I left this morning not knowing where I would ride other than eventually I needed to be at Lowe’s to buy a tube of silicone caulking for the bathroom. It’s always something with a house. I decided to take a long loop to the north that would take me through some quiet places with a minimum of traffic. After a stop for fuel I rode along Spring Creek just to see the water. This is one of Pennsylvania’s great trout streams and during trout season you will be lucky to find a place to stand. Being a loner I never understood the attraction of opening day either for trout or deer. Just a huge madhouse.
I stopped to look around at the water and rocks and sort of got lost for a while.
The quiet is magnified by the earplugs I wear and when I stand looking at the water my thoughts get loud. I wear the plugs to save my hearing but I definitely like the way they cut be off from the noise and make it easier to pay attention to thoughts.
Riding out of the valley and into the farmland above the creek I was struck by all the open land we still have. One big farm has been sold off and is now the beginning of an industrial park, something we have a lot of in Pennsylvania.
I’m not sure how successful they are but the local business leaders seem to think they are the answer to every economic woe. As I look out at the empty farmhouse I can’t help but wonder how much land has to surrender itself to development before we’re done. Big business, big houses, big stores. Growth is the Holy Grail. You don’t have to ride far to see that the world is in a cycle of constant change.
Snow fences are emerging in preparation for the blowing wind and snow that sweeps across this area.
The skies seem to get darker every day as a reminder to prepare for winter.
I saw another old farm off in the distance and decided to cut across a field to have a look.
No “No Trespassing” signs and being Sunday all good farmers and landowners would either be in church or in front of the tube so I felt a good dose of trespassing was in order. The scooter just looks so tiny in the wide-open spaces of Pennsylvania. I can’t imagine what it would be like in the West and Midwest. Someday.
All that was left of the farm was a silo.
The house was torn down and I suspect a developer has bought up this land as well to turn it into something great, another retirement community, some condominium cells, or perhaps another shopping plaza. There just aren’t enough places yet to dump money. I rode away towards Lowe’s and the tub and tile caulk and realized that everything is part of a cycle. The farms would give way to something else and that would give way to something else. Nothing is permanent if you’re patient enough. I grew up on Neville Island in the Ohio River south of Pittsburgh. Almost the entire island was taken up by shipyards, steel fabrication companies, blast furnaces, coke ovens, tank farms, trucking companies, and chemical plants. A bustling industrial beacon employing tens of thousands of people. In a few short years in the early 1980’s all of that vanished. Steel disappeared and the landscape changed again.
I stopped at the old Lowe’s building to take this picture.
They were in business at this location for about 10 years or so. Now they have built a new facility and abandoned this site. It won’t disappear as fast or easily as a farm but it will eventually give way. I hate to see the best landscapes surrender to development but money talks and walks. Too bad it doesn’t think.
Bill Sommers says
No, you don’t have to ride far to see the constant change. And it bothers me.
That is the sole reason that my favorite areas to ride are in the Olympic National Park. The Dept. of Interior will not allow the preditors to develop the unchanged landscape that is my back yard.
I’m so thankful for that.
Have fun,
Bill
Doug K. says
I’ve watched what you describe take place over the last 25 years here in the Phoenix, AZ area and now it’s coming to my little down 40 miles south of Phoenix: Walled communities, strip malls, a new Home Depot and a Lowe’s. As I drive across town all I see is “Generica.” The view of the rugged desert mountains are all but gone. I guess you could say, since I’m not a native of this town, that I’m part of the problem. No matter, retirement is just around the corner and I’ll get out and get to somewhere that’s open spaces again. And no doubt the locals there, wherever “there” will be, will bemoan the arrival of another city guy cluttering up their place.
Steve Williams says
bill: I wonder what our country’s landscape would look like now if there were no state and national parks and forests. Someday I hope to see the Olympic National Park.
doug: Generica is a great word! So appropriate for the commercial sameness surrounding us. Blindfold me and drop me in the parking lot of a strip mall somewhere in America and I would have no idea where I was.
As long as you don’t build a shopping center somewhere when you move you should be able to sneak in and become a local in twenty to thirty years. In the East it takes longer. I know a family who has lived on a farm here for over 50 years and the neighbors still refer to their place by the name of the previous farm family. Localness comes hard and slow in some places.