Allegheny Mountains

Allegheny Mountains: 

it's Christmas, and this isn't a holiday that has much meaning to me outside of some happy childhood memories of celebrating with my family, the ritual of driving north to Pennsylvania to visit my grandmother, what seemed an endless driving, but loving the view as we made our way through the Allegheny Mountains. I feel a kinship with those mountains even today,ancient, rounded and worn down in height, yet once reviling the Himalayas in their reach. My Christmas memories take me there, that long stretch of turnpike, stopping for a meal and enjoying the crisp bite of mountain air that greeted me fresh after the warmth of the car and family near. 

my father was a sure and steady driver, I never once doubted his skills navigating the often snow covered road. Although I'm sure it was a tiring drive for him, he loved the mountains too and would answer any question I threw his way concerning them. He taught middle school physical science and had a great love for geology, geography, maps and history, passing that love on to me. More so, he was a mountain boy at heart, having grown up in deep rural central Pennsylvania, son of a forest ranger, hunting with his family until his sensitive nature urged him to halt. Even after serving in the navy in the last year of the war, he remained a gentle soul. I loved him dearly.

this is my first Christmas without him. 

  he made it to 94, fairly healthy and mobile until his six months, and even then he continued to exercise, to be as independent and helpful as possible. I was fortunate to spend this time with him, caregiver in name and act, but receiving just as much in return. He was a selfless man, giving and caring for his family literally until the very end, our last conversation being his final moments, and he apologized that he may have awakened me. His death sums up our relationship, how he lived his life, and how much he wished for my welfare and concern. 

yesterday I wrote of words, of how they appear from an unknown source of quiet, stillness, spontaneous in their arrival. I never really know the topic or theme of anything I write until near done, these things making themselves known to me as words appear. I started writing this morning thinking of Christmas, a holiday I only celebrate by tradition, feeling much closer to solstice lore and pagan ritual. Maybe it's my mountain roots passed down from my father, an earth-based call of celebration of land, rock, and spirit. It seems the Alleghenies have their hold still, and urge me to visit this morning if even and only in my thoughts and writing. It's somehow fitting that my writing took this turn, winding like a Pennsylvania mountain road, from holiday memories and thoughts of my father, and that it ends with landscape, ancient, eroded and weathered worn through time, yet still towering in my mind. I think my father would enjoy me writing of the Allegheny Mountains. This is for him, and for everyone who shares a deep kinship to a certain land, and whatever memories it brings you. 

Peace, Eric