Walking Thoughts

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Once, on a rare day off work, I decided to take a long walk.  One of the places to do this in the Lehigh Valley is the Saucon Rail Trail.  At the moment it doesn’t quite reach Bethlehem, so if you start from that end, you go south.  I noticed something on my long walk.  On the northern end of the trail there are informational signs.  One of the favorites that I spotted is this one, on dinosaurs of the Saucon Valley.  Some of the others are town names and commemorations of the rail stations that are no longer there.  There’s one of these in Hellertown and another in Bingen.  Educational signs are one of the simple pleasures in life.  It was a long walk, however, and I was just getting started.  The trail skirts along some wealthy properties.  During the fall, these often display right-leaning signs and banners.  As you head in that direction, the educational signs disappear.

More “private property” signs show up.  If you go far enough, “Residential area: please keep the noise down” (I don’t recall the exact wording) signs appear.  It seems less friendly.  Then “No Loitering” signs.  I was disappointed on my long walk, but not surprised.  My understanding of local politics are that the northern part of the trail leans blue.  Indeed, it too is a residential area, but there were no shushing signs, just educational ones (and the necessary ones about trail rules).  In fact, some property owners put out whimsical, occasionally interactive, diversions to amuse walkers, bikers, and joggers.  The near southern section goes through deep red territory.  The signs are less friendly, at least as far as I went.

I didn’t walk the entire length of the trail; it’s seven-and-a-half miles.  In my post-Nashotah days of shock I used to jog nine miles, but I’ve had a desk job far too many years and my daily jogs are now down to one or two.  I’m curious if the trend continues.  The Saucon Rail Trail used to be part of the North Pennsylvania Rail Road.  There’s a bit of history along the trail.  The Thomas Iron Company used to have a factory on the northern end of the path.  I see from the map that it also skirts DeSales University.  Perhaps, if I ever retire, I’ll be able to work back up to walking the entire distance.  Maybe by then there’ll be more friendly signs than warning ones.  But then again, I could be a dinosaur.

Geeology

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Some of my fondest memories of the Midwest, apart from living my teaching dream, involve rockhounding.  The other day I was out in the garage trying to locate my rock tumbler when I came across many carefully labeled boxes from our rockhounding trips.  Not all of these trips were local, nor were all of them solely rock-based.  For example, my family took a driving trip around Lake Superior.  This was back before a passport was required to cross the border.  Part of the trip involved driving up to Copper Harbor in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to look for agates and, well, copper.  Then there was the time when we drove to Hannibal, Missouri to hunt for geodes.  The mine was closed because of excessive rain so a couple months later we drove down with some friends we knew from Michigan and tried again.  This time with success.

The great, unfortunately departed, bookstore manager at Nashotah House was a great conversation partner.  Once I was talking to her about rocks and I stopped and apologized, “I don’t know why I’m so interested in rocks.”  She said, “You’ve got curiosity.  If it wasn’t rocks it would be something else.”  I took that to be the compliment it was intended to be.  Not everyone at the seminary was curious and many were only interested in matters ecclesiastical.  One night a huge windstorm blew over a very large cedar tree that barely missed our house.  Before the week was out, I was outside standing in the hole left by its roots, poking around the glacial till for interesting rocks.  I continued doing this until the tree was removed and the hole filled in.  I’ve had other interests, bordering on obsessions, in my life, but the geological interest started early.

When I was a child my brothers and I would go down to French Creek in Franklin, under the 13th Street bridge and look for fossils.  I wondered how this could fit together with the story of the world being only 6,000 years old.  We knew from school that fossils were millions of years in the making.  One time my mother bought us, at a rummage sale, a small cardboard “rock collection.”  It had a few little pieces of non-gem quality gemstones glued to the bottom.  A couple of them had been previously pilfered.  I was fascinated that such colorful things just came out of the ground.  Planning on being a minister, I never studied geology in school.  To be fair, I don’t think Grove City even offered a geology major.  Years later, teaching in a seminary in the Midwest, my old fascination caught up with me again.  And it left many fond memories.