Another American Adventure: north to south (again)

Monday, October 24, 2011

north to south (again)

It dawns on me that for each of the last 6 nights, I have slept in a different state. (Wed -PA, Thurs - CT, Fri - NJ, Sat.- PA, Sun- SC, and Mon - FL)

Anyway, through a mostly cloudless sky, Jubilee and I made our way to a cool and breezy Florida tonight. We opened the house up (all the windows and doors) and then sat outside and watched the stars. Still feels strange to be here, but Jubilee is definitely excited.

Before we left Cranberry TWP on Sunday, we took one last walk at Knob Hill. John liked this leaf ...

And, believe it or not there was frost on my back window the morning we left. (There's definitely no frost in Florida!)

Waving hello to Tony in Daytona ...

The lighting is so different down here. Much, much light. Jubilee went for a swim within 1 minute of getting the doors open to the backyard. We put some bird seed in the feeder, so there will be squirrels around soon. She thinks she is in heaven. I hope her allergies don't act up.

1 comment:

BarbaraOctober 25, 2011 at 12:17 PM
Glad you had a safe trip. How long will you be in Florida? When you return, the trees in Cranberry Twp will be bare. Today the guys came to put the plastic cover on my car shelter. Next week the tires get changed. Winter is around the corner.
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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.