. But it’s a wonderful life too. Wish us luck.

Snowfalls and Sunrises

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 13:37:26 GMT

Looking out at Lightfall Hollow today through a driving rain, I see only dirty tatters of the snow that, earlier this month, completely swaddled the hollow in a cottony sheet of spotless white. The woods are now practically naked and drenched to the core. The trees shiver and drip. My maternal instinct kicks in, and I feel an urge to bundle the woods back up again, but I do not possess the prowess of winter’s magnificent matriarch, and I know it. The forest probably knows it too.

I wonder how long it will be before the pearled grande dame visits the hollow again. I hope it won’t be too long. Because although it’s true she has a frosty air about her and is as mute as can be, she invariably comes bearing wonderful gifts.

The peace of a quieted world. The wide variety of delightful dances snowfalls perform. The satisfying morsel of a snowflake caught on a searching, hungry tongue. The sweet treat of maple syrup hardened into taffy by drizzling it on snow. (Clean snow, of course!) The creative opportunity to make a snow person, angel, or igloo.

A fallen snow catching sunlight and sparkling with the clarity of finest crystal. The same fallen snow catching sunlight and sparkling with the pastel tints of Easter. “Spring is on its way!” the normally subdued colors seem to shout. The diaphanous, glowing blue found in the depths of accumulated snow, as though bits and pieces of the blaring sky have snuggled up with the silent white and are taking a snooze.

The thrill of sledding or skiing down a hill made mountainous by snow. The thrill of cross-country skiing through a mundane patch of ground turned wonderland. The fascination of looking through a magnifying glass at the exquisite and intricate hexagonal ice sculptures of snowflakes. There is nothing more beautiful.

While also so fleeting. A snowflake exists but for a few seconds. It either melts, evaporates, or amasses with other snowflakes in a mishmash, as though sacrificing its individual self for the common good. In any case, a sublime beauty gone too soon. But that’s life.

Yet, it is also life that there is ever something beautiful to behold. Even if only for too short of a time. And it is always for too short of a time.

A week ago, before the temperature began to climb and the snow began to disappear, the wind tore the lid off my husband and my garbage container that sits more than a mile down the road from our cabin. Unlike the United State Postal Service, the local garbage collectors do not refuse to drive this far into the woods on a narrow dirt road to where there is little space for a large vehicle to turn around. Nonetheless, they are grateful we do not ask them for the inconvenience.

My husband and I knew better than to leave our garbage overnight in a lidless container. By 5 AM when the trash collectors came for pickup, the wildlife would have had our trash, some of it of a rather personally embarrassing nature, strewn across the road, through the fields, into the woods, and heaven only knows where else.

So, at 4:30 AM the next morning, I rather grumpily got up in what our porch thermometer said was two degrees Fahrenheit to climb into a frigid car and drive the garbage down to the end of the road and the lidless container. But here’s the amazing thing.

Because of the freezing cold, ice crystals had formed in the underbrush on both sides of the road. As I drove by, my car’s headlights shone on the crystals, making them coruscate. For as far as my eyes could see, it looked like the woods had been strung with little Christmas twinkle lights. It was gorgeous. I rode back and forth several times, never wanting the spectacle to end. What I had anticipated as a miserable chore had become a beautiful extravaganza.

Then there was the dawn of a couple of days ago. Everything was draped in a gray mist, and it must have had something to do with the way the sun was trying to break through, but everything also looked as though outlined in silver. Cobwebby interiors with moonlit edges.

How frequently does that happen? I don’t think very often. But no matter. Because, at least for now, there’s always yet another beautiful thing to behold. It is genuinely apparent that the world has a vast wealth of beauty. However, the other truth that needs to be told is that it is a rare, maybe even nonexistent beauty that is immune from destruction.

One more beauty I’ll try to describe, and then I’ll quit for now. The dawn of another day this past week. This one was anything but gray. It started out lavender and peach. Soon thereafter, a reddish-purple magenta and an orange-yellow apricot showed up and brushed against the first couple. The apricot brightened to orange. The peach paled to yellow. It was as though the flamboyant apricot intimidated the shy peach. Whereas the apricot was emboldened by its presumed superiority. As for the purples, they stayed where they were and did nothing.

But then a gentle blue, along with a serious pink inserted themselves into the mix. The blue and the pink weaved themselves together, and the purples and orange departed. While the yellow of the former peach deepened to gold and soared across the sky.

With it, a streak of pure green appeared on the horizon. Green, the color of hope.

And thus the sun rose.

The Dark, Bright Skies of Cherry Springs

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 16:30:25 GMT

Above Lightfall Hollow, in the moonless sky of crystal-clear nights, there was a time not too long ago when the Milky Way was visible. But it has been several years now since that ethereal beauty with the softly glowing complexion has made an appearance in my neck of the woods. Even here in a woodland hollow with the closest neighbors more than a mile away and every light in my power to kill killed, the artificial trappings of civilization pollute the dark and obscure one of nature’s most wondrous sights.

So, I was delighted when, a couple of years ago, I happened upon an article about Cherry Springs State Park in northcentral Pennsylvania’s relatively undeveloped Potter County.

Cherry Springs, named for the large stand of black cherry trees originally found in the park, is certified by the International Dark Sky Association as a Dark Sky Park, the second such certified park in the United States and the only one on the East Coast. In 2017, the Smithsonian magazine ranked it as one of the eight best places in the world for celestial gazing. Its astronomy field, a former airplane landing strip carved from a mountaintop and surrounded by the Susquehanna State Forest, affords an unobstructed 360-degree view. Under optimum conditions, it is said that as many as ten thousand stars can be seen by the human eye, and the Milky Way can be so bright it casts shadows. With proper equipment, planets and nebulae can be viewed in vivid detail. In certain auspicious years, around September’s Autumnal Equinox, the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights show up.

However, as you might surmise, most nights of any given year at Cherry Springs do not have the cloudless, moonless sky and low levels of atmospheric water vapor that liberate heavenly bodies to reveal themselves in all their naked glory. This dearth of fair, dark nights at Cherry Springs is something I can personally affirm. Since periodically for the past two years, I have been getting on the park’s website and checking its Clear Sky Chart. Frustratingly, during most of this time, on the rare occasions when Mother Nature seemed in the mood and ready to grant my star-filled wish, I would have other things to do of a more obligatory sort. But finally, a few weeks ago, I got lucky.

The Clear Sky Chart predicted the night of December 14, 2023 – a night that I was on schedule to have free – to be nearly moonless, cloudless, and vaporless. Moreover, I knew from a news report that Mother Nature had another heavenly gift she was giving away that night, the peaking of the Geminid meteor shower.

So, on December 14, off I went to Cherry Springs State Park. I got there shortly after sunset, but already multitudes of dazzling solitary stars bejeweled the sky, many seeming close enough to touch and, if bling were my thing, maybe even snatch and wear. While more distant stars, along with clouds of galactic gas and dust appeared to unite to form the spangled path through darkness known as the Milky Way.

Although the Milky Way, like so many things in this world, has a lot of names. One of them, the Backbone of Night, from the indigenous people of the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa is, in my opinion, one of the all-time greats. Because that bumpy cord of starred clouds does look to me like a spine running through the body of the firmament, and so much like our own backbones, paradoxically delicate and strong.

Still, the Milky Way is a great name too. It has come down to us from ancient Greece and a Hellenic creation myth that claims it to be breastmilk that was splashed across the sky by Hera, the Olympian queen and goddess protector of marriage, women, and childbirth. Although there are a couple of mythological versions as to why Hera showered our galaxy with her mother’s milk, and both reasons given are quite unmotherly, in the myth of my creation, I would propose an opposite explanation for Hera’s actions. I would suggest that she was following her maternal instincts to protect and sustain our world, and she did so in a most motherly way.

Well, there you have my mythological two cents. I guess I came up with it because, when I look at the Milky Way, I do feel protected and sustained.

As for the meteor shower, I’ve seen meteor showers before, but nothing like the Geminid meteor shower of December 14, 2023 at Cherry Springs State Park. It was embarrassing the way I kept letting out spontaneous gasps of amazement and squeals of delight that I just could not get under control, even though there were other people present, and I feared I was being rude and spoiling the show for everyone else. But I couldn’t stop myself, and thankfully, I could hear some same spoutings of wonder coming out of my fellow gapers.

It was not just the intensity of the shower and the frequency of the meteors or how near, bold, and long some of them appeared. It was also that many of the meteors had colors of pale, but striking red, green, and blue. Another one of the meteors I saw looked like it was in golden flames.

I learned later, after some research, that the colors were because the source of the Geminids is an asteroid. Most meteor showers have as their source a comet. A comet is composed of ice, dust, and gas. While an asteroid is essentially a rock with some metallic elements. When a small piece of an asteroid breaks off, usually from a collision with another asteroid, it becomes a meteoroid, and when that meteoroid enters the Earth’s atmosphere and begins to burn up, it becomes a meteor. The igniting of the metals in an asteroid meteor is what produces the colors.

The asteroid the Geminid meteors originate from is called Phaethon. That name also connects the empyrean to ancient Greek mythology. Because, according to the Hellenes, Phaethon was the son of their sun god, Helios.

Phaethon doubted that Helios was really his father. To prove their relationship, Phaethon asked to drive the sun’s chariot. Helios granted his son’s wish, but it was a big mistake. Since Phaethon lost control of the horses, putting our world in catastrophic danger from a sun gone rogue. But Zeus, the Olympian king, saved Earth by striking down Phaethon with his lightning bolt. Upon being struck, Phaethon fell from the chariot, his body on fire. Thus, as I imagine it, the Geminid meteor shower was born.

I enjoy learning myths. I like how getting to know them kindles my imagination and makes me wonder. Which is probably why, as evidenced in my altering of the Hera myth, as well as my adding to the Phaethon myth, I can be shameless in how I sometimes twist and turn a certain myth to suit what I intuit and try to do what is not wholly possible, to put those gut feelings into words. But that’s what one does with myths. Along with folktales too. I think that’s what keeps such stories alive and ever full of meaning.

On the other hand, I have very little knowledge of astronomy. I can’t even name the constellations, much less locate them in the night sky. What I can spot are the Big Dipper, Little Dipper, the Pleiades of seven sisters fame, the moon, along with its man and rabbit, and, as you would expect, the Milky Way of my desire. And that’s about it.

I didn’t even know until my recent research after the Geminid meteor shower of December 14 that the Milky Way is not only the name for the illusive coalescing light of distant stars, it is also the name for our entire galaxy, which includes every star we can see and what NASA estimates as one hundred billion more stars that we cannot see because they are too far away, too faint, or hidden by clouds of cosmic gas.

I personally find it confusing for the exact same name to be both for something and the something that encompasses it. Makes me think that perhaps someone got a little lazy with their naming responsibilities.

I may not know much about astronomy, but what I do know is that when I see the stars, whether they be stationary or shooting, solitary or grouped, when I see the vastness of a black, radiant sky, the tiny fragment of an unmeasurable dark, bright universe, I don’t feel small. I feel big. I don’t feel alone. I feel connected. I don’t feel insignificant. I feel valuable. I don’t feel meaningless. I feel needed.

Most of all, I feel what the poet, William Wordsworth, dubbed for us mortals as “our life’s Star.” And I wish with all my might upon that star of light.

Yes, Virginia

Fri, 15 Dec 2023 13:58:07 GMT

Since writing The Fairytales of Lightfall Hollow , several people have asked me the same question. Do I believe in fairies and other magical creatures?

My answer is an emphatic “No.” It is also an equally emphatic “Yes.”

No, I do not believe in the physical existence of fairies. The same goes for unicorns, mermaids, giants, Boogeyman, and all the other supernatural creatures I wrote about in the fairytales.

The magical creatures in my stories are my inventions. They are my imagination’s endeavor to give bodies to what is bodiless, substance to what has no materiality, and words to what is beyond words.

Which is not to say I made up my fabrications from nothing. Like all inventors, I started with something in existence and built upon it.

That bodiless, incorporeal, ineffable something is the spirit that is present in nature. It is my view that every natural thing has a spirit, from lands and animals to waters and plants to air and stars to fire and even rocks. As I see it, they all have a spirit.

It is a mysterious spirit, far beyond my human capability to understand. Nonetheless, it is a spirit I recognize, connect to, cherish, and absolutely do believe in.

And it is this omnipresent, unknowable, familiar, beloved, and trustworthy spirit that was my raw material for creating the fairies and other magical beings of Lightfall Hollow. Consequently, I can honestly say that, in an abstract sense, I do believe in fairies and other magical creatures.

While how strange it is that the magical creatures of my invention turned out to be so very human. Or not.

Writing the preceding has recalled to me another, far more superior writing that is also an answer to a question similar to the one I have gotten. I first read this true masterpiece in 1997, shortly after my then eight-year-old son asked: “Mom, is there really a Santa Claus?”

It was a question for which I had no immediate good and honest answer. So, I stalled for time, and the next morning I went looking for help at our local public library. There, I came across a newspaper editorial written a century before by Francis Pharcellus Church, “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus.”

In 1897, Mr. Church was an aging and relatively unknown American editorial writer who most frequently commented on religious topics, typically with quite a bit of skepticism toward matters of faith. He had been a correspondent during the Civil War, and the horrors of man’s inhumanity to man he witnessed during that war turned him into a bitter, distrustful, reclusive

curmudgeon.

But then one day, while working for a New York City newspaper, The Sun, Mr. Church’s managing editor gave him the assignment of responding to a letter written by eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon. In the letter, the little girl asked, “Please tell me the truth: Is there a Santa Claus?”

With that question, Virginia O’Hanlon opened the hardened heart of Francis Pharcellus Church, and he wrote back to her the 416 hopeful and loving words that would become the most re-printed editorial of all time. Glorious words that also radiate both a childlike sense of wonder and the steadfast faith of a child that there is goodness in this world, and it prevails.

I highly recommend “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” to anyone, regardless of their particular faith and spiritual beliefs. It is an inspiring and encouraging read that reveals the presence of the the universal spirit that lives in all people. Evincing what is, as Mr. Church wrote, “real and abiding.”

And with that, I will close with the 6 words that reflect the fervent yearning of every human heart.

Peace on Earth. Goodwill to All.

Last Times

Wed, 22 Nov 2023 14:21:56 GMT

I wonder about last times. Sometimes I wonder about future last times. Like I wonder about the last time I take a breath. I wonder if I will know it is my last breath. Because if I know it is my last breath, I think I will make that last breath great. I will breathe a grateful good-bye to all I have lived, loved, and wondered upon. Or at least, that is what I think I will do.

More than I wonder about future last times though, I wonder about past last times. So often when it has been the last time, I did not know it was the last time, and I failed to make that last time the greatest one ever. Afterwards, I felt regret.

Sometimes, I still feel regret. Because if I had known it was the last time, I would have tried harder. At least, that is what I think I would have done.

But sometimes I also wonder if knowing it was the last time and trying to make that last time the greatest would have made a meaningful difference overall. I wonder if the last time matters more than previous times. I wonder if the presumption that last times are of supreme importance is perhaps wrong.

As I wonder about last times, my last time going for a walk with Anna comes to mind. Anna was a dog. She was a yellow Labrador Retriever from a Georgia Lab rescue.

When our family adopted Anna, she was a frightened, emaciated eight-month-old puppy. Once we got her home, it did not take long for her to gain weight, and although probably due to her undernourishment early in life, she stayed relatively small for a Lab, Anna became a beautiful dog.

Yet, Anna never did lose her fears. All day long she would carry her food bowl around in her teeth. Like it was her most cherished possession, more treasured than all the balls, toys, and bones she now had as a member of our family.

Then, twice a day, at mealtime, she would become frantic. Although never once in our twelve years together was a meal withheld, it was obvious that every day, Anna was terrified she was not going to be fed.

Loud noises of any kind also terrified Anna. Even a laugh, a cough, or a sneeze would send her into hiding. Nor could she tolerate confined spaces. A crate was out of the question, and even a twenty-minute car ride with the windows down was traumatic for her. One time when my husband and I boarded Anna, desperate to get outside of the cozy room where she was being kenneled, she chewed through both the frame and glass of the room’s window. We never boarded her again.

A friendlier, gentler dog has never lived. Anna loved everyone, humans and animals alike. She welcomed any new stranger into her life with open paws. She was extraordinary that way.

Anna loved the woods too. In that way, she was like me. Not a day went by that we did not go for a walk in the woods. It did not matter if it was rainy or icy or blustery or in the single digits or sweltering and buggy. Regardless, we went for our walk. Sometimes we would walk for hours.

Anna was always happy on our walks. Especially when there was snow. Again, like me, Anna loved the snow. Even when she became old and gray in the face, and her big, brown eyes were clouded and dull, she would frolic in the snow like a frisky puppy.

There was a deep snow on the ground, and more was swirling down from the sky the last time Anna and I went for a walk. I was tired and not feeling like myself that day. After we had been walking along for a much shorter time than usual, I wanted to turn back and go home.

Anna had run ahead of me, leaping and prancing through the snow, only slowing down to snuffle the wonderful white with her nosy pink nose and shake the fallen flakes from her champagne-colored fur. When I called her, she turned and dutifully bounded back toward me, stopping a few feet from where I stood. Ears perked, mouth open in a wide grin, tail exuberantly wagging, Anna looked so happy in that moment. I knew she was not even close to wanting our walk to end.

But I insisted we turn back. I saw the disappointed, questioning look she gave me. Nonetheless, while still romping through the snow like a puppy, Anna followed me home. A few hours later, Anna became ill. She died the next morning. She died at home, here at the cabin. I was lying beside her and singing to her when she took her last breath. I felt her final exhalation on my face, and then I felt her leave. She left without fear. The dog who was afraid of so much in life died fearless.

Later that week, I walked alone where Anna and I had walked together that last time. Her pawprints were still in the snow. I could see where her tracks followed alongside my own, where she had run ahead, where her tracks ended, and where she had backtracked to me. Looking at Anna’s pawprints, I was again reminded of how much more she had wanted of what would be our last walk.

I felt regret. I thought that, if I had only known, I would have kept walking with Anna until I collapsed. After that, I would have crawled. At least, that is what I thought I would have done.

But then one day, a few years later, as I walked in a snowy wood with another dog, I began to wonder if perhaps I was giving that last walk with Anna too much weight. I began to question why a last time matters more than previous times. It occurred to me the many wonderful walks and other great times Anna and I had shared should be the ones that matter most.

But then demons of regret attacked me. Well, I thought as I tried to defend myself, at least my very last time with Anna was good. At least I was there for her when she died.

But that thought of my very last time with Anna brought back thoughts of other last times.

I thought about the last time with a tender-hearted friend, who, not too long afterwards, took his own life in a tortuous, gruesome way. Our last time, I spotted him at a gas station where I avoided his eyes and gave him no more than an impatient wave because I didn’t want to stop and talk. I only wanted to fill up my car’s tank and get going.

I thought about the last time with my mother, who suffered from dementia and died shortly thereafter, confused and frightened in a strange place. Our last time, I whispered good- bye and snuck away as she slept because I didn’t want to risk her waking, looking at me with those familiar, sea-blue eyes, and bearing the anguish of my mother not knowing me.

I thought about the last time with my ex-husband, the father of my child and one of the best friends I will ever have, who three days later was murdered and died alone in what used to be our happy family home. Our last time, I stayed locked in a bathroom and said good-bye to him through a closed door because I was too hurt and disappointed to open the door, look into his eyes, and give him the respect and common decency he deserved.

Of course, I felt regret as those thoughts came back to me. Of course, I felt regret for those last times I could have made better. And, who knows? Maybe even great.

And sometimes I still feel regret for my failed last times. Every now and again, demons of regret bring me down and feed themselves with my spirit. But when they do, I remember the wonder that came to me in a snowy wood, lifted me, and fed my soul.

For in the end, surely it is that the best times are the times that matter most. Because although not all times shared with loved ones, including sometimes last times, are as great as they could have been, where there is love, demons are impotent attackers. Where there is love, demons are defeated. Not with war, but with peace.

So, now when my demons of regret attack me with my failed last times and other failed times too, I fight back with my wonderful memories of the best times. Which is not to say I forget my failings. But, along with my failings, I remember I’m human. So, I’m okay.

As for Anna, she is what she always was. An angel. Like my friend, mother, and ex- husband, along with my current husband, son, and so many others who love me.

And in this season of thanksgiving, I am so grateful and filled with wonder for the many angels in my life and their gift of peace.

The Road

Fri, 10 Nov 2023 14:08:14 GMT

The road that runs through the heart of Lightfall Hollow has substantially changed since my uncle first drove it and experienced a magical moment of wonder and home. Since that day sixty odd years ago, and for quite a few years after as I was growing up, the road was a deeply rutted, stony and weed-infested dirt. It was prone to flooding and so narrow that if two cars going in opposite directions came upon each other, one of those cars had to back up until a safe place to completely pull off the road was found, and the second car could pass.

But that did not happen very often. Because, back then, the hollow was pretty much an undiscovered forest wilderness, and since it was rarely travelled, its road was not maintained. Even after a heavy snowfall, the road was not plowed. My father and uncle used to wear snowshoes to make their winter treks to their hunting camp and our family’s cottage. Something I don’t think they minded at all.

As a little girl, I didn’t mind either that the hollow’s road was neglected and deserted. Primarily because it meant that my parents were not at all afraid to let me walk the road by myself. Which I did every chance I got. Down the road, I would walk to an old, gnarled, and hollowed-out oak. There, I would curl up inside the tree’s hollow and dream. It was like the tree was my mother, and I was inside her, waiting to be born.

Up the road, I would walk a steep, rigorous, heart-taxing ascent. Its physical challenge seemingly substantiated by the makeshift tombstone sitting along the road’s edge with May 31, 1931 scratched upon its surface, the crude monument of jagged native rock marking where a farmer who had lived in the hollow collapsed and died of a heart attack. There, I would kneel in the dirt and wonder what dying alone on the road at the apex of spring and surrounded by freshly leafed out trees must have been like. I always concluded it could not have been bad.

All these many years later, as the little girl I once was hurtles towards age seventy, the oak tree down the hollow is still standing, but she has aged to the place where I fear she may flop over dead any time now. The makeshift tombstone up the hollow is still standing too, but the date scratched upon it has become lichen-splotched and faded to the place where it is almost illegible. While the stone now leans at such a precarious angle, I fear it may soon fall over.

As for the road running through the heart of the hollow, today it is well-maintained. In all honesty, much better than many a city street where I have resided. The local township government’s road crew regularly smooths out its ruts, fills in its potholes, repairs its flaws, restores its crown, installs and cleans out its culverts, as well as adds ample amounts of gravel to its dirt. They do a tremendous job. Including in winter when, within a few hours of any snowfall, they plow the road and restore it to a much less risky drive.

Over the years, the township has also widened the road. Its current width is twice what it was when I was girl. Which is beneficial, since encountering other vehicles on the road has become a common occurrence. Now two cars going in opposite directions can safely pass one another. Although, even on sunny days, I drive with my headlights on, and if I do meet a car or other vehicle going in the opposite direction, I slow down, pull off to the side a bit, and usually even come to a stop.

Almost always, the other driver practices the same dirt road etiquette and returns the courtesy. It’s nice. Although it can get a little awkward if we both are stopped and then get into a hand-motioning/headlight-blinking war about who should proceed first.

As the road has changed so has the hollow the road runs through. No longer an isolated forest wilderness, now it is more of a friendly, peaceful woodland. Benign magic pulsates through the trees. I feel it every day, as familiar and true as a beating heart. So, it is no wonder I imagine this little wooded valley as a fairyland of magical creatures and The Fairytales of Lightfall Hollow as taking place here.

Still, I miss the days when the hollow was wild and remote, and the road was desolate and untended. I miss the days when, not only did my parents believe the road safe enough to allow me to walk it alone as a little girl, a few years later, they also thought it okay to permit me to ride it solo on the back of one of the two donkeys we had here then.

I miss those donkey rides, and I also miss sliding down the road’s untouched, snow-covered descents in a sled. Those rides were thrilling.

Even more thrilling were the rides my uncle provided, where I sat in a wooden box chained to the back of his pickup truck and was dangerously dragged along, the box lurching, skidding, and whipping back and forth from one side of the road to the other.

Fortunately, my parents never knew about those rides.

I have had so many marvelous rides on the hollow’s road, and I have done a lot of running on it too, but through these almost seven decades, mostly I have walked the road. I have walked it in all kinds of weather and at all hours of day and night. I have walked it in the light of the sun, moon, and stars, and I have walked it in darkness so dense I could not see my hand in front of my face. And then there was that still, sultry, fog-filled night thirty-some years ago when, as a mother-to-be in labor, I paced the road through the wee hours until the dawn broke, and the weather broke with it. The temperature plummeted, wind began to blow, snow began to fall, and later that day, the baby boy who gave me life was born.

Speaking of life, as an old woman, I have come to see that, even now with all its changes, the road that runs through the heart of the hollow is as it has always been for me.

The road is life.

Composed of rough and hard stuff, it is full of bumps.

It has holes that remain but briefly filled and flaws that are in constant need of repair.

It is prone to falling into ruts.

It is always dusty or muddy or icy. Never clear or clean or perfect.

It twists and turns, and just when it’s moving along a smooth, easy, nice even plane, it starts to go uphill or drops into a dip.

Nonetheless, despite being a tough road to travel, despite the miserable bumps, holes, flaws, slips and slides in the muck and the cold, as well as the treacherous twists and turns, difficult uphills, and tortuous falls, the road is wondrous and so worth the journey.

At least, that is how this old lady sees the road that runs through the heart of the hollow.

Eight-Point Buck

Tue, 24 Oct 2023 14:14:43 GMT

As I stated in my welcome , my sense of wonder began in the woods. And with the coming of that sense of wonder also came a sense of home. Even though I was only a toddler, I somehow knew right then and there that the woods is my true home.

That certainty has never left me. So, I am extraordinarily lucky. Because I now live in same woods I once rode through as a small child on my father’s shoulders. My true home is the forest of a small, hidden valley known as Lightfall Hollow.

Lightfall Hollow began for me sixty some odd years ago with my maternal uncle. An avid woodsman, he had been driving around the Allegheny Mountains of south-central Pennsylvania for well over a year, searching for a wilderness property to purchase as a hunting ground at the rock-bottom price that was all he and the other six members of his hunt club could afford. He had not even come close to finding land that was for sale, dirt cheap, and the Allegheny mountain forest of his dreams, when he turned into an old, deserted, almost impassable dirt road and drove up a small, narrow, secluded glen that was heavily shaded by the deep hardwood forest growing inside her.

About a mile up that dirt road through that little woodland hollow, standing where is now the middle of the pond he and my father later built, my uncle spotted an eight-point buck. Afterwards, my uncle always said that deer was a sign. That he knew right then and there Lightfall Hollow was the wild realm of his dreams.

I cherish that vision. Because it indicates that my uncle, much like myself, while riding through the hollow experienced a magical moment of wonder and home.

That mutual wonder and home has created an unbreakable and enduring bond for my uncle and me. Although he has been dead for well over two decades, my uncle is always with me. Together, we are at home in the hollow. And every day, I look out at the pond he and my father built and imagine the ghost of an eight-point buck.

Then there is what I see each night. It’s funny, but shortly after we married, my husband, to whom I had not yet told the story about my uncle and the eight-point buck, designed, constructed, and placed in the middle of the pond where that deer once stood a floating halo of eight solar lights. I look at that halo of eight lights falling on the water, reflecting, and shining through the dark, and I wonder what moved him to do so.

I wonder, is that halo a sign?

I don’t know. But I do wonder.

All that I know for certain is, in a world where so much of the time it is dark, a sense of wonder and home is what keeps a spirit alive and brightly burning.

Happy Halloween!

I hope you enjoyed the above, my true story of both wonder and spookiness. And I hope you come back in a couple of weeks and visit me again here in the hollow.

Wonderdust

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 15:59:58 GMT

In 1978, the American rock band, Kansas, told us in their song, “Dust in the Wind,” that “all we are is dust in the wind.” Those words, though humble, elegant, and poignant, could easily be interpreted to portend that life is meaningless and nothing we do matters because our lives are fleeting and “all we do crumbles to the ground. Though we refuse to see.”

However, what if the dust we are made of is wonderdust? What if we are composed of brilliant particles of always and forever? This is what I believe and what I tried to convey in “Of Stardust and Seawater,” one the stories I wrote for The Fairytales of Lightfall Hollow .

I wonder if perhaps, Kerry Livgren, the composer of “Dust in the Wind” had an inkling of the same notion when he also wrote “All my dreams pass before my eyes, a curiosity.” So he appears to admit he acknowledges his hopes, and the word “curiosity” could imply that, while he believes himself to be dust and all he does is dust too, his hopes and dreams remain, a wonder.

If that is true, I would propose it is because like creates like. Although we may seem as insignificant and temporal as dust, we are the glorious stuff of the everlasting. Our dust is wonderdust, and everything we produce is of wonderdust too. While, as Mr. Livgren also informed us, we are as well “the same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea.”

And what a wonder it is to be that same old song.

That was my recurrent thought recently as I was wondering along the seashore during a recent visit to the Atlantic Ocean.

Although the little woodland mountain valley of Lightfall Hollow is my main and most beloved home, ever since I can remember, I have also felt a deep emotional connection and sense of rootedness when I visit the ocean. This is probably at least partially because Lightfall Hollow got its start under an ocean. The Iapetus Ocean, which I refer to as the Appalachian Sea in my fairytales, covered this land 400-600 million years ago. It was a very different, much shallower ocean than the Atlantic, but it is the precursor to the Atlantic, named Iapetus for Greek mythology’s titan, deity of mortality, and father of Atlantis.

Fossils of little sea creatures who once lived in the Iapetus Ocean hundreds of millions of years ago can still be found embedded in rocks on the hollow’s woodland floor and in its creek bed. I am gaga for such treasure-bearing stones, to the extent I prefer holding a fossil in my hand to wearing a diamond on my finger. I have even plastered “remembering rocks” to my kitchen walls, the way others, with perhaps better taste, cover their kitchen walls with ceramic tile, marble, granite, or some other, more obviously beautiful something.

But the fossils, while not beautiful at first glance, fill me with wonder.

As does the sea.

When I look out at the ocean, I can feel I came from there, that the sea is Mother Earth’s womb and where all life on our planet began. So, of course, the sea too is my home. She is my first home, and, from time to time, I want and need to be with her.

To watch the sun of a new day rise over the ocean is one of my favorite wonders. Some dawns on my recent visit to the Atlantic, I witnessed sun and sea move together as one, on separate lighted paths that grew from blazing red to fiery orange to gold to silver to pure, dazzling white. I felt like I was watching a marriage unfold.

Then there was the night when lightning united sky and sea. The thunder of the heavens crashed and roared, and the waves of the ocean crashed and roared in return, sky and sea renewing their wedding vows.

And the thrill of watching that obstinate, spirited surf. How the little ripples gather and proudly swell in waves of translucent, naïve green. Boldly, the waves climb and climb, but all too soon, they crest, curl into fetal position, and fall, exploding with a resounding bellow of defiance. Only to inevitably land on the shore no more than fluffy froth, bubbles of foam popping with wee hisses of indignation.

But the water is undeterred. It slips back to its source. To gather, grow, build, be glorious for a moment, fall, and fizzle out upon the shore once again. The same old song.

Just my opinion, fresh from my wondering at the Atlantic Ocean, but to be a drop of water borne by an endless sea, a speck of dust carried by the wind, and a note in the same old song is the most wonderful wonder of all.

Thank you for reading “Wonderdust.” I hope you will return here in a couple of weeks to read my next post.