Another American Adventure: Thorn Hill

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Thorn Hill

One of the other dog walkers that I meet at Knob Hill told me that I needed to hike Thorn Hill, which is across the road from Knob Hill. This morning we hiked Thorn Hill. It was OK, but really not such a big deal. The path followed power lines to the top of the hill where there was a large transformer switch yard. From there we were soon in the parking lot of an industrial park. It looked like it might be a good trail to jog on (if I jogged).

We decided that we like Knob Hill much better. Knob Hill is more remote, with trails that are less developed and lead further into the woods where you can hear different bird songs. A little more wilderness and mystery, despite the fact that you are just off the road.

Back at Knob Hill, Jubilee found a very big stick and attempted to carry it home.

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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.