Day One: Washington, DC, to State College, Pennsylvania

Monday 23 September -- On day one, I took the 9:30am fun energy exercise class in Falls Church, Virginia, then changed into jeans and drove about 200 miles to a friend near State College, Pennsylvania.  The weather was gorgeous, with blue blue skies and a few light, fluffy clouds that never seemed to obscure the sun at all.  According to the First National Bank of Mercersburg, it was 66 degrees, but it felt warmer than that.

The drive just felt like another nuisance until I got off of route 270, one of the major arteries for the DC area.  Then my route followed mostly secondary roads; single lane in each direction, 50- and 55-mph speed limits.  Traffic was light, and the scenery was rich with trees and fields and farms and small towns.  It looks nothing like the city-and-suburban terrain of my daily life.  Western Maryland and south-central Pennsylvania offer up some gentle undulations as well, some of them steep enough to make the sudden appearance of a truck lane welcome – those trucks get really slow at times.

Perhaps the minarets have a practical purpose, but what?

Thanks for the muffin, R&C!

Right about the Maryland/Pennsylvania border, I saw a beautiful barn and stopped to take its picture.  There was a field across the street, next to a pasture with six or seven horses, so I strolled over there for a picnic.  I’d brought some odds and ends from home that would just have gone bad if I’d left them, so I could enjoy fresh mozzarella with a roll and a sweet, white nectarine for lunch.  The neighbors had baked banana muffins the night before, and given me one as a bon-voyage gift, so that was dessert.  I was braced for icky walnuts, but those dark lumps turned out to be chocolate chips.  Finding chocolate chips in my dessert muffin was a burbling joy on a warm afternoon, sitting in the grass by the road near the state line, awash in sunshine and happiness.

Nova, Pennsylvania, right up the road, felt a million miles from home.  But when I switched on the radio, I got the DC station I’d been listening to in NoVA (a popular acronym for northern Virginia).  It was a bit of a shock.  One or two bends later, the signal started to fade, and when Foster the Static came on singing, “All the other krtch with krtch krtch up krtch,” I hit the scan button.

I don't think we're in the Capital Area anymore, Toto.

I got to D.J.’s town early, but there was a park right up the street where I could walk along a river.  A friendly cyclist stopped to tell me, with a Scandinavian accent, that she’d seen copperheads in the grass there recently.  People see them in the woods around the lower Potomac, too, and I’ve never heard of anyone getting bitten.  So copperheads:  not too worrying.  The leaves were just starting to turn, and there were still lots of wildflowers, in blues and purples and yellows and whites.  There were also plentiful signs warning people that if they rode horses on the trail, instead of the grass verge, horses would be banned permanently from the trail.  I saw hoof marks on the grass; none on the trail.  Whew.

Alabama-cum-Pennsylvania with a chunk missing.

D.J.’s kids are great, and her husband friendly and smart.  He remembered the quote I always like but frequently forget (this is not his only claim to intelligence), from James Carville, regarding the state’s demographic profile:  “Pennsylvania has Philadelphia to the east and Pittsburgh to the west, and in between there’s Alabama without the blacks.”  Or something like that.  There are certainly more than a few yard signs quoting Biblical passages, as well as yard signs offering fresh, brown eggs for sale.  My Detroit friend, K.R., says, “I like the eggs better.  I’m not done sinning yet.”  What Bible verse do you love so well you’d be moved to make a sign of it, and stick it in front of your home?

Metaphorical tree in quite literal landscape.

Dinner at D.J.’s was bountiful, with cornbread baked in a cast-iron skillet and tasty delicious kale chips.  She also made brownies, and never once consulted a recipe to make sure she had the proportions right, for them or the cornbread.  You can tell this is a PhD-rich family.

Here is her recipe for kale chips:

Take a bunch of kale and wash it.  Cut out the tough stems and slice the leaves and tender stems into something roughly like two-by-two inch pieces.  Put them in a bowl, add some olive oil and salt and mix everything around.  Then put the kale on a cooky sheet and bake at about 400F for a few minutes, until it gets crispy and maybe some pieces are a little burnt.  It’s delicious, but maybe that’s because she put me in charge of the oil and salt part and so they came out pretty greasy and salty.  Yum.

This is a recipe I can memorize.  With baking, I always double check whether it’s a teaspoon of soda or just half a teaspoon, etc. etc., even with things I’ve made 100 times, like bread and Cape Cod oatmeal cookies.  The only thing I trust myself to bake without looking at the recipe is pie pastry.

I went to bed in the beautiful guest room/playroom (“Did you make anything with the Lego’s?” D.J. asked in the morning.  No, I collapsed into crisp, clean sheets and pulled the comforter up to my chin.) of their gorgeous federal-style home, after washing up in the under-the-eaves bathroom, eyeing the tiny clawfoot bathtub with anticipation.  My own former home has no bathtubs, just ‘luxury’ showers, so I do like a nice tub bath where one’s available.

A soothing and revivifying day.  I feel like I'm in the right place.

Chambersburg, Pennsylvania or thereabouts.