On the road

I started out on the road on Sunday. Getting through Ohio is always a drag, but after I got past Columbus, things seemed to roll smoother. One of my favorite places to stop on this drive is Wheeling, WV. I don't do much else except get out of the car and walk by the river, but what a river. The Ohio River.

I've seen a few stunning rivers on this drive. Ohio. Delaware. But the one that always stuns me is the Susquahanna. As you are driving through the mountains in Pennsylvania, the highway veers around till it is hugging the side of a Mountain Range, until it finds a gap and passes through, and then you are in a maze of ridges until suddenly, as you approach Harrisburg, you are on this massive bridge crossing over the Susquahanna as it emerges, wide and magnificent, from between two mountains.

This time, my trip has a different sort of flavor. I am neither going to something nor escaping from somewhere. This place is so much a part of my life now, that the trip seems merely like a necessary distance to be crossed. Though this distance itself is interesting. I stayed the night in a hostel on the Appalachian Trail - an old brick mansion from the early 1800s that belonged to the owner of a nearby iron mine.

There were two girls there who were hiking the trail - they had started in late March. This hostel happens to be at the middle point of the trail, so they still have a long way to go. I asked them why they decided to hike the whole trail, and one girl said, "Cause I like walking." The other responded, "It's a good transitional activity, to help you figure our what comes next." And then they were off down the trail. The hostel keeper said they get about 100-120 trail hikers a month at the hostel.

The hostel itself was nestled in the Michaux Valley. Once I got off the highway, I drove through beautiful little roads dotted with interesting old farmhouses between the towns of Newburgh and Newtown. Prof. Glassie would have been proud. All my vernacular architecture class memories rushed to the forefront of my mind. Two front doors + symmetrical facade = German vernacular housing!!! They were everywhere. Almost every old house followed the model, and they almost all faced east, regardless of their orientation to the road. And as I navigated through the last rays of twighlight and an oncoming rainstorm, I passed an Amish buggy gliding down the oncoming lane.

I am now in Jeffersonville, and my mind is full of thesis ideas and gossip.