Autumn's Finale...

I suppose last weekend was it. We drove. We looked. We searched. We made due with what was to be found.

The foliage just never got here this year, as has been the case for quite some time, which I did grumble about before.

Finding apples and pumpkins was a plus, it helped to fill in the gaps left by the lack of that precise mix of water, temperature, warmth and chilliness, that can force the stunning show it sometimes does.

For good measure, and with really no thought given to the approach of Halloween, we stopped and walked a small graveyard, lingering in imagination at the lives long ago begun and ended by some of the original settlers in this particular piece of Luzerne County, very near the Wyoming County line. Some of the dead here have been such since before the Civil War.

The surname upon most markers is Dymond, a familiar name to many of us. Dymond's strawberries, blueberries, and hayrides bring an annual trip to the country for a lot of folks in the Wyoming Valley. Right down the road from Dymond's farm is Brace's Orchards. Brace is likewise a name to be found on some markers in this small family cemetery. Those are baskets of Brace's apples up there. Spectacular.

This place, before I forget, is Dymond Hollow. If you're ever of a mind to make the trip, it's not far from Fitch's Corners, on Creamery Road. You'll know you're there when you spot the Dymond Hollow United Methodist Church, a pretty little place with a very active congregation, I'm told.

Personally, I'd like to offer thanks to the deity that places like these still exist and that folks still live nearby and gather for chicken and biscuit suppers in small country churches.

I had to have said this before, but America isn't New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. America is everything else in-between.

I like living in-between.

The Cliches of Autumn...

It's really hard to avoid the photographic cliche when the days again grow short.

Earth-tones, water, sky, late afternoon light, they all say the same thing - it's Fall.

Looking for newness in Fall subject matter takes work, work I'm willing to do, and willing to travel to find. The net result, though, seems pretty much the same.

You drive to where the apples are, search out a blanket of pumpkins, find that looking glass lake. It's pretty much the same.

Getting the right mix of clouds and deep blue skies is a big boost and the only thing you can do to achieve that effect is be patient. You wait, you watch, you'll get what you want. Or you can Photoshop. Nothing here has been "shopped."

Photographic or otherwise, the cliche is a cliche, I think, because there is some truth to it.

Not all that long ago I was listening to "The Girl from Ipanema," the original hit version done by Stan Getz with vocals by Astrud Gilberto.

If ever a song became cliche, that was it. Grammy Award or not, cliche it is, still to this day, the song is cliche.

It became such because so many people loved the song which, in turn, forced countless entertainers to cover the song. Good, bad, somewhere in the middle, hundreds, thousands, did "...Ipanema" at one time or another, making it cliche. You don't play or listen to a song over, and over, and over again because you hate it. If you do, try adjusting the aluminum foil hat a hair to the left and back.

Challenging "...Ipanema" might be McCartney's "Yesterday." It's been reported that "Yesterday" has been commercially recorded over 3,000 times. Cliche? Sure. Great? Absolutely.

My point? Cliche doesn't mean bad. Quite the opposite, really, cliche more means well-liked, maybe even loved. You might be tired of hearing something, looking at something, or listening to it, but that's because it was once popular enough to be elevated to the level of cliche.

Know this, there is nothing in the world of the cliche that didn't earn its position. It takes years of repetition for the patina of cliche to slowly accumulate on any given object, phrase, tune, or even a way of life.

People can be cliche. I was a TV weatherman for over twenty years. Does it get any more cliche than that?

Sad to say, cliche or otherwise, this year's foliage was simply unspectacular. By the looks of it, roughly a week before November, we'll get no breathtaking show this year again. By my reckoning, it might be as many as ten years since Autumn's wow-factor turned heads. Nice, to be sure, but not up there at knockout level.

It's the last weekend in October. From here at home, the day is slowly turning from drippy and overcast to low clouds breaking for some sun. There are way more leaves on the ground than in the trees. Pieced together, it's a somewhat forlorn sight.

The location of each photo, top to bottom, is:

• Brace's Orchards, Franklin Township.
• Darling Farms, Dallas Township.
• Frances Slocum State Park, Kingston Township.
• Ford's Pond, RD Clarks Summit.
• Brace's Cider Mill, Franklin Township.
  

It's 2009's last weekend to capture even more Cliches of Autumn. I'll give it a good try.

A Path Once Wandered...

The Sunday drive is as much a part of my tradition as the dread of Christmas shopping, which of course, is really not much more than weeks away for many. For this laggard, you must be kidding, there's a lifetime to be lived between now and any shopping.

I carry the platinum Federated Laggards of America Membership Card.

So it was that this Sunday past I tossed camera gear in the truck, tossed myself in along with it, then headed for...well, I really didn't know where.

The weekend previous it was south to Hickory Run in Carbon County, so this week I went north into Wyoming County. There was a destination in mind, but my guts were nagging me toward somewhere else.

Going with my guts, I let the journey take me.

In a broad sense, that somewhere else is a location known by many as Sugar Hollow. Others call it The Stretch, or you'll hear the the term the Barn Pool used for this area. Barn Pool no longer applies, since nature (weren't we just talking about nature?) did some reclamation work in recent years and erased the Barn Pool.

Once the road goes from hard to soft, you're there, at least by my own accepted coordinates. The rutted swath you see is not for those still among us with rear wheel drive. It's either front or four-wheel drive, with the only alternative being, get out and walk.

I'd come home. More accurately, I'd returned to my "home water." Most everyone who's ever fly fished has a stream they consider home, their home water. For me, it's here in Sugar Hollow.

For far too many years, I'd been away, busy with things other than those which make me content, happy, at peace. This is a place that once chased errant thoughts away, slowed and calmed a busy and racing mind. A place that offered tangible meditation. Roll your eyes at me saying so, if you will, but this place holds a Zen like quality for me. That may be the first time I ever used the word Zen in any situation. It'll likely be the last.

There may or may not be great enlightenment here, but there is an undeniable peace and tranquility. Each path you see is a means to an end, both lead somewhere, and that somewhere is a little piece of Bowmans Creek that I love, as do so many others.

Fly fishing, be assured, is not a better way to fish, merely a different way to fish. Fly fishing is also a solitary pursuit, in itself rewarding.

To catch a fish is seldom the point. If for you it always is, you've missed said point. Fly fishing, therefore, may not be fishing at all, it could be something else. I see that as a very real possibility.

It's now almost twenty-five years since first discovering a personal immutable: Fly fishing empties my mind of all else. Once I step into a stream, my consciousness becomes as clean and clear as the stream itself, and remains so for as along as I wade its waters.

The gentleman to the left arrived on Bowmans Creek just about the same time as me that day, only he'd come to fish. I'd come alone to reminisce. He was fully outfitted in stream gear, all functional, while my gear was a camera and a lot of great memories.

We had a good chat. On one page we both solidly landed; working a stream is good for the soul, it has magical soothing not to be found elsewhere. Stream etiquette has always been important in fly fishing, so with his happy consent, I stood, watched, and photographed.

Some say there is nothing so good for the inside of a man as the outside of a horse. Having spent but a scant couple hours of my entire life on the back of a horse, there's no challenging that claim.

Instead, I'd offer that, for many, nothing is so good for the mind as the ever moving and never changing waters of a trout stream.

Waving the wand we call a fly rod is little more than giving your hands something rhythmic to do while the sounds of chilly rippling mountain water wash away useless thoughts and distractions.

That day, while I watched, my new acquaintance caught and released two beautiful brown trout. When not looking at him, or following his fly upon the water, I looked skyward.

Within no more than fifteen minutes, an osprey and a great blue heron passed closely enough that we might have looked each other in the eye. And while I can't raise my right hand to it, I'm near positive of glimpsing the brief flash of a bald eagle riding a thermal into view no more than fifty feet away.

Last Sunday was a fine day.

Hickory Run...

Overlooked is one word to describe Hickory Run State Park. Another word might be under-appreciated. In all honesty, I wish that more of Pennsylvania would get overlooked, ignored, and generally left alone.

This is one gorgeous state. Its natural beauty may very well be unparalleled. Each time a little bit of it gets gobbled up in the name of "progress" my stomach turns, my heart breaks. Hyperbole? Sadly, no, no, not at all.

Even what I've captured here has been tinkered with by man. Interfering with the natural order of things is an All-American past time. Baseball? Nah. The All-American pastime is not leaving well enough alone. In this particular case it was building dams. Yes, I would imagine you'll find some charm in this photo, charm coming from the fact that both of these dams are built of roughly hand-hewn and presumably native stone.

The charm wasn't lost on me. I stopped, set up my camera on tripod, and took dozens of long exposure shots of this scene and others within the park. There is considerable charm in the pretty pools and cascading waters created by those rocks placed one upon another.

Waterfalls need not be of our making, we've got plenty right here in NE PA left behind from the glacial scraping of the last Ice Age. Have you ever visited Rickett's Glen? Breathtaking.

Each time we build something for our pleasure or convenience, we interfere with how nature developed over millions of years. That incomprehensible time-line should alone be a pretty clear indicator that nature, however you define it, is a force not to be trifled with, not to be teased over and over again until there's a breaking point.

Nature will never break. We will. The planet may suffer countless indignities but will, in the end, prevail.

No matter the thousands of lessons hard learned down through the centuries, humans continue to believe we are masters and mistresses of all we survey.

Some say, "We plan, God laughs."

We plan, nature laughs. It's really one and the same.

Scooping Out The Litterbox...

Before gagging, yewwwwwwing, and getting all dyspeptic on me, that's a cake over there. You want the real thing, I can hook you up, but that's a cake. There are dozens of recipes out there for Litter Box Cake, it's apparently big around Halloween. Boo. I'm a little queasy myself.

Got that annual flu shot a few weeks ago. Painless enough. Last week, early on in the morning, the chills woke me, followed by an ache from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. A flash of fever followed. Reaction to the flu shot? I really don't know. Some "experts" say any reaction you might experience would not be that reaction.

The Swine Flu. Didn't we go through this thirty years ago? Seems I remember lining up at a firehouse in Taylor to take that thump from a pneumatic inoculation gun so I didn't get Swine Flu. And, I didn't get it. Who did? Some joked it was no big whoop. I think that mass inoculations, free at that, prevented an outbreak that was feared by many as the coming of a great plague, literally.

We have something for everyone. Why do businesses insist on telling me that there's nothing they don't have? No one has everything. The closest I've ever come to seeing a place that had something for everyone was Sugerman's. Even their bulging inventory didn't halt them from skidding into the big book of history.

Marcellus Shale is one hell of a seductress. If some gas company came around and started writing me astounding checks to poke holes in my property, it would be really tough to say no. Many will get wealthy beyond imagining, going from near poverty level to millionaires overnight, really overnight. We need to slam the brakes on this thing until legislation is in place to strictly regulate the process. Last week a string of Halliburton drilling rigs blew past me on I-81 north. Does anyone believe these corporate monsters will leave us better than they found us? Please, someone, anyone, do what needs to be done; place a moratorium on all drilling until we can feel safe in knowing that we aren't getting drilled along with the Marcellus Shale.

Jay Leno would do himself a favor in knowing when it's time to leave. It sure can't be the money or the benefits, so it has to be either an enormous ego in need of feeding or an equally insatiable appetite to keep working and working and working. I've mentioned elsewhere that I really loved Leno as a stand-up, then really disliked him as a late night host. Both he and NBC are trying too hard, and it shows. NBC has brought us some of the best, while bringing us some of the worst. Would someone please tell Amy Pohler that she's not funny? Her pal Tina Fey can be very funny. I don't think "funny by association" works.

SNL's Turnaround on President Obama. Their flip from pro to anti was more about pumping life back into that sad shell of a show than biting commentary on the president. The president is not above criticism. SNL is no longer funny, and far worse yet, its relevance is trace at best. My qualifications to critique the show may be a little thin. I don't watch it much these days, it's that bad.

President Obama's Nobel Prize. Shortly after news came from Stockholm that our president had been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, his detractors began dissing not only him, but the Nobel Prize itself, some going so far to say, "...a Nobel Prize isn't what it used to be." You do realize of course, that most making all the noise have no "prizes" of their own, they haven't even a little teeny tiny plastic loving cup around the house marking even the smallest of achievements. Again, the president isn't above criticism. However, bitterness and resentment over the accomplishment of others is pretty damned small-minded.

The Letterman Affair. Affair, fling, dalliance, casual sex, whatever it was, it sure sounds like little more than a physical tangle between two consenting adults. Now, of course, the "talkers" are all out there trying to make a ton more of this thing than it deserves. Letterman cheated on his wife. To state the ridiculously obvious, that is unacceptable, wrong, despicable. Now all the vultures and parasites are circling and slithering in hopes that this situation "has legs," meaning that there is enough bubbling beneath the surface here to keep it going for months, years. My prediction? No legs. Vultures and parasites go elsewhere. Most Americans are very fond of David Letterman, that's an opinion that will not change.

I love newspapers and read at least three a day. That, I guess, is the good news. The even better news is that I actually hold all three in my hands and read them...but only Monday - Friday. Weekends, I read two of the three on-line. On-line is where I have a problem, and not with any news stories themselves, but rather with the ability offered by these papers to leave comments regarding any particular story. Read the story, then read the comments. The line gets very blurry as to where fact ends and opinion begins.

A chance of showers doesn't mean "Run for your lives!" Weather people really need to work on that. It would be the responsible thing to do. I spent twenty years yammering about the weather, and daily, hourly, fought to bring correct and precise information to the public in whose service I was. A shower is just that, a shower. It's not an all day soaking rain. I've understood the implications from both sides of the camera. While I'm making a speech here, rain is not evil. Rain is a bringer of life.

A Brief Trip on The Misinformation Superhighway. This past week we had ourselves a situation. Seems a dog got itself stranded on Scovell Island in the Susquehanna River. Scovell is one huge land mass in the shadow of Campbell's Ledge, an environment unto itself no more than a stone's throw from a busy neighborhood. By the time the dog was back with its owner, the stories circulating ranged from the silly to the absurd. Fingers of blame predictably started to look for a target at which to point, and there was no such thing. The dog got away from someone who was dog-sitting. The dog ran. The dog is skittish, a little nervous. Some dogs are, some dogs aren't. When a passer-by spotted the dog and tried be a Good Samaritan and grab it, the dog jumped in the river and swam over to the island. Most dogs swim quite well. There was no neglect, abandonment, or animal cruelty involved. I know. We had a Humane Police Officer on scene. There is far more to be gained in animal welfare with a level head, rather than with raw emotion.

We didn't get the Olympics. What shall we make of Chicago's failed bid to bring the games here? I can tell you what I make of it; America isn't the only country in the world. We may be the biggest and the best (at least we think so) but we are neither the center of the universe nor the capital of the planet. America, and Americans, can't have everything they want. When we don't get what we want, we whimper and, just as with the doggie-deal, we start looking for targets of blame.

I Like Fall...

Harveys Lake. Last Sunday.

Late afternoon.

A grab shot from the small stone dam near the "Lakeside Skillet."

Sometimes you get lucky.

It won't win any awards, but not bad.