Pittsburgh has been my home for most of my life. I am a city boy. However, the occasional trip to the countryside is a welcome respite to the monotonous, concrete surroundings I am used to. We recently had a trip to Waynesboro, PA. This is about my eighth visit to the area with Marieke.
Each time we make the trip, I'm always surprised by the beauty of the area. While the Appalachian Mountains run right through here, Waynesboro is situated between the Appalachian Plateau and the Blue Ridge Mountains in what is known as the Valley and Ridge. This location lends itself to a landscape that is slightly hilly, ringed by distant peaks and topped with an almost perfect 360 degree view of the sky. Beautiful scarcely defines the scene.
I do not grow tired of seeing fields and fields of corn, soybeans, alfalfa, orchards and rows and rows of hay bales. While Pittsburgh has a fairly diverse and active ecosystem of its own including groves of deciduous trees located in sprawling parks (it is one of the greenest cities in terms of tree population), nothing we have here compares to seeing farms upon farms- of which there is no shortage in Waynesboro.
We must have driven by at least a hundred corn fields and several dozen soybean fields. 100% of America's soybean production comes from fields located in Pennsylvania. So if you plan on eating tofu in the next 6 months, chances are good that we passed the field where the main ingredient was growing.
The near 4 hour drive is worth taking just for the peaches and corn alone- to say nothing of the water, air and roller coaster-like country roads. 
While driving from Chambersburg to the Blue Mountain entrance on the PA Turnpike, you will inevitably encounter what must be the oldest post office in Pennsylvania, numerous orange triangled horse and buggies, vegetable stands by the handful and the occasional Mennonite boy on a scooter.
Perplexingly, several familiar orchards and corn fields have been vacated in favor of housing developments. Marieke and I are of the same mind on this evolution: we're all for progress, but how many people could possibly want to live in Waynesboro?
The land occupied by her childhood house and the surrounding property, previously devoid of 'next-door neighbors', has been carved up and the apple orchards across the street are no more. Where there was a natural pond at the foot of the yard of a far off house is now a cul-de-sac surrounded by ten or twelve houses, eight or nine of which are for sale.
Musselman's applesauce created their ware from apple orchards that previously extended from one end of the intersecting road adjacent to Marieke's house up the mountain as far as the eye could see. Now there are pre-fab houses.
According to Grandma Margie, the cornfields behind her abode, the first in my life I ever walked through, are being torn up to make room for 97 houses. 97 houses in the middle of nowhere. Who is going to buy them? I've been putting off getting a conversion kit for our car that would enable us to use ethanol because of the possible contribution to 'agflation'. Now I have a better picture of why corn is apparently so hard to come by.
Someone had to say yes to this and I curse them for taking away something precious and inestimable only to replace it with urban sprawl. It is disgusting.
22 July 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments
(
Atom
)
Posts
0 comments :
Post a Comment