Following Bryson II : The Pinnacle

(continued from here)

As I re-entered the woods on my way to the Pinnacle, the only thing on my mind was big rattlesnakes that moved through leaves. The trail was covered with leaves that were moving. It could have been the wind or it could have been rattlesnakes. Or it could have been rattlesnakes breaking wind. Fuck you, hiker guy, for your well-meaning warnings.

The problem with keeping an eye out for anything while hiking the AT in Pennsylvania is that it is virtually impossible to do so without inflicting grievous bodily injury upon your person. This trail is a fucking rocky mess. It demands intense concentration from you, the hiker, at all times. You cannot withdraw your gaze from the path immediately preceding you even for a split second, because by doing so, you are inviting permanent disability upon your ankles and any other body part that embarks upon a collision course with the ground as a result. Therefore, while you're on the trail, you may not admire the scenery. You may not observe the serene verdancy of the surrounding foliage. You may not even turn around to check if that grunting growling sound that has been following you in close proximity for the past fifteen minutes is an harbinger of doom or merely a benevolent fellow-organism desirous of initiating contact with you with the benign intent of accompanying you in your adventures.

The end result is, on the trail, you turn into a quivering bundle of nerves. Anything your peripheral vision makes out to be an object of even a remotely reptilian nature, be it a twig or your own forearm, spooks you out. Finally, after being startled by a log for the twentieth fucking time, I realized that I needed to have a talk with myself.

"Listen up", I said. "No matter how many times you shit your pants at the sight of a log, if it has been written in the stars, the snakes will still get you. Look up, do you see any stars? No? It means you're safe. So get back to work, chickenshit". I even tried to shame myself by doing the chicken dance. It worked.

"Yes Sir", I said to myself and began to walk again, feeling less terror-stricken.

This feeling lasted until I reached the boulders. Again, those fucking boulders, as far as the eye could see. I thought I was done with the boulders but here they fucking were again. This time it was even worse because snakes in crevices had gone from being just an old wives tale to cold hard reality. Well, there was nothing to do but keep forging ahead. So I forged ahead.

For about twenty minutes or so, I never touched the ground, flying over the tops of boulders like a hovercraft. Finally, I stepped over the last boulder and was back on level ground. I saw a guy approach me on the trail from the opposite direction. He looked like a good old country boy in very unhiker-like clothes. In fact, he looked like he had just finished painting someone's house and having extramarital sex with the home-owner's wife. He accosted me from afar.

"Go Phillies", he cried out to me in a very cheery, fraternal manner.

I realized that I had my bright red Phillies cap on. So I replied with equal enthusiasm saying, "Yeah, Phillies" or something similar, although I might also have said "Yeahhohey". I think all that boulder jumping had caused me to displace my tongue.

On seeing me up-close, he stopped and gave me a curious look. I had seen that look before. In bars during Eagles games, me with my Eagles cap on and my Eagles jersey on, screaming E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES with the rest of the bar crowd, with everybody giving me that same look, thinking, hello, what have we here, an ethnic looking guy cheering for our beloved sports team? Where's he from? He looks like somebody who should be following "soccer" and not football.

It was that very same look.

Still continuing to subject me to close scrutiny, the guy said, "So gonna be a good game today huh? Who are the Phillies playing, the.....", and trailed off. I got his drift. He was giving me a test. A test to prove I really was a Phillies fan. A test to prove I was authorized to wear official Philadelphia Phillies team apparel on my head. But I was ready for him. Bring it on, homie, I said to myself.

"I think they are playing the Marlins today", I said confidently.

"Yeah, yeah, the Marlins", he said pensively. "I wonder who's gonna start today. Probably the new guy, right, Pedro........". He trailed off again.

"Pedro Martinez? Yeah, probab.....", I said and then paused. Hold on. This was a trick question. I mulled it over for a bit.

"Nah, I said. "I don't think they'll start Pedro today", I said.

"And why's that?", asked the guy, feigning ignorance.

I took a deep breath.

"Because before they allow him to start a game, the Phillies will probably need Pedro to pitch a couple of bullpen innings first with an existing good lead. You know, just to get his confidence up before throwing him into the high pressure situation of a starter. Besides, Cole Hamels is due because his last start was five games ago. So no, I don't think Pedro's gonna start today. It's most likely gonna be Hamels"

I had nailed it. I could see it in his eyes. I had passed the legitimacy test. Wishing me a good hike, he waved goodbye and I continued on the trail.

The trail climbed some more along the side of the ridge, until I finally reached Hiker's Mound which my friend from Pulpit Rock had told me about. This is a large mound of rocks on the trail that has been created by hikers. Apparently every time you reach this point on the trail, it is customary for a hiker to add another rock to it. I wished to make my contribution to this structure but no matter how diligently I combed the area, I just could not find a single rock. Hikers before me had swept it clean. I decided to continue on to the Pinnacle and import a rock from there.

To get to the Pinnacle from Hiker's Mound, you need to follow the blue trail (Another blue trail?? Sure, why not.) This isn't really a trail at all and involves more bouncing along more boulders for another fifty feet till you reach the Pinnacle.

The Pinnacle is a bunch of large rocks resting upon the edge of the cliff, standing on top of which allows you to partake some excellent views of the surrounding countryside. Churches, farmhouses, distant hillocks and even a cemetery. Although it was a bit hazy, the view was as pretty as the reviews had made it out to be.

After spending a few minutes enjoying the view, battling the wind, enduring some egregiously sappy love talk from the couples canoodling on the rocks and spotting (what seemed to be) a freshly moulted snake skin on the ground, I decided to embark upon my return trip. I was gonna continue on the AT, which does a sharp hairpin turn at Hiker's mound, and then make a left onto the Furnace Creek Trail (The Blue Trail, yes, another blue trail) that would take me back to the reservoir and the parking lot.

I returned back to Hiker's Mound, added my own rock to it and after spending some time searching for white blazes, began the descent back. This section of the trail was quite broad and ideal for normal walking. On the way, I met a group of hikers who asked me, "Do you know how to get to the yellow trail?"

This time, to be more accurate, I replied, "Yes, it's over there", waving my hands vaguely over my head through an angle of 360 degrees. After conferring amongst themselves, the group chose an arc sector of 15 degrees out of my 360 and started walking in that direction.

The Furnace Creek Trail diverges from the AT at, what my Pulpit Rock friend had called, "The Helipad". The "Helipad" turned out to be a misnomer. It's not like I had expected a fully functional runway, air traffic control tower with a brewpub restaurant at its base with fifty different beers available on draft and pretty barmaids eager to pour you a long cold one, accompanying it with small talk, oh to heck with you, so what if I did?

Anyways, there was no such thing there. The "Helipad" turned out to be an unkempt grassy meadow that suddenly appeared in the middle of the forest. To show my displeasure at being bamboozled, I emptied my bladder right there in the center of the meadow where the "helicopters" would be landing.

The Furnace Creek Trail ran alongside a mountain spring called, I'm assuming, the Furnace Creek, because if not, it would have been a shitty choice of name for the trail. It was lined with gigantic rhododendron bushes and was in general, the perfect trail for a nice leisurely walk. At one point where the trail crossed over the creek, I filled my bottle with fresh spring water, having being informed by online reviewers that the water was perfectly potable and 99% hanta-virus-free. And so it was, and quite delicious too. I realized that it was the first time I had suckled from mother earth's untreated teat.

The trail led down to Hamburg Reservoir, a small artificial lake created by damming the Furnace Creek. A sign on the side of the lake said "No animals allowed in the lake", which was very impressive to me because for the past year and a half, I've been trying to teach the deer in my backyard how to read English, but they still have problems differentiating "dessert" from "desert". The wildlife in this area must have evolved from a different gene pool.

Finally, I walked down the reservoir road to the parking lot and my car. My stats according to my newly acquired pedometer were :

distance walked : 7.2 miles
calories consumed : 950
steps walked : 18,000
survival rate : 100%

All in all, I would call it a successful hike.

Following Bryson II : Pulpit Rock

So there I was, once again at the base of the Blue Mountain Ridge, this time about thirty miles west of Palmerton, near a small lake called Hamburg Reservoir. I was going to hike up the mountain on the Appalachian Trail to a place called "Pulpit Rock" and then push on to "The Pinnacle".


View Pinnacle Hike in a larger map

The Pinnacle is a scenic outlook on the Appalachian Trail that is said to possess some of the finest views the trail has to offer in the state of Pennsylvania. Through careful online research, I managed to uncover the following salient facts with regard to this particular hike.

1.> It usually takes about 3.5 to 4.5 hours to complete the 8.5 mile round trip.
2.> You may encounter copperhead snakes on the trail.
3.> You definitely need lots of water.
4.> You may encounter rattlesnakes on the trail.
5.> If you fail to follow the trail map posted in the parking lot with adequate discipline, you may get lost and find yourself in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
6.> The rattlesnakes that consider this trail their home are of exceptional quality, if what you look for in a rattlesnake is girth and bloodcurdling ferocity.

Armed with these helpful facts, two bottles of water, brand new leather hiking boots and a camera, I drove up to Hamburg Reservoir near the small town of Hamburg, PA, where you can hop on to the AT. To get to the AT from the parking lot, you have to walk uphill along a service road that leads to the reservoir. The AT intersects this road about a half mile up the hill and enters some woods after crossing a stream on a wooden bridge. Heeding the advice of online hiking reviews, I looked for copperheads sunning themselves on the creek stones but I saw none, which wasn't a disaster because I really fucking hate snakes.

I had decided to hike up the AT to the Pinnacle, then descend back down along the Furnace Creek (Blue) trail, which forms a loop to the parking lot. About half a mile into the woods, the Blue trail branched off the AT. Immediately thereafter, the AT began a steep climb up the side of the mountain. After an initial shock to my cardio-pulmonary system during which I aged twenty years within the span of twenty seconds, I settled into a nice rhythm.

About a mile into the hike, I ran across my first fellow hiker. She was twenty yards ahead of me, an amply proportioned woman, also climbing up the trail. As I caught up to her, I saw that she was arguing with somebody on the phone. Just as I passed her, she turned to me and asked me, "Do you know where we are?"

"We are on the Appalachian Trail", I replied, not hugely surprised by her question because she looked like somebody who had just stepped outside to get a cup of coffee and somehow inadvertently managed to end up on the Appalachian Trail.

"I need to get to the blue trail", she replied. "I've been walking all morning, trying to get to the white trail that leads to the blue trail".

"This IS the white trail", I said. "But why are you climbing up? To get to the blue trail, you would have to climb down".

"I climbed up the blue trail and I made a left on to the white trail and now I need to reach the blue trail to climb down to my campground, so I'm climbing up again", she said. "Do you see now?"

"I see", I replied, not seeing at all. "The blue trail meets the white trail at two different locations, the closest of which is a mile down this trail."

"Oh damn", she exclaimed in disgust. "Alright, thanks", she said, turned around and began to walk down.

After marveling for a moment at how anyone could get lost on such a clearly marked trail, I walked on.

A few minutes later, I came to a blue blazed trail branching off the AT to the right. Another blue trail? Perhaps the mysterious, mythical blue trail the woman was looking for?

Now here's my problem and it is a very general problem that I have faced many times in my life. I have a pathological desire to assist mankind through the generous dissemination of my knowledge. The problem is that frequently, I lack knowledge of any kind. In such a situation, I manufacture knowledge through the process of theorizing and deduction and in my defense, there have been numerous occasions when this method of knowledge manufacture has served me well and earned me accolades.

Apparently this wasn't one of those times.

"Fuck", I muttered under my breath because I had just been hit by a severe pang of hiker's conscience. Quickly, I did an about-turn and jogged back down the trail to see if I could find the woman and inform her that I had discovered a blue trail that might be the one she was looking for, but she had disappeared. I never saw her again. They say her spirit still wanders these woods at night, giving unwary hikers false directions in a fake Indian accent.

As I continued to hike up the AT, it continued to get rockier, with more and more boulders appearing on the path. As I mentioned in my previous post, Bill Bryson has called the PA Appalachian Trail a place where hiking boots go to die. After reading his description, my initial impression was that the AT in PA was probably akin to an old age home for footwear, where already decrepit boots would be allowed to die quietly with dignity, catheters being disengaged at regular intervals, culminating with the final unplugging of the dialysis machine.

And my experience on the Delaware Water Gap section of the AT had only served to confirm my hypothesis. After I returned from the hike, my old shoes which were already well past their expiration date, called it a day and kicked the bucket.

But this trail was different. In fact, for this particular section of the AT, a more apt comparison would be to Vietnam. Young, healthy shoes being sent off to battle for a lost cause and be slaughtered like sheep. I felt a deep sadness for my new Timberlands. They were not having the best of times. I could sense their muted suffering through my Dr. Scholl's insole.

It began with the appearance of a few rocks on the path. I snapped a picture, thinking hey, that's cool, so this was what Bryson was talking about. A few steps ahead, these turned into boulders. I snapped another picture, thinking sweet, I am THE MAN for doing this trail alone. And then, the path disappeared entirely, turning into a field of giant rocks, climbing up the side of the mountain like a stairway to hell and identifiable as the Appalachian Trail only by the white blazes painted on trees surrounding them.

My problem wasn't merely with regard to the technical issues involved in climbing up a rocky mountainside. I also knew (again, from online research), that the rattlesnakes of this region, displaying uncommon enterprise, often occupy the empty space between two rocks, staying still for prolonged periods of time and awaiting rodentia or human limb to succumb to gravity and fall in. Therefore, as I jumped from rock to rock, I could almost hear hollow fangs clicking away in anticipation all around my feet.

As I was standing on one of these rocks, trying to catch my breath, my cellphone rang. It was my dad.

"Why are you sending us money?", my dad wanted to know.

"Who else will I send money to?", I replied.

"We don't need your money, we are relatively well-off", replied my dad.

"Dad, I already sent you the money, so donate it to the poor or something", I said.

"Okay, I will send it back to you, then", said my dad.

"Dad, I have money now, I am no longer poor", I said, "But anyways, I'm standing on a rock surrounded by snakes right now so I gotta go, I will call you later, bye" and hung up.

After carefully leaping from rock to rock and making my way up the ridge for another twenty minutes or so, I finally emerged onto a flat area on the edge of a cliff with a nice view of the surrounding countryside. This was probably Pulpit Rock. I confirmed my suspicion by asking two women lounging around on a couple of flat rocks at the edge of the precipice. One of them was lying on her stomach, peering through binoculars at the birds of prey circling the cliffs around us.

"Is this Pulpit Rock?", I asked.

"Yes, it is", the non-birdwatcher replied. I walked up to the edge of the cliff to take pictures. Down in the valley at a distance, I could vaguely make out the "Blue Rocks", a boulder field supposedly deposited there by glaciers during the last ice age.

The woman who had replied to my question got up from her roost and at the same time, a skinny guy in well-worn hiking attire emerged from the trail. He immediately walked up to the rock the woman had been sitting on, carefully scrutinized it and then broke out in smiles as if he had just spotted an old friend.

"There it is", he said, "There's usually at least one in there".

"Where is what?", I asked him, puzzled.

"A copperhead", he replied. "It's coiled up inside the crack between these rocks you ladies are sitting on."

This revelation caused the birdwatching lady to temporarily suspend her ornithological activities in favor of leaping to her feet and saying, "AaaaA. Where?" I have never seen anyone transfer body weight from belly to foot with such agility.

The man pointed to the crevice between the two rocks. I stepped onto the ledge at the very edge of the cliff to spot the serpent. A sudden attack of vertigo hit me. Carefully, I backed off and tried to get to it from another angle. As I raised my camera and moved my hand towards the crevice to take a picture, I asked the guy, "Where is it"?

"Stop right there", he said. I froze.

"What?", I said.

"There's one right underneath your hand", he said.

I looked closely at the crevice my hand was passing over and sure enough, right there among the leaves was a curled up copperhead. It was quite difficult to spot due to its amazingly camouflaged skin. There were two of these snakes, in the very same crevice.

"Sometimes there are so many in there that they get stacked up on each other", said the guy. He had obviously made a career out of studying the relaxing habits of Appalachian Trail copperheads.

"That's nice", I said, thinking otherwise. "Are they venomous?".

"Yeah", he replied. "Also, the babies are more dangerous because they keep biting and inject more venom than the adults."

I decided never to hand-feed a baby copperhead. Sure they are all cute and scaly and all, but on the whole, it's just not worth the risk.

"We've been sitting here for a while now", said one of the women. "We never knew it was in there."

"You were lucky you didn't drop anything into the crack and try to retrieve it", I said.

"I know", said the woman, "My water bottle was right there".

After taking a number of copperhead pictures, I put my camera away.

"Anyone going to the Pinnacle?", asked Hiker Guy.

"Yeah, I am", I replied, "Why?"

"Watch out for rattlesnakes", he said. "People have seen big ones among the rocks there".

"B...B?", I said.

"Excuse me?", he said.

"I said B...B", I explained. "I was actually trying to say 'B..B..Big?' in a terrified voice."

"Yeah", he replied, "You might also run across them on the trail. I saw one the other day, moving through the leaves. Just make sure you keep an eye out for them."

And so, after taking some more pictures of the view from Pulpit Rock, I took my leave of these good folks and headed out towards the Pinnacle.

(continued here)

The Green Ribbon Trail 1

The first time I became aware of the existence of the mighty Wissahickon was during a massive rainstorm in the winter of 2003. It had snowed heavily a few days ago and it was now raining heavily and as I stood on my apartment balcony contemplating the overabundance of water in this country, I noticed something curious. A pool of water was slowly creeping towards me. Some indeterminate body of water that had previously occupied the space at the end of the parking lot was now advancing towards my building at the speed of, say, a frightened turtle. Holy fuck, I said to myself, what is this indeterminate body of water that threatens to engulf me and my rental property on this sad morning? It turned out that this water body was the Wissahickon Creek, in a state of flood due to the lethal combination of snow-melt and rainfall. It appeared that all this time, I had been dwelling on the banks of the famous Wissahickon Creek of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

The Wissahickon is legendary. It is lusciously pretty and an aquatic heavyweight in these parts. Before it enters the city of Philadelphia through the steep ravines of Fairmount Park, it meanders along the rural countryside of Montgomery county, forming a ribbon of green running through Philadelphia's northern suburbs. Poets have admired it, authors have written about it and old colonialists from the 1700s and post-revolutionaries from the 1800s have forged iron by harnessing its hydro power. Native Indians, impressed with the yellowish tinge of its water, named it "stream of yellowish color", or "Wissahickon". That was before they stopped urinating in it.

When we purchased a home in this area last year, we did so after being hugely impressed by its natural beauty. Also, the close proximity of an Indian grocery store. And, a beer distribution outlet. Plus, a Burger King. A mall. And an Indian restaurant. But mostly its natural beauty. And little did I know at that time that this place had an additional treat in store for me. A treat in the form of the Green Ribbon Trail.

The Green Ribbon Trail is a hiking path that follows the wooded banks of the Wissahickon Creek for twenty miles as it commutes through the suburbs, originating in the burrough of North Wales and forging right into the city of Philadelphia. Imagine, a trail with historic implications beginning virtually in our own backyard. Well, I don't really have to imagine it, do I?

After a year of being aware of this trail's existence, I finally decided to hike it this summer. I realized that I would have to do it in sections because of all the sore feet involved. I began my hike in the North Wales burrough park where the trail starts, armed with a water bottle and legs of steel.

The trail began quite innocuously, with a paved, tarred path, running beside a residential neighborhood. Notice the chimney in the distance.

The trail then turned left into a powerline right-of way. So far, so good. The trail was marked with green blazes throughout, so it was quite easy to follow.

To the right was the immense industrial complex of the Merck pharmaceutical company, to which the aforementioned chimney belonged. I could feel my arteries being drained of cholesterol and my prostate reducing in size, just by breathing in that lovely fresh Mercky air.

The trail then turned left and took its leave from the powerline right-of-way. It turned into a tunnel through the bushes. Things began to get interesting.

Here's where the trail actually came in contact with the Wissahickon creek for the very first time.

Soon, I came to my first wet stream crossing. The Green Ribbon Trail is liberally endowed with these. Either due to a lack of funds or a desire to keep the trail environmentally as less intrusive as possible, there are no pure pedestrian bridges on the trail. Whenever the Green Ribbon, for no rhyme or reason, decides to leap to the opposite bank of the creek, the hiker needs to either wade through the water, or as in this case, walk over some very unstable-looking stepping stones.

After crossing the creek, I paused to take a picture of some strange but pretty flowers that begged me to. I heard them sing. And so will you, if you stop texting and twittering for a moment.

I had barely overcome the trauma of my first wet stream crossing when, after crossing North Wales Road, another, wetter crossing presented itself to me. Here, not only was the stream wider, but the stones were also farther apart and partially submerged in water. Additionally, the creek appeared to be swift and I could also see faces of dead people on its bottom.

Then, I came across something strange. A random concrete bridge across the creek. No road, just a bridge. A bridge to nowhere. I crossed the bridge to see what nowhere looked like in order to describe it to my grandchildren.

Tiny blue wildflowers on the side of a wooden boardwalk on the trail. Somebody had thrown a plastic bottle onto them. You will die, son. And you'll come back as a tunafish in your next life, swallow a plastic bottle and die again. You'll keep dying through various plastic bottle-related mishaps and keep coming back. And I would feel sorry for you, were it not for the fact that you threw a plastic bottle into the woods.

Soon, I came to a crossroads. Apparently, the trail had decided to turn right. I followed it without questioning its motives. The trail knows best.

Here, I came across my first fellow hiker, a running woman. I wondered why she was running. But once the undergrowth began closing in on my feet and nipping at my knees, I began to run too.

After outrunning the shrubbery, I came to the third wet stream crossing on the trail. Pthooey. I did this one with my eyes closed.

I finally opened them after falling into the water for the third time.

Much of the Wissahickon's passage through Philadelphia city is through a deep narrow gorge. Here's where it gives you just a slight hint of what it will be doing to the landscape later on in its route.

As I was walking through a section of the path enclosed on all sides by high bushes, one of them suddenly groaned. It sounded like a cow that would really have liked to moo, but was just too tired.

"Groan", said the bush.

After I had descended back to mother earth, I addressed the situation. I peered into the bush.

"What?" I said.

"Groan", the bush replied.

"I'm sorry, I did not wish to disturb you, I shall be on my way soon", I said to the bush.

"Groan", said the bush, apparently satisfied with my explanation.

I fled. I did not wish to partake of groaning bushes.

But then, I crossed a sweet idyllic meadow and all my fears soon left me.

Here's where somebody had planted trees on the trail and encircled them with wire so they would be protected from the deer (I assume). I don't know any hikers who like to gnaw on trees.

Here is where my other great fear, that of snakes left me. I saw this small dead mouse lying on the ground. If a dead mouse could lie unclaimed on the trail, it meant that there were no mouse-eating predators around. No snakes. Alright, high five.

A great blue heron roosting in the creek flapped its wings mightily and flew away.

Here's where the heron was. Right there. It was right there, I tell ya.

Finally, I emerged from the wilderness onto Swedesford Road. An elderly couple in an SUV gave me a puzzled look as I emerged from the bushes and drove away.

After inspecting the Satan's maw-like entrance of the trail on the other side of Swedesford road and inspecting my watch, I decided to turn back for now and come back another day.

The groaning bush awaited me. I wanted to tackle it before nightfall.

Deer and rabbit

Here are deer and rabbit. Deer and rabbit are seen sweetly entwined in the symbiotic harmony of harvesting my neighbor's crops. As seen in this exclusive surveillance camera footage, rabbit cautiously makes his way to the day lilies as deer watches out for the long arm of the law. Later, rabbit will stand guard as deer forages on the tulips. In my role as an embedded journalist who refuses on principle to interfere with their garden consumption activity, I receive unfettered access to all the inside scoop. Here is their story.

Deer and rabbit have come a long way from their troubled past. There was a point when each time deer applied snout to vegetation for grazing purposes, deer would come up with a mouthful of bunnies and had to spit them out like you would spit out goat bones from the mutton masala at Sunny-da-Dhaba on the Mumbai Pune highway. It resulted in a poor dining experience for the deer and led to a frustrated deer introducing the phrase "breeding like a rabbit" into the English vernacular. This, in turn, pissed off rabbit who, under the glare of the public eye, was forced into using protection during sexy-time. It was tiresome for someone unendowed with opposable thumbs to have to spend time fiddling around with condom wrappers at such a delicate, fleeting moment.

But then, just when it seemed that a deer-rabbit final confrontation would be inevitable, Man stepped in. Man cleared away all the brush and planted short grass everywhere, so deer could spot bunnies more easily and rabbit could continue with his baby-making efforts without fear of criticism. In fact, Man made it safe and even desirable for deer and rabbit to co-exist peacefully. Man planted pretty, tasty stuff in his backyard with easy access to deer and rabbit. Stuff bearing colors of such vividity that they might as well have been neon signs proclaiming, "I am delicious...Eat me". Now, deer and rabbit live together in a mutually beneficial partnership, the serenity of which is only occasionally interrupted by the sight of my wildly gesticulating neighbor running out of her basement with chainsaw in hand and murder in her heart. It is not without irony that Man, who was responsible for the deer-rabbit collaboration, turned out to be the worst affected by it.

But regardless, deer and rabbit are now happy. Deer and rabbit, friends forever.

Deck Garden

Deck garden is ready. Here is deck garden. This year I win the deck garden competition against my neighbor. Clearly visible in the background are neighbour's two flowers. Last year, I got my ass kicked in the deck garden competition but this year I win. Champagne in everybody's hair.

Send me money. I am broke due to the deck garden competition.

The deck

Historic aerial PA

I've often wondered what my neighborhood might have looked like, say, 50 or 100 years ago and this website answered my question. It's got aerial pictures of Pennsylvania from the 40s and 70s, arranged by grid on the map. Amazing. I wonder if other states have such a website as well.

Snowed in

The backyard.

Amazing photograph

I just took an amazing photograph. It is of my grilling thermometer lying inside a flower pot on my deck. The flower pot is full of ice and half the thermometer is embedded inside the ice and half outside. I didn't actually take the photograph because my camera battery is dead and even if it weren't, my camera cannot take night pictures. But imagine the magnificence of the photograph, were I to have taken it. Imagine it conceptually : a thermometer lying inside ice. It is irony worth a Nobel photography prize. I trust you understand. Fuck it's cold tonight.

Still Friday photo-blogging

I was just foraging in my camera and I found this picture of the Montague Book Mill that I had snapped during my last visit to New England. I don't know man, I have a strong urge to go back there tomorrow, 6 hour drive through New York City be damned.

Today

This is a public service announcement. Today is Friday the 13th.

I hope you got out of your bed today left foot first. Now go walk under a ladder while wearing your shirt inside out and throw a mirror at the black cat that crosses your path. If you cut yourself, spill salt on the wound. Don't be distracted by the moon shining over your left shoulder or the insomniac rooster who insists on crowing at night.

Thank you.

Also, just so I can finally get this out of the way, two saturdays ago, I went to Jim Thorpe with Mrs Gawker, Zambezi and Mrs Zambezi where we had wings and beer in an Irish bar. The wings were too hot for a South Indian and zambezi started sweating like a pig on a spit in summer with the air conditioning turned off. The concerned waitress asked him if he was having problems, if the wings were too spicy and he said yes, also assuring her that the considerable spice content of the wings would soon necessitate a sprint into the high hills for defecatory purposes. The waitress accepted his scatological confidences politely, in the proper spirit, with an ambivalent "ah".

And that was that.

Speaking of Jim Thorpe, here's a picture of the Switchback trail we "trekked" on, if you can call walking on a flat surface trekking. It's called the Five Mile Tree.

The interesting thing about this particular picture is that it used to be a place where railroad cars going in opposite directions used to pass each other. It looked like this.


Spitting on the car underneath was out of bounds for everyone except the very highest of high society. Also notice how there is virtually no forestation in the old picture as compared to the new one. Immigration of trees to the US began in earnest only after the rain forests of the world began to face persecution in the early 20th century for their wood, their land and their bark, oh that sweet sweet bark.

I guess that's all for now. I had something else to say but I don't remember what it was.

Friday Photo Blogging : The Schuylkill River Trail

Don't look now and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think spring is here. Okay what the heck, go on, look. Too late, it's back to freezing again. Look again tomorrow. It's expected to be nice and sunny and warm. But don't look on sunday because it's supposed to be cold and rainy. Monday is expected to be like saturday, tuesday like monday and fuck wednesday because no one cares about wednesday. So coming back to spring, I expect cycling activities to commence this weekend. Luckily, Philly, if not the biking capital of the US, is at least the biking capital of Philly with a number of decent biking trails within stone-throwing distance, although if you are going to throw a stone, make sure you aim for the speed-cyclists and not the leisure bikers. The biking trail that I patronize the most out of sheer laziness due to its close proximity to me is the Schuylkill River Trail from Valley Forge to the Philadelphia Art Museum along the banks of the Schuylkill River, a distance of about 25 miles.

The trail begins in Valley Forge Historic Park where George Washington amassed his troops during the revolutionary war while preparing to attack Philadelphia, which had been captured by the British and whose residents were now being forced to spell color with a "u".

On its way to Philly, the trail passes through Manayunk, a semi-pretentious neighbourhood which apparently is the place to be in if you're a young puppy, or, as it's known nowadays, a yuppy.

People travel to Manayunk to bike on a very small section of the trail along the Manayunk canal which makes perfect sense because that section of the trail is generously endowed with crumbling factory buildings like this one which makes for a very scenic ride.

But to be fair, the trail also has sections like this one where the buildings get momentarily obscured by foliage.

Finally, the trail breaks out onto Kelly Drive, where the beautiful people of the city hang out to showcase their beauty and also to stay beautiful by engaging in various activities of physical exertion such as roller blading, biking and canoing. The following is the spot on the trail where the highly anticipated Philadelphia skyline makes its first appearance.

Further along the way, you pass this sculpture of a man shielding his eyes from the sun while humping an eagle, a testament to willpower and physical exertion.

Finally, the trail ends at the Philadelphia Art Museum which is a great place to spend a day in. One of the best exhibits in the museum is an entire authentic South Indian temple which was moved here and reconstructed one naked sculptured breast at a time.

Of course, you don't have to stop biking once you are at the Museum of Art. You could continue on into downtown Philly along this avenue lined with the flags of all countries except India, which the New Jerseyites keep stealing come every Independence Day to hang outside their own homes.

On the way, you pass City Hall with the statue of William Penn on top, who is famous for having his statue on top of City Hall.

Just behind this marvellous No Stopping sign which I really did mean to include in the picture, you can see a flock of people who've just exited a theater on Broad Street after watching a play.

This is the Kimmel Center, cultural center of the city. I am not sure what happens in there but some day I mean to find out. Maybe this guy knows, in fact, I am pretty sure that he does, so why don't you just ask him instead.

As for me, my ultimate destination is almost always South Philly, Heavenly Abode of the Cheesesteak Deity.

I hope this travelogue will inspire some of you to travel to Philadelphia for taking its sights and sounds in and Mayor John Street out with you when you leave. If so, may the spirit of the Lizard riding a Chicken aid and abet you in your endeavours.

Related post : The Delaware Canal Biking Trail.