By the way, the Blue Mountain Lotus Society (a local Buddhist group) is having a book discussion group on The End of Faith on May 8th at the East Shore Borders. I think I might go. I don’t actually think Buddhism runs afoul of any of Harris’ critiques of religion generally, so it might be interesting to get a Buddhist perspective of the book.
Anyways, the place is very nice, and it’s pretty close by.
We got there and were greeted with a prophetic sign warning us of impending turtles.
Turtle Crossing
I’m happy that things are starting to turn green. I have a touch of the seasonal affective funk, and seeing green stuff seems to pull me right out of it.
I’m all about the chloroplasts
We saw a beaver swimming around, and I assume this is his house.
A beaver house
The lake was full of all sorts of ducks and geese and those long-legged white birds (Egrets?) I don’t know much about birds, but I’m pretty sure this is a goose’s arse.
A goose’s arse
More signs of life. The trees are busy getting thier leaves ready.
Buds
At last, the long awaited turtle parade. I have seen turtles all lined up on a log like this on TV, but never in real life.
Turtles in the sun
We also saw a deer and some gigantic snapping turtles, but I didn’t get any picures of them. I was amazed at how much wildlife there was basically in downtown Harrisburg. It’s a 3.1 mile hike around the whole lake, and we were back to the starting point in about an hour. Not a bad way to kill a Friday afternoon.
I’ve always been fascinated by monasticism, especially Buddhist. (Probably watched too many Kung-Fu movies as a kid.)
Anyhow, if you’re into that sort of thing, it’s worth a listen.
Trail
We got out just past the Appalachian Trail where a dude was talking to some hikers about an abandoned coal mining town (Rausch Gap) that used to be here. We broke the cardinal rule, and rode bikes on the AT. I was very pleased with the moustache bars’ performance on what was essentially fairly rocky singletrack.
So, we found this town’s cemetery, and I tried to take some pictures of it, but my camera started getting all flakey and wierd on me. The LCD started turning on and off all by itself, and the none of the pictures turned out.
Very Blair Witch. Kind of freaked me out.
Anyways, we did get a few pictures of some other stuff. It was a beautiful day to be on the trail, and the traffic was pretty heavy.
An old bridge
Now that I look through some of the other pictures I took, I think my camera may be starting to die. It probably wasn’t the ghosts of long-dead coal miners after all. I bought the thing in 2001, and I suppose it has outlasted it’s intended life span. Maybe it’s time to upgrade.
This was a really nice weekend. I rode to work on Friday, I went Kayaking on Saturday, and had a supernatural bike ride on Sunday. It’s finally spring! W00t!
I found a page documenting the St. Anthony’s Wilderness area, which contained the ghost town. Lots of nice pictures. Check it out.
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/StAnthonyWilderness/picpage.htm
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper