Another American Adventure: Wellsville, again

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Wellsville, again

While I was gassing up before leaving Wellsville yesterday morning, I thought this view of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church was interesting. The gas station attendant had to come outside to see what I could possibly taking taking a picture of!

Once again, I was driving in early morning fog. It settles in the valleys, but as you get to the top of the hill, there is a clear blue sky.

Not much traffic on the road all the way to Erie. Easy driving. Zillions and zillions of lovely wildflowers lining the path, like angels and saints.

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"In those first days, people said, a squirrel could run the long length of Pennsylvania without ever touching the ground. In those first days, the woods were white oak and chestnut, hickory, maple, sycamore, walnut, wild ash, wild plum, and white pine. The pine grew on the ridgetops where the mountains' lumpy spines stuck up and their skin was thinnest.

"The wilderness was uncanny, unknown. Benjamin Franklin had already invented his stove in Philadelphia by 1753, and Thomas Jefferson was a schoolboy in Virginia; French soldiers had been living in forts along Lake Erie for two generations. But west of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania, there was not even a settlement, not even a cabin. No Indians lived there, or even near there.

"Wild grapevines tangled the treetops and shut out the sun. Few songbirds lived in the deep woods. Bright Carolina parakeets - red, green, and yellow - nested in the dark forest. There were ravens then, too. Woodpeckers rattled the big trees' trunks, ruffed grouse whirred their tail feathers in the fall, and every long once in a while a nervous gang of empty-headed turkeys came hustling and kicking through the leaves - but no one heard any of this, no one at all."

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood.