Another American Adventure: Brown

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Brown

Other than some moss growing here and there, Western Pennsylvania is very brown this time of year. No sign of growth or budding, this is still the dead of winter. Even though it is above freezing during the day, it feels very cold to me. There is a wind ...

Perhaps fitting for the day before Ash Wednesday.

2 comments:

BarbaraFebruary 12, 2013 at 5:53 PM
Around here things are in shades of black, white and grey. Temperatures will hover around the f.p. for a few days. From our perspective that's almost balmy. I had some problems getting out of my driveway tonight -- slushy ice. I will salt it again tomorrow and I parked my car on the street.
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beth cioffolettiFebruary 13, 2013 at 8:33 AM
It was 26 deg F this morning when Jubilee and I went out for our walk, and it felt comfortable. Talk of snow, or flurries, and also of high 40s tomorrow! I am nervous about driving in snow, and have to go into Pittsburgh (22 miles) to the doctor and chemo appointments, starting on Friday. So ... we'll see how this goes ...
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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.