The Place Of Desert

For the last year or so in American Voyages, I have been largely focused on eastern North America.  My long-time readers and those who dig further into the heap of posts will find that my emphasis started out in a completely different direction, that of the vast, diverse wild-lands that is the West (or in the case of Mexico, the North).  My travels out there were what ultimately inspired me to give a go at this blog, but heaven knows I did not start out loving such a place.  I grew up in the boreal forest, which remains to me the most primal, holy, and majestic landscape on the planet.  I viewed the southern pinelands as the next most incredible landscape, followed by a child's imaginary view of the evergreen forests of the western rainy reaches, and largely disliked that which was in between, the world of the deciduous forests and grasslands.  When it came time for me to take my first ground trip across the continent, I was dreading the flat, boring plains that I would be forced to endure.

Of course my image of them was made uglier by what I figured they would be, a continuation of the flat, artificial cornfield "prairies" of far southern Ontario, Ohio, and southern Michigan.  There was no life between the Appalachians and the Rockies, I had gathered.  But then I drove into central Illinois and saw the sky get bigger.  I crossed the Mississippi and found Iowa to be rolling, and in places where the farms had gone fallow, lush green lands dotted with the occasional Bur Oak (Quercus Macrocarpa) standing as a lone witness to another world.  August rains had come and blessed the land so that it looked as if it were something out of Hobbit country.  Again, I placed my conception of the world on top of the landscape as it truly existed and was perhaps even eager to be seen by my overly-focused eyes. 

Then came Nebraska, and some more corn, especially between Lincoln and where the Platte and I-80 meet for the first time heading west.  That river though, that shallow, silty, seemingly unimpressive river... it stole my heart and my attention.  Perhaps it was the trees that did this; tough-as-nails Cottonwoods (Populus Deltoides) forming gallery forests that made the trip so much more enjoyable for my stubborn sylvan-centric tourist agenda.  The funny thing is, though, my eyes started looking for the prairie.  I had long wondered what the transition between eastern forest and western void was like, and found instead that the corn, or at least my concern for it, had prevented me from finding this remarkable transition area.  Around North Platte, however, I saw it; hills of grass and what I presumed was only grass.  I-80 kept following the rivers, but I was headed for golden California, and the majestic mountains of Colorado.  I turned onto I-76 and into the High Plains, and much like viewing a religious icon, my mind was made quiet and my gaze indirect.  The immensity of all that was not human overtook my concentration; not for nothing have many religious experiences of some of the most intense contemplative types from western Christianity (Jesus, in fact, started to "find himself" in the desert) to the Lakota mystics who once ranged far and wide over that same northeastern Colorado grass included sharing that nature made them forget the self and connect with the infinite.

Doubtless I found such a place in the small, innocent world of childhood.  I remember the towering pines and ancient granite of the Canadian Shield transporting me far away from the worries of the present.  Then I grew up, indulged in material culture, formed a rigid world view like most other college students sharply liberal and conservative alike tend to do, and forgot about my and my world-view's insignificant place in the cosmos.  At some point I started realizing that this was at best silly and at worst insulting to myself, my place in history, and my purpose in the greater world.  Maybe I was looking for something else, or something more whole... but that trip to California plunged me into less of a tourist run and into more of a pilgrimage.  The High Plains cleared my mind and prepared me for the grandeur of the mountains to come, and more surprisingly so, the desert beyond.  I was amazed at the vista given by the Front Range, but the High Plains managed to keep me even more enthralled with my first ever glimpse of an honest-to-goodness western plant, the Sand Sagebrush (Aretmisia Filifolia).

This one was taken at Pipe Spring National Monument, on the other side of its range compared to where we first met on the Colorado High Plains.  I think this is where we fell in love. 

If you've never experience one, I would say that it alone is an excellent reason to go out west.  It feels and smells incredible, with the best olfactory performance coming after a rain.  Like so many White people before me, I always viewed sagebrush as an afterthought, even a weed.  I had encountered its northernmost version, Artemisia Frigida, back in my magical boreal youth.  Perhaps I was bred to hate prairie, however, because I found nothing likeable in that patch of meadow that constituted the "back yard" where I found my first specimen of this plant.  I have since apologized to what I assume is its children.  Back then, however, I was all about the pines, like so many people are.  No one can tolerate the fly-over states, and they seem to view anything even drier as either a wasteland, the backdrop for Vegas and sci-fi movies, or a good place to extract resources and produce more crap for us to throw away.  I certainly headed into my California voyage with a similar attitude.  Then I saw the open skies, and then I saw the sagebrush, and then I saw the yuccas... and then the cacti.  Nearly two years later, on a misty March day, I saw the saguaros, and a view of the desert that had gone from hard on life that had turned into otherworldly had then become something closer to ethereal.  The desert is a place teeming with life that has managed to not only make the best of the situation, but in many cases to positively thrive there. 

I write this because far too often we dismiss the desert as an unwelcome, useless intrusion into our idealized view of the world.  We like it lush and green, happy and managed/cultivated.  Our vision of the world, even the wild portions of it, are often frowned upon if they do not conform to our place in it.  This attitude exists in persons as different as lobbyists for the Koch brothers or ecological restorers concerned with the dwindling wolf populations on Isle Royale.  Those religious types I mentioned would probably tell the rest of us to focus instead on greater things than our immediacy.  I write this because today I read a piece related to this post, written by an "activist" living in the Mojave, an atheist no less.  I wanted to share his piece here, with all of you, and give a brief description of my own of why I think it is important.  Please, take the time to read it, because I'm shutting up now.

https://www.beaconreader.com/chris-clarke/the-desert-is-not-your-blank-canvas

Wednesday Filler: Philadelphia's White Pines

Like D.C., Philadelphia is a city where one can encounter southern botanical elements such as evergreen magnolias and hardy palms next to a few northern ones like the Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus).

At Penrose ave. and Homestead st.

At Gloria Dei National Historic Site.

Unlike those zone pushed plants, however, the White Pine is actually native, albeit at the edge of its range, to the cities.  It found quite a bit of use as a landscape tree, often planted in more open situations to take advantage of the bold sweeps of its unrestricted form.  In the wild around these parts, it grows with a decent amount of vigor and majesty, and has enough of a winter chill and less than brutal summer heat in order to reproduce decently.  From here southwards, however, these conditions are only met in the Appalachians.

The Garden Spaces Of Philadelphia

Last year we explored the garden and green spaces of historic Charleston and found a subtropical paradise seemingly imposing itself, sometimes orderly, sometimes not, on a city.  Like downtown Charleston, downtown historic Philadelphia is a lot of stone and brickwork and various kinds of paved streets.  This was apparently not William Penn's intention, but the early settlers who came to Philadelphia for reasons other than religious freedom were merchants and tradesmen, and all of them wanted easy access to the river.  As a result, the rural flavored, open setting that was in mind for the city went by the wayside as it grew progressively denser.  To this day, people are crammed into homes side by side.  In contrast to the larger homes of Charleston, which had courtyards and exposed back gardens, much of Philadelphia is arranged more with a combined desire to be close to the water and close to the street. 

This is not to say that the modern city is lacking in greenspace, or that even the historic core is without gardens and peaceful areas:

I forget where this is, but it's pretty much in or near the big attractions of Independence National Historical Park.

That's Carpenters' Hall, home of the First Continental Congress.

 The city is, however, much more closed in than Charleston and even New York was in the same era.  Washington might have been developed according to a more open plan under possible direction from politicians used to having the seat of government in both cities.  As noted in the last post, many politicians ducked in and out of the city whenever possible, feeling it somewhat cramped.  This was probably in large part due to the fact that some of them were less than democratic and did not enjoy proximity to the average citizen, and/or the fact that many of them were used to a more open and rural existence, especially the gentlemen of the South.  Cramped or not, the city certainly has its fair share of things paved and bricked, and the side streets off the historic core are certainly more restrictive of viewpoints than colonial Georgian or Regency era surviving cores like Charleston, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Cooperstown, and especially Williamsburg. 

But as you can see, the streets are not devoid of life.  In fact, Philadelphia does individual specimen trees remarkably well!

This is a very old American Sycamore (Platanus Occidentalis) growing in the cemetery of Gloria Dei National Historic Park.  The guide told me it was either there already, or that it had been planted during the building of the church.  Considering as how, either way, that was 1700, this is a very old tree.  The church is on an ecotone bordering the bottomland of the Delaware River, so a natural origin is not out of the question.  Come to the site just to see this beauty!

Two lovely Sweetgum (Liquidambar Styraciflua).

In short, Philadelphia is all about trying to fit life back into whatever available spots there are.  In contrast to Charleston, which I keep comparing to as it was indeed the competing botanical export center, Philadelphia is less a city seemingly overtaken by the wild as it is a city containing or built around and over top of it.  This is in part due to climate; Charleston gets a lot more rain and heat.  Still, there are the odd spaces where nature looks like it explodes.

The next three photos were taken along a little side alley off of Elfreth's Alley, a very scenic little part of the old town that has remained largely unchanged since colonial times.

But there are also many places where it is bricked and potted in. 

This should not be seen as a reflection of the attitudes of a citizenry who wished to dominate nature so much as find a place for it in a place where space was at a premium.  Cities like Chicago and New York took time to become as dense as they are, but Philadelphia started out that way, if much smaller in vertical scale.  Like Charleston, however, the surrounding environment never became as much of a secondary feature but got slowly reabsorbed into the setting.  There are many gardens, some restored, some surviving, that attempt to capture the changing face of the populace and its relationship with its environs.  The best way to see them, or any city, really, is to walk around and take in the sights. 

The Magnolias Of Philadelphia

When I was first learning about various trees of the continent back in my idealistic youth, I was blessed to come across a free copy of Audubon's Field Guide to North American Trees (Eastern Region).  This was a marvelous book full of fun things like maps, pictures, and even illustrations of trees in silhouette, with the evergreens being nice and full, and the deciduous trees shown in their bare winter glory.  Now and then, I came across a remarkable leafy tree... with leaves on it!  I knew about them before, of course, being a traveled veteran of Southern Florida, but what really impressed me was the fact that some of them could be found very north, namely the American Holly (Ilex Opaca) and above all else, the majestic Southern Magnolia (Magnolia Grandiflora).  In specific, the guide noted that the beauty is noted for hardiness "north to Philadelphia".

In gardening circles, people are lately growing fonder of the art of "zone pushing", which is to say that they, ahem, we, like to grow things far north of where they are considered hardy.  Gardeners in Detroit, Chicago, Toronto, and Cleveland (and associated friendly cities) have long since considered anything that retains leaves in the winter to be of high prestige and a reminder that life goes on during otherwise snowy and cold dark months between November and March.  Alright, so October and April...  Anyway, its a hard thing to take even a cold hardy palm or broadleaved evergreen and expect it to dance for you while the blizzard rages, at least this far inland.  Philadelphia, on the other hand, is perhaps in one of the perfect situations for attending to a variety of cultivation.

While it has far more in common with the ocean than the Appalachians, it has elements of both; pine species form extensive barrens in nearby rural areas in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as well as more mountain species like rhododendrons in surviving woodlands.  It's not too hot, it's not too cold, and due to an atmosphere of tolerance, it was the American city that got the most brains to boot.  Massachusetts was all about religious agenda/freedom, New York was all about commerce, Charleston and Williamsburg were all about slave-powered farming, but Philadelphia was about letting you pray how you wanted, letting you argue with people over politics, and, surprisingly, letting you talk about what academic subjects were currently in vogue.  Alexander Hamilton of the spice islands by way of New York tried to get finance to set up a crown here too, but ultimately the city is still best remembered as more of a home to the Benjamin Franklin type.  This is a city of books, trees, and people who still like to read newspapers on a park bench.

One such popular academic interest was plants.  Aristocrats in Europe went crazy over trying to acquire New World vegetation for their estates, especially in England.  Various botanists made quite the name for themselves detecting and acquiring such treasures, and Philadelphia's own John Bartram earned the respectable but low paying title of the "King's botanist".  While Charleston, under Michaux, served as a secondary port for the thriving plant and seed trade, the varieties of climate and plant life meeting here, as well as the royal connection, ensured that Philadelphia would remain the chief point of departure for the finest trees finding their way to the finest clients.  Unlike Charleston, however, Philadelphia grew up much more snug and dense, seemingly paved over, much to the distaste of the founders and succeeding generations of planners in the city who wanted everyone to have a growing space.  Thomas Jefferson disliked the environment, and like many other politicians, wanted to try to escape to greener pastures when possible, which usually meant taking a trip to Bartram's house (which I regret upon regret not stopping at).  There they talked about plants.  No, really.  Jefferson and Washington were plant geeks.

Philadelphia has since greened rather nicely, even if the concrete which has replaced the brick is still the dominant feature everywhere.  The riverbanks are lush, there are parks and green spaces never far away, and the city is home to the United States' first urban national wildlife refuge.  Out of all this, however, what caught my eye was, well, the magnolias.  My little guide book did not disappoint.  I can't remember where half of them were taken at, with the exception of the line of tall ones at Betsy Ross House.  They are not hard to find, though.  Just wander through the historic core and you will find quite a few, some very impressive in size.

Yeah, that's a Sugar Maple (Acer Saccharum) intruding on the top left.  Pretty cool seeing them together!

These last fellows were at the Betsy Ross House.

There is also a garden consisting almost entirely of imported magnolias which, while not the majestic Southern Magnolia, do put on quite the show in spring.  I ran into some volunteers at the garden who gave me the unofficial history of magnolias in the city, as well as the intent behind the creators of this garden.  They explained that Washington, plant geek, wanted to green up the city he had to spend so much time in as president.  He was particularly fond of magnolias, which the ladies and I deduced to probably be his proud Southern Magnolias, arboreal symbols of American robustness.  As a symbolic tree, Magnolia Grandiflora is much more associated with the deeper South and with Andrew Jackson, who planted them at the White House as they were his wife's favorite tree.  Nevertheless, Washington probably would have run into plenty of them in his boyhood tidewater stomping grounds, as the tree was already making quite the impression in the trans-Atlantic trade and was already being cultivated as an ornamental in the southern lowcountry.  He probably enjoyed seeing a tree as robust as this in remaining green even in colder winters, and as a horticulturalist probably thought about bringing them further north with him into his presidential exile from Mt. Vernon.  The creators of the garden, acting 150 years later, apparently did not have the same design in mind, which the volunteers and I grumbled about.  The Asiatic magnolias, they said, are nice, but they only flower in the spring, and, well, are not very American.  At the risk of sounding like an ecological imperialist, considering the intent of the design of the garden, I have to agree.

Still, it's a nice garden (with a fountain, which I did not take a picture of), a quiet space of reflection surrounded by quiet streets (Locust between 4th and 5th streets) and various quiet places of worship.  There are thirteen flowering trees and shrubs which represent the thirteen colonies, but most of them are imports, and ironically, two of the species are iconic of England!  I'm a proud subject of the Commonwealth myself, but the concept seemed rather nutty to me.  If I had to guess, I would think that the creators wanted to put on an incredible burst of spring and early summer color, and to be fair, the garden was set up long after the colonial era passion for natives had faded and the Victorian and Imperial passion for exotics had become the rage.  Remember what I said about zone-pushing?  That's something fairly new, the current emerging vogue.  People maybe just weren't planting southern trees here back in the day, just as they weren't planting palms in Vancouver or London until fairly recently.

The worm has since turned, and the National Park Service tends toward at least the homegrown and preferably native ecological restoration as much as possible (and to be fair, as much as they work here and are not too distantly native, Magnolia Grandiflora is native no further north than the central Chesapeake, if I am allowed to make such a bold statement).  In the garden we get to see shifting trends in horticulture presented as a history lesson about a history lesson.  I have to admit, regardless of my angst, I stopped and enjoyed the patch of green for a while.  Washington probably would have done the same.  Jefferson would have turned cross, purchased nearby land, and started over on a superior garden.  Bartram would have sold him the plants.  All of them probably would have been in awe of the many Southern Magnolias found through the rest of the city.  I have to admit, seeing them together with so many other trees, including my favorite Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus) gave the city a pretty interesting arboreal landscape.  You can do that in DC too, but then you have to pay for it with hot, muggy summers that do not get nearly as bad here.

What's the rest of that city treescape look like?  Come on by next post for a tour. 

Sunday Afternoon Post: Really Small Town America

Smithfield, Pennsylvania, is one of those towns where if you hold your breath you can make it through by the time you need to exhale.  They do have a traffic light there, though, at the corner of Church and Morgantown. 

Its not that I am not used to small towns, I've lived in and around them most of my existence, but this particular traffic light reminded me that while this was still a full functioning town, it was also a very... small one.  There it was, standing all by itself, like a toll collector at a bridge that never gets used.  It seemed very superfluous, as if to say to the odd out-of-towner that Smithfield was something to notice while passing by, maybe even a nice community to live in, but that it would not be surprised or upset if you just kept passing on through.  That's the sort of feeling I got from that off the beaten path part of Pennsylvania in general.  Sure, Pittsburgh and even Morgantown were nearby, as were notable attractions like Fort Necessity, but this is one of those parts of North America that seemingly got skipped over for the next level of frontier. 

Northern Lush

In the last post we looked at a rather handsome trees and shrubs from the American South.  It felt wrong not to also give something of a shout out to the greenery farther north, specifically that in the Pennsylvania Appalachians, or Alleghenies.  Northern forests can be very thick and have fun, acid-loving, evergreen foliage too!

This particular scene is representative of the Laurel Highlands in Pennsylvania, and is actually on the site of Fallingwater.

There we have Rosebay Rhododendron (Rhododendron Maximum) in the lower foreground and shooting up on the right.  The darker green spruce looking trees on the right and left sides further back are Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga Canadensis).  There is a huge variety of hardwoods at various stages of growth here, including oaks, beeches, maples, etc.  This is a very dense forest, albeit a healthy one with various levels of canopy.  The Hemlocks here have not yet been assaulted by the Wooly Adelgid (Adleges Tsugae), an invasive insect which has otherwise been murder on the majestic Hemlocks.  In former times, before the bug and logging had seen that many Appalachian forests looked nothing like their former glory, the above scene would have been typical of the deep woods that at once both encouraged European exploration and kept colonials back on the cultivated lower ground.  They also would have had less mosquitoes in these parts; they do not seem to swarm that much around the Hemlocks.

Like the plants in the last post, these fellows are also the in-between crowd.  They don't like to keep their feet soaked, but they don't do well with hot and dry either.  This is a forest of comfortable heat in the summer, despite the lack of breezes in the dense growth.  Things are moist, but not wet, even though the region receives plenty of rainfall like the southern one previously seen.  The soils help in that regard, holding on to what they need to with their thick layer of organic matter, while also draining relatively well.  All in all, a rather pleasant environment to live in, but still relatively unsettled.

Q and A: Southern Lush

I came across a particularly lovely picture tonight, one worthy of standing by itself in a post.  I was looking to post on another closely related topic, that of how rivers affect their surroundings in terms of soil and plant life, but that's looking like it will be a huge undertaking in terms of the sheer pictures that need to be uploaded.  Instead, since I have been active on this here blog again, and a few questions have started streaming in, tonight we feast upon a picture and try to answer a question.

Q: Since you have been to so many places and lived in quite a few, where would be an ideal place to plant some roots if you had the option?

A: That is a very unfair, difficult question.  If money were no object, I would love to have multiple small places.  One which is already there, up north in Ontario.  One on the high plains, preferably eastern Wyoming or western Nebraska.  One in highland Mexico, in the trans-volcanic belt.  One in western New York or southern Michigan, where I would probably spend most of my time.  One in the coastal South... yes, especially that one. 

If you rephrase the question as "where would you like to live to be able to garden to your heart's content", it would still be tricky, as I have a fondness for northern species of trees, shrubs, and in the flower department, for the gifts of the prairie, but wow, the South has amazing native stuff like evergreen oaks, more azaleas than you can shake a stick at, pines upon pines, moss dripping off of it all, and... magnolias.  Not the hardy, Asian hybrid kind that flower before they leaf out, but the kind that never lose their leaves and flower in full green.  Needless to say, I do have a picture, and a natural one at that, of most of these elements put together:

Oh yes, that is truly lovely.  Sure, it comes with some price tags, notably brutal summers of heat and humidity, destructive storms for a much longer period than up north (including hurricanes), and much less of a thrill regarding the onset of spring, but... I mean look at that!  The tree on the left with the brown undersides to the leaves is a Southern Magnolia (Magnolia Grandiflora), perhaps the second or third most beautiful tree on the planet.  The tree on the right with the lighter green, almost maple looking leaves is a Sweetgum (Liquidambar Styraciflua), a tree that can be found from the tropical cloud forests of Central America to the Ohio Valley and New York City, one of the few trees besides the Red Maple (Acer Rubrum of our past maple sugar posts) and Baldcypress (Taxodium Distichum) to brilliantly light up the Autumnal southern canopy.  In the center stage below is a Sabal Minor or Dwarf Palmetto, the northernmost naturally occurring species of palm in North America, and in the rear, dripping with that incredible Spanish Moss (Tillandsea Usneoides) is one of those incredible evergreen oaks, the Live Oak (Quercus Virginiana).  Its a veritable natural stand of who's who in the Southern tree world.  When I found this thicket, growing so peacefully off the shores of Albergottie Creek in Beauford, SC, I stared for a good ten minutes, as if it were a holy icon.

Then I had to wonder why these trees, clearly more in love with being nice and dry, were so close to something so decidedly wet like a tidal creek.  Except for the palm, none of these species like to get their feet soaked for a long time.  Then I remembered that even a few inches of elevation change can make all the difference in an otherwise very low landscape such as this.  That's the special thing about river habitats, really, they have a strong influence on their immediate surroundings, but life goes back to something else once you get far and high enough away, as we will see in our upcoming river post.  At the same time, rivers have far more of an effect on us humans; while we love to use them to travel and fence in for aesthetic purposes, we sometimes also learn to give them a wide berth, what with the way flooding and erosion works.  In many places such as this, the "extended river" becomes a vessel of green and wild cutting through an otherwise cultivated and transformed landscape.  So, to be more precise about that question, something in the South near, but not on, a river.  To be honest, the mosquitoes are just a bit much to handle...

Wednesday Filler: Philadelphia's Environmentalist River

The Schuykill River was, like the Juniata spoken of yesterday, a major conduit for colonial expansion deeper into Pennsylvania.  The Lenape people, re-named the Delaware by later Pennsylvanians, formed part of the central portion of their nation around the banks of this and the Delaware River.  Unlike the Haudenosaunee who lived further west in the mountains, the Lenape spoke an Algonquian language, like many other nations along the Atlantic coast from Virginia to Maine.  The Lenape were pretty knowledgeable farmers, and readily understood the ecological importance of fire; the local pine barrens naturally renewed with periodic fires.  The banks of the river itself were, and are, largely lush, owing to the humid and mild climate of this part of Pennsylvania.

Looking north off of the bridge carrying US 30.  As one can tell from the exposed banks, the tide is low (this lower part of the river is influenced by oceanic tides, like the lower Delaware which it flows into).  A weir runs across the length of the river beyond the next bridges.  That classical looking building on the right is the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where Rocky the steps.

The river has seen not so natural history, of course, being torn apart and polluted by some of the earliest activity of the Industrial Revolution in North America.  The river was of immense fascination for naturalists such as both Bartrams and Audubon, and was later the focus of one of attempts to ensure cleaning drinking water for Philadelphia.  In the last century, it has been largely cleaned up, and much of its banks are incredibly natural, rather than developed right to the water's edge.  Today the river retains its traveler focus, thanks to such environmentalist foundations and concern, and serves as an incredible place to canoe or kayak while taking in scenes of nature in the midst of a cosmopolitan, yet very American, city.

Juniata Sunset

As I was searching for pictures for yesterday's post, I ran across some particularly memorable scenes taken during sunset while driving along US 322 on the banks of the lower Juniata River in central Pennsylvania.  I've been through there several times, and while the area is pretty lovely during the day, it is absolutely stunning at sunset.  In the last post I mentioned that Pennsylvania has its share of farmland and open fields, but the Juniata is Pennsylvania in a more primal form.  Much of the river area is forested, and even though the valleys have featured settlement of both Iroquoian peoples and colonials, it was a staging area and frontier area, respectively. 

Daytime, July of 2011.

Like many rivers in the region, the Juniata allowed for easy connections between the Appalachian interior and the Atlantic coastal lands, and the river is notable for being oriented east-west, like the Potomac, rather than north-south like most of the other waterways.  In addition to long since providing the First Born with connections to the interior, it provided early drive for colonial explorers wanting to press further west into the otherwise difficult terrain of the Appalachians.  Pennsylvania's lower easy Atlantic facing lands penetrated pretty far inland; Chambersburg, for instance, is halfway west into the state.  The Juniata, which is thirty miles north, provided a tempting path to get lost on.  Canals and Railroads would later follow, notable the Pennsylvania Mainline Canal, which bridged the Allegheny divide by means of a portage railroad.  Dear portage nps site, I regret not stopping there last summer!  


The canals and railroads ultimately never dominated those in New York or along the National Road route, the former a path the Haudenosaunee were also keen not only on maintaining, but also settling as the heart of their confederacy.  Colonial peoples were also more keen on moving on to the Ohio country; the Juaniata was the scene of frontier settlement in the early 18th century, but the area remained sparsely populated and is still very much verdant and sylvan to this day.  In some ways, its not hard to see why.  Typical of regional rivers, the river cuts through the imposing ridges of the Appalachians, and in some places the slopes come right down to the water's edge.  Dense riparian forests of willows and friends cover the shores, things are rather rapid and rocky in the river itself, and the upland forests have thick underbrush of rhododendrons and other typical Appalachian plants in many places.  Like the canyons of southern California, the Juniata and other regional valleys can provide for some very natural America not far from densely populated America.  The sense of passage and frontier is still very much obvious, especially when the sun disappears over the western horizon. 

And since I did label the post as such...

July 2014.

Hope you enjoyed it!  Sorry for blabbering on so much, but the colonial era frontier has always been very interesting to me.  It easily gets lost behind the later romance of the distant western frontier, and is often ignored by intelligent people otherwise trying to rediscover how the relationships between native and colonial peoples evolved in the middle stages of the modern American story.

Where Is This?

Like yesterday's post noted, sometimes we have conceptions about places that unfortunately prevent us from exploring them and enjoying them.  Take California, for instance.  Most people see it as the beach, maybe some mountains and tall trees, maybe a little desert sprinkled in.  They see a superficial culture of surfers, media and film industry types, and aloof people in general.  In reality, the variable geography of California made for extremely diverse First Born cultures living in close proximity to each other, and the state features a colonial history (some good, some not so good) that stretches as far back as the 16th century.  This is all set against a backdrop of just about every sort of ecosystem one can imagine short of pure tropical, but also featuring the very rare one of Chaparral shrub land.  You can read a little about this natural California in one of my oldest posts, here:

http://americanvoyages.blogspot.com/2012/01/remnants-of-natural-california-canyons_10.html

Moving further east, I have found that some of the biggest misconceptions come from those who live in the larger cities and often groan when thinking of having to travel between them.  In particular, most east coasters seem to view everything beyond the Appalachian Mountains as being pretty much beyond the pale, with such people deriding said territory as the Midwest, a title that locals in the great unknown rush to embrace with equal fervor.  Such lands are unbearably flat (or maybe slightly rolling), covered in nothing but cornfields, and full of people more concerned with family values than with international affairs.  You know, some place like this:

Which is funny, because that was taken not ten miles slightly out of Appalachian valley and ridge country.  Yes, that is pure Pennsylvania right there, taken looking north off of the westbound lanes of PA 283 near Elizabethtown.  Pennsylvania is indeed pretty mountainous, but it also has its far share of rural farmland that could easily pass for something as different and distant as Ontario or Kentucky.  The colony itself, like the other North American European ventures, could not survive without resident farmers and ordinary settlers who came to simply live as much as many would come for various idealistic reasons. 

Here we go about 15 miles more down the road and find those mountains, and thus enter into more forested land and familiar scenes (never minding that Harrisburg is hidden behind the trees).

US 22 North; the ridge ahead slopes down towards the Susquehanna River.  This is in the north of Harrisburg.

Of course, even within those mountains one finds valley floors where rich, alluvial soils have long since been cultivated; the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) had done so for centuries in Pennsylvania and upstate New York before European settlers found such places equally agreeable. 

Maryland 495 south, not even 10 miles south of Grantsville.

And sometimes, they cultivated up the more agreeable slopes, too.  I have to admit that I did not expect to see such a scene in extreme western Maryland, which is otherwise pretty vertical and sylvan as a default setting.  This could just as well pass for something in rural southern Michigan or Indiana, and judging from left over campaign signs I saw in the area, the locals probably vote for similar end goals.  Labels can be a tricky thing, though, as can misconceptions.  Why not take a trip down some seemingly boring back roads and be surprised now and then?  Just a few miles down the road was enough to turn that landscape into this:

That was taken on the same day, within a few minutes, and the sky was largely blue just like in the other picture.  It was almost surreal how majestic those blue and misty Allegheny Mountains looked...

Sunday Afternoon Post: "Fly Over"

Or even "drive through".  Such is how Oklahoma through Saskatchewan get labelled by people who think there is no life outside of large cities with water or mountain views.  If you focus on the manicured farmland (which does, by the way, feed us) and preconceptions, then sure, it's all a bit like this:

Kansas, heading north on Kansas 177 somewhere between Council Grove and I-70.

I have to admit, the first time I headed west I was intending to zoom through boring old I-80 as fast as possible.  Along the way though, I started wondering just what I was zooming through.  The prairies, it turns out, are not pancake flat for the most part, and were never a uniform sea of grass.  Nebraska features cliffs, forests, and incredible river valleys.  Kansas, seen here, ranges from forests to near desert like conditions in its extreme southwest.  The sound of the wind is incredible, the storms are quite the sight, and the flowers... let's just say try to find a natural "meadow" around where you live and get back to me on how boring grasslands are. 

In our next post, we shall explore misconceptions about location!

Cheap Beer In New York City?!

In honor of the fact that another Friday is upon us and that there no doubt plenty of people taking a detour on the way home to get absolutely sloshed, I proudly present McSorley's, where you can still get two beers for 5 American dollars (cash only).

15 East Seventh Street
(Third Avenue)
New York, N.Y. 10003

Like any good old ale house, McSorley's and its patrons do not have a record of when the place actually opened; the sign says 1854, however, and I'm sticking with that.  When rioting Irish-Americans pretty much burnt many parts of lower Manhattan to the ground during the draft riots of July 1863, they were careful to keep their watering hole and veritable community center largely intact.  The place has stood and gathered dust ever since, one of the few physical things in New York that has passively resisted change by simply not changing.  Its a lovely experience, and for just five dollars, you can get a light and a dark (or two of each), the only beer they serve.  Perhaps it was the awareness of being in what is pretty much the closest thing to the heart of Irish (North) American history, but that beer tasted pretty damn good the first and every time since that I have had it.

The walls are covered in various pictures and paintings, many of them with as much dust on them as the rest of the place.

And of course, the floor is covered in sawdust.

Those pictures though, some of them give hints that there have been visitors here beyond what the management claims.  One particular New Yorker who first showed me the place insists that the Kennedy brothers came here for a victory drink after Jack won the presidency.  I have a pretty good feeling that Mr. Roosevelt the first came here now and then during his policeman days; there's no proof, but it just seems to fit his character.  While his sort was much more from the other side of town, and though he personally loathed populist politics, well, he was also no stuck-up rich snob.  In many ways, McSorley's was the beating heart of old New York.  Take what I say with a grain of salt, of course, because I've only been a frequent visitor and temporary resident in the city.  The best way to experience the place, as usual, is to come see it.   They have food.  I've never had it.  It's probably good stuff, though I usually wander around the neighborhood later and find rare odd-ball things like Khyber Pass, an Afghan restaurant just around the corner.  There is nothing like having Afghan cuisine served to you by a Russian waitress...

Oh, and did I mention that there are restrooms on the premises?  The gents have urinals that you pretty much can't miss, no matter how many lights and darks you have had.  The first time I saw them I nearly burst out laughing.  Like the urinals, the other best free part about McSorley's is that it is really off the beaten path while still largely accessible.  Most tourists don't head anywhere near here, which is not to say there is nothing to see here.  The cheapest attraction in New York City is just walking around and enjoying the experience, and there is no shortage of great shops, restaurants, art, music, and pieces of history to be found in East Village.  It's also probably one of the best places, aside from Harlem, to see how average Manhattan people exist (at least until rezoning and gentrification really get underway).   

Destination Food In Your Backyard

I was going to continue with the food posts today, covering a delightful Buffalo treasure known as the hot wing, but I searched in vain for a decent picture of the Anchor Bar, home of the "Buffalo Wing".  I've mostly gone at night, and the best I had were some very fuzzy images of their sign.  It's a wonderful place, one of many reasons to go to western New York, and I really recommend their cheese garlic bread to be enjoyed alongside their wings.   Then I realized that, in addition to not having any good pictures of anything, I was pretty much devoting a week to fast food.  While such worship is part of the American religion, this felt wrong.  People from around the world have taken a peek at this blog, and if I really want to talk about North American food, I figured I should probably talk more about Native American food, as well as more traditional fare of us newcomers from abroad.  The problem is, outside of pre-Columbian Mexican cuisine, Ojibwe and Algonquin fare, and a half bad look at how we improved on the eternal boil that is British food, I lack the proper experience to share more on such matters.

Worse, I have not done a lot of destination dining as far as such things go, or at least I've never organized my thoughts much on the places I have been.  Instead of heading head first into a food week, then, I'm going to take us to such places as a lowcountry boil when I get to them, that is to say getting to the stomach once I have visited the landscape and the history.  In the meantime, I'm going to issue a challenge to my readers: find out what sort of regional cuisine you have, and start with the First Born.  They've been here a lot longer than us colonial types, and as a result have used the ingredients on hand a lot more.  I'll start!

Here in southeastern Michigan, in addition to having access to passably decent maple syrup, and trading access to some of the best stuff in our own northern lower peninsula, we've also long since had a variety of fruits, from plums, paw paws, blueberries, and persimmons to later introductions of apples and berries; the climate here is excellent for temperate fruit trees, as we get much in the way of winter chill without excessive cold.  This part of Michigan was historically part of the Sauk and Fox nations, which after the Black Hawk War.  They were later joined by the Wendat (Huron) people, who were most likely also here and in neighboring southern Ontario centuries before their arrival in exile after their near destruction in 1649 (long story).  All of these people were excellent farmers, growing squash, beans, and corn (the three sisters), like many people in North America.   They were also expert fishers, Michigan being absolutely permeated by waterways.  Tomorrow being Friday, I'll talk about a particularly wonderful catch then, one less common so far south as Lake Erie and Lake Saint Clair.

I've barely scratched the surface on local food, not even touching the contributions of many later peoples such as the Polish, and yet we've already found quite the buffet set up for us, a vegetarian and fishy one at that.  Fear not, meat eaters, there were also plenty of ungulates around to be hunted, and the deer have yet to catch on that this is not really a wilderness anymore.  That said, find out what's in your backyard; even if it is a cuisine that has evolved from far away places and through millennia of development, the truth remains that fresh and local is making a comeback, probably because it tastes just a bit more real.  There's a reason to be mindful of history and geography, after all, as a sense of continuity is helpful for figuring out perspective.   

Wednesday Filler: The Capture Of Philadelphia

One of the nicest features about a tourist side trip to Pat's King of Steaks, which we featured two days ago in a post, is that one gets impressive views of the city skyline from that location.

Right next to Pat's is a large park dominated by a baseball diamond.  Since a fence was in the day, I tried to zoom through the links the best that I could.  The end result was almost artistic, a look at a city that has had as many historic ties to dominating financial structures and Federalism as it has to religious liberty and progressive democracy.  Here we look from the working class neighborhood around Pat's, through a fence, higher up into intermediate businesses, all past floodlights meant to illuminate a baseball diamond, and finally resting in a city above all that, one of corporate finance and upper management.  Meanwhile, next to the fence, all members from all layers were chowing down on the same steak sandwiches. 

Lots of potential social commentary in one convenience-oriented photo... 

Anyway, you decide what it means.  I was thoughtful at the time, but still largely conquered by lunch.  This is south of the city center looking north; colonial Philadelphia, including the original banks and exchanges which steered the city in this landscape direction, would be to the right of those tall buildings. 

Other Blogs: Jim McCormac

Just after finishing our post tonight, I stumbled into my reading list on blogger for the first time in forever, and found a delightful gem of an article:

http://jimmccormac.blogspot.com/2014/12/spring-grove-cemetery-and-braun-sisters.html

Of particular note, Emma Lucy Braun was one of the past scientists who first inspired me to take a second look at the natural world, way back in seventh grade when my amazing science teacher, Ms. Williams exposed us to women in science.   Despite my many years of reading classic works on North American ecosystems, I regret to say that I have yet to read her classic work on eastern North American deciduous forests, probably because I am such a grassland and boreal forest snob.  Thankfully Mr. McCormac is not, and goes to explore all sorts of places in order to find nature at its finest.  I've actually shared his blog before, and if the article above strikes your fancy, give some more of his pages a read.  In that post, I also made note of his book, which is hands down the best nature tourist book on Ohio out there. 

Go.  Read.  Enjoy pretty photography!

Gyros In The Mojave

If you thought the end of the last post was either a crazy, desperate attempt at making junk food sentimentally patriotic, or just crazy silliness, then you are well prepared for something truly insane that will be shared today: The Mad Greek.  This is a restaurant that has all the charms of what one would expect from a Greek-American eatery that does its best to compete with the house in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Click on the image for a higher resolution version, or even save this and let your computer zoom it in for you on your image viewer.

Sadly, I don't have too many more pictures of the place, or at least none that I find readily accessible.   This one gives the glamor shot though, complete with as many Olympian statues as one can handle.  Inside, the place feels like a tourist visitor center, had one just landed at the airport at Athens.  They are pretty much a fantastic road trip stopping point, offering good air conditioning in one of the hottest places in California (Death Valley and only about a thousand and change feet of elevation lies northward, and the road to get there, California 127, actually is the left turn at this pictured intersection) as well as free public restrooms and... until 2014, the best gyros I have had in the United States of America.  The Fleetwood in Ann Arbor, Michigan, recently trumped this, but as I have not been back to Baker, California, where this wonderful pit stop is, since 2010... well...  Let's just say I want to go back.  Baker pretty much being almost as dead center into the Mojave as one can get, I think I have a pretty good excuse.

But again, the food.  The gyros are massive.  This is one of those times where I was so into the food that I failed to take any actual pictures of it, but trust me when I say that you will not need fries or even a drink to feel full.  The meat is excellent, the veggies are better, but what really makes this one stand out is the sauce.  They must put ambrosia in it or something, because it tastes amazing.  So what does it all mean, and why would I turn the blog into something resembling a lousy junk food review?  Well, the Mad Greek, like Baker itself, is something that pretty much only exists because of the American notion of transit.  When the railroad left, modern roads like I-15 moved in, and what you have is a crazy restaurant in a small crazy town in the middle of sand flats which were once lakes and rivers.  On the negative side, it is also a distraction, a man-made oasis that makes people remember their creature comforts and forget how truly awesome the North American deserts are.  Instead of enjoying traveling past ancient volcanic features and through Joshua Tree (Yucca Brevifolia) forests, the modern driver is convinced to speed through the place as fast as possible until one sees signs of "civilization", however crazy and fun they might be.

In fact, you'll have no problem at all trying to get to the Mad Greek, as the billboards are everywhere, starting mostly in Vegas heading south.

This is actually right outside of Baker, and you can see what amazing beauty lies all around Baker.  Those green larger bushes are Creosote (Larrea Tridentata), lovely little things that are probably also incredibly ancient.  They smell amazing, especially after a rain, one of the reasons to go visit the desert for its own sake. 

Instead of the wonders of the desert, one finds comfort in a rest stop or even a road sign and is immediately drawn to something garish like said billboard.  I say this because such was the reaction of many of the other patrons in the gyro palace, happy that they had been rescued from the "monotony" and "lifelessness" of the place they had to drive to get between Las Vegas and Los Angeles.  Don't get me wrong, the sauce and even shakes are worth the drive, but they are pretty much a minor bonus feature to the privilege of being in a land the 'Aha Makhav (Mojave) have long considered a pretty amazing home.  If you find yourself passing through Baker, stop on by for a gyro or a salad (and get some iced tea with some amazing fresh lemons), but also consider taking a few minutes to drive up 127 or back up the nearby Cima dome to enjoy the various easy access vistas this destination dining can lead you to. 

Philadelphia: City Of Brotherly Sandwich

Part of the fun experience of traveling is to find lodging and food that is local flavor.  Its nice to see the mundane as an evolution from ages of cultural development, and how particular regions and even cities and towns have produced both high and low culture with their own touches as a result.  Sometimes it can be hard to find something that is not overly "tourist", but sometimes you have to sit back, laugh at the kitsch, and dive right in.

Philadelphia, like any destination city, is full of things drawing tourists into the bright, sparkling lights.  It manages to do this in a way that very much blends in with the normal reality of the city, however, and even though some places feel like a museum packed into a modern mess of skyscrapers and freeways, she does so out of concern for the past while moving on with the future.  "Out with the old, in with the new" does not apply here.  That's a tangent for a different time, but the lesson holds strong in the living example of finding a place to eat the local flavor.  When I was last there in 2014, I had a choice between going to some re-invented gastro pub that was a recreation of some colonial era tavern, or... Pat's King of Steaks.

This was not a hard decision to make.  What might have been hard was choosing to go there, or to Geno's, right across the street.

But, being a traditionalist, as Pat's claims they started the whole thing, and far more attracted to the particular smells coming out of Pat's (not to mention the faster moving line), I went for it.

Despite what some reviews might say, Pat's gives you a pretty impressive sandwich.  That, some fries, and a coke (9-10 bucks total) was more than enough to sate me for some time, and it was a pretty active day walking around much of the historic core of the city.  The steak was definitely better than what is offered for the sandwich in most other places, the cheese was pretty delightful (but honestly, as much as it sounds gross, traditionally I would have been better off going with cheese-whiz than with American, at least according to my traveling companion, as it melts and fills the thing so much better), and the bread was pretty good.  The most refreshing feature, however, was seeing the options in a nice grill from which one could self serve.  There were peppers, more onions, etc. piled together with condiments.  You can see one of the wee green peppers behind my sandwich.  Normally I'm not much of a pepper guy, but... amazing little things.  Grilled to perfection.

All in all, a pretty enjoyable experience, with a caveat: Know what you want (use the website for instruction) when you order, or else they kick you to the back of the line.  They serve people fast, and don't like to mess it up.  Seating is somewhat limited, but the tables were moving pretty fast, like the service.  In terms of accessibility, the steak shops are off the beaten path, decently south of the historic core.  Some people have said that the neighborhoods are scary, which I suppose is true if you have lived in a cave outside of some no name town in North Dakota your whole life.  As a reward for braving the non-tourist actual city, you get to see a small slice of how the normal folk live.  My take?  Pretty clean, pretty open and airy, fairly laid-back compared to New York or Washington. 

Passyunk ave and Wharton st., looking south, right across from Pat's.

Really, the neighborhood is one of families and working people, ethnically diverse and with typical urban east coast atmosphere.  We went at lunch time and the place had quite a few suits milling about.  Multiple bus lines are in the area, and if you drive, you just need to sneak a few blocks away and find a parallel parking spot.  Tip: try it off of the main eating hours for easier access.  Otherwise, be prepared to find a space in this:

South along 10th street, beside Capitolo Park/Playground, a block walk from Pat's.

Now, as for the sandwich itself, I would say that the Philly is a pretty average street food for something from an east coast city.  You get the sandwich, something European if not downright traditionally English, then you get the American spin on it turning it into something huge and more than just a snack, and then you get really good meat, lots of it, and on a superior bun, representing the Italian blessing on most east coast street and deli cuisine.  It's a democratic sandwich that has evolved in a city born of liberty, that has survived total transformation by government and high finance, and ended up as a place where you can get relatively greasy, cooked with gusto, here-enjoy-this eating.  You had suits next to tourists next to construction workers, and no one gave off any attitude or got in anyone's way. 

Next: Greek food... in the desert?!

Sunday Afternoon Post: Poutine

I decided to make this first of bad-for-you destination food posts on our perennial heart-stopper, monsieur poutine, short and sweet.  I have written about him before:

http://americanvoyages.blogspot.com/2012/07/poutine-mes-amis-poutine.html

Alas, then I did not have a picture to share.  I warned the timid readers out there before that it might look disgusting, and to quite a few people it does.  Voila!

Come closer.  It won't bite. 

Yep, that's the real deal, from Riverview Snack Shack in Mattawa, Ontario.  Coincidentally, they have the best hamburgers in the world there as well, but I can save that for a more detailed post.  Today, just enjoy the thick gravy, melted curds, and amazing fries sitting together in French Canada's answer to the query "and what shall your street food be?"  In our next post, the gravy train goes to visit Philadelphia, home of the cheese steak sandwich. 

Real Maple Syrup: Finale

Not too much today, just a little bit on the actual goods themselves.  Much of it speaks for itself, and the best way to now truly get to know maple syrup is to try some!  Despite my warnings as to what constitutes good, holy, and amazing syrup, give your local producers a shot first, or at least as close as you can get, because nothing compares with the taste of home, or at the very least, familiarity.  If you have trees of your own and the previous year was of average to generous precipitation, consider tapping one yourself once you learn the basics!  The sap, the most basic product, is very much edible and pretty much one of the best "flavored waters" you can get from mother nature, at least where they grow (I'm still learning to like coconut water).  It's pretty pure stuff, at least if the land on which your maple grows is.  As normal, never tap or consume anything wild unless you know what you've got.

As far as the syrup goes, keep in mind that you may sometimes find varieties ranging from really thick and dark stuff (awesome for baking and cooking) to medium (your average, good for pancakes syrup, what most default options will be) to light (which is nice to drizzle on desserts).   One recommendation I cannot help but make, regardless of "grade", is source simplicity: keep it from one place.  Unless your source is so far south or west that the syrup needs a boost from elsewhere, let your syrup be the child of a single sugar bush.  If they only have blends available, maybe... just move on.  There is usually no reason for a Quebec or Vermont maker to draw on blends from outside their territory, so if you see such a thing, definitely go running or stick with their single source stuff.  That goes for wine, too.  Sure, that blend of grapes might be tasty, but you're a sinner for drinking it.  I'm not a snob, or anything, just a picky traditionalist.

Anyway!

The syrup can provide a candy like treat in and of itself, when drizzled on snow.  This is best after it is freshly boiled up, and sugar makers love to give out free samples if you happen to visit them at this time of chilly bliss.  This is obviously usually done far enough north where snow persists well into March and even April, depending on harvest and production time.  In Quebec, this culinary art is practically a required event for citizens and visitors alike.  This can also be done even with the raw syrup, which I have only done once, on the Seneca nation reservation south of Buffalo, NY.  While the syrup gives you something more of the consistency of candy/taffy, the sap gives you a veritable snow cone, be it a very watery one.  Experiment!  Make ice-cream!

Oh, don't forget the actual sugar.  It works just as well if not better than cane or beet sugar.  I have never tried it in tea or coffee, but I am sure it would work fine.  The best part, though?  The candies!

They are not for everyone, but give them a chance.  They taste amazing.  Let them melt in your mouth!  If you feel unpatriotic about the maple leaf shape, have no fear, I have even seen Ethan Allen-shaped candies, and even various native hero candies.  Speaking of which, if you get the chance, find such a native hero.  Sometimes tradition tastes really good. 

Coming up next, a slew of posts on various other destination foods, domestic and imported!