04/08/11 21:33
I'm going up the country, baby, don't you wanna go
I'm going up the country, baby, don't you wanna go
I'm going to some place where I've never been before
I'm going, I'm going where the water tastes like wine
I'm going where the water tastes like wine
We can jump in the water, stay drunk all the time
I'm gonna leave this city, got to get away
I'm gonna leave this city, got to get away
All this fussing and fighting, man, you know I sure can't stay
All right, I live in Pennsylvania, in the Poconos, the sticks, the toolies, off the map, where there be dragons, where people marry their cousins. When you City people think of the Poconos, you think of summer camps, honeymoons, the heart shaped bed, and Deliverance. I want to state unequivocally that none of this is true. Well, the summer camps are true, and so are the honeymoons, and the heart shaped beds, but nothing else. At least, I don’t know anybody who married their cousin.
Most of my neighbors are refugees from New York and New Jersey, and they’ve come up here for the clean air, the clean water, and the quiet. Unfortunately, they brought the City with them. When we first moved here, we could see the Milky Way from our back yard, a hazy ribbon of light stretching from one horizon to the next, and my wife and I sat out on lawn chairs, surrounded by our dogs (more about Border Collies in a later post) and listen to the stars, as if we could hear the music of the spheres like a finger rubbed on fine crystal. But our neighbors wanted street lights. We begged them to put up the lights with caps on them that direct the light toward the ground, but they couldn’t see the point of that, so now we watch as the Milky Way retreats behind the same smudge they have in New Jersey, where the only astronomical object you can see is the moon, maybe.
But there are compensations. The other day, I was sitting on my front porch with my neighbor Marvelous Marv, and we were discussing the virtues and vices of riding lawnmowers, when a 600lb black bear, a boar, sauntered down the middle of the road. It was the biggest damn black bear I had ever seen. The people across the street, newbies up from the City, were freaking, running toward their house, pointing and shouting, calling for the police on their cell phones, and screaming. The bear didn’t notice them, but stopped in front of my house and stared at us for what was a good minute. Marvelous Marv and I, being old hands, stared right back. If I had some chewing tobacco, I would have taken a chaw for effect. But then the bear continued his amble, past us down to the creek, and disappeared into the thick brush. God knows where he ended up after that.
“Now that’s something you don’t see in New York,” Marv said.
“Well, at least not every day,” I said, and we returned to riding lawnmowers.