Category Archives: travel

On the Rocks at Trough Creek State Park

#Pennsylvania State Parks, #PennsylvaniaStateParks, #TroughCreekStatePark, rocks, Smithsonian Folklife Festival, travel, ,

If you like rocks, you’ll love Pennsylvania.  I swear half of the state is made up of rocks, especially judging from the back (and front, and side) yard of our property in Fulton County.  Some of these rocks are more famous and picaresque than the ones in our yard, however.

Case in point, Trough Creek State Park, home of Balanced Rock.  My husband and I hiked up to this geological phenomenon this past weekend, after a false start.  Clue, if you go:  take a RIGHT after Rainbow Falls, not a left.  The trail map is not very helpful, and there is no sign directing you to said Rock.  Since you can’t see the Rock for the trees, so to speak, you just have to go on faith.

Once you find it, after a steep (and rocky) climb, the Rock does not disappoint.  It is a sizable formation that appears to be teetering precariously over the edge of the cliff, although it has been like that for centuries and presumably will be for centuries more.  As impressive as it is, though, the Rock has not made it to the ten most famous balancing rocks in the world, I am sad to report. Nor does it have a cool legend behind it like this rock in Finland.

We took photos of the rock and then retreated to hike along the Ledge Trail, which connects eventually, after much rock hopping and dodging, to the Rhododendron Trail (lots more rocks, but also huge rhododendrons that must be amazing during the spring bloom) and back over the wobbly suspension bridge near where we entered.  This bridge put me in mind of the Q’eswachaka suspension bridge, a model of which Peruvian participants built at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 2016 (though that was a lot cooler).

Even if I make it to Peru and that bridge some day, I don’t think I would muster the courage to walk across it.  So, this Pennsylvania suspension bridge, maybe built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, was the next best thing.  If you fell off this one, you would only tumble into the (rocky) creek below and get scraped up, instead of plunging to certain death in an Andean river gorge.

And, so, to coin a phrase, Trough Creek State Park (and most of the rest of Pennsylvania) Really Rocks.

 

 

Musing on the Museum of Appalachia

culture, East Tennessee, memories, museums, tourism, travel, ,

A couple of weekends ago, I was visiting my old friends Bobby and Teresa Fulcher in East Tennessee, one of my old stomping grounds and the inspiration for my novel, Seasonal.  Bobby, who had served as my supervisor on the Tennessee State Parks Folklife Project in summer of 1980, took me on a marathon nostalgia tour through the highways and byways of my youthful fieldwork days.  This included a tour of the Museum of Appalachia in Clinton, TN.

The Museum is a wonderfully eclectic collection of the stuff of life, with leanings toward old-timey, traditional items such as quilts, baskets, wittlings, weavings, and that sort of thing.  It is the brainchild and more or less obsession of John Rice Irwin, who I visited at least once during my summer research to get some leads.  Say what you will about John Rice (and some people have said a lot, not all of it positive), he amassed a collection of artifacts that boggle the mind and cause one to marvel at the unending creativity and skill of East Tennessee folk.  Interpretation is not a strong point, especially if one is looking for the unobjective curatorial view.  But, if you just want to see a whole lot of East Tennessee stuff from people’s barns, attics and hidey-holes, John Rice has assembled it here for your viewing pleasure.

I had interviewed some of the craftspeople and musicians represented, as Bobby pointed out.  Memories were cloudy on some of them, but others brought back fond memories, such as whiling away an afternoon chatting with former coal miner and woodworker Troy Webb and purchasing several of his amazing “water dog” carvings.

One object that captured my imagination was Asa Jackson’s Fabulous Perpetual Motion Machine dating back to the mid-1800s  The Museum allowed a gentleman named Dave Brown to study the wheel and sketch it extensively, resulting in a book, but apparently this has brought us no closer to knowing if the wheel, when in working order, really had the capability of creating perpetual motion.

The wheel for me is a sort of metaphor for the hyperactivity of collecting frenzy that John Rice Irwin himself must have been capable of before becoming too feeble to pursue his life’s work.

This item was not labeled and I still haven’t figured out what it might be. Any ideas??

The result is something that, like the machine, is a curiosity with no clear purpose but with a great wealth of largely untapped and possibly unending potential.  Just what will become of The Museum of Appalachia and its vast collection in the future is unclear.  So, if you find yourself in East Tennessee with several hours of leisure, make a visit while it is still intact.  Be prepared to be amazed.

Spring Hopes Eternal: Visiting L.A. Landmarks While Winter Returns to D.C.

culture, Los Angeles, travel, ,

 

March is a quixotic month, offering a false sense of spring only to take it back and slap you with winter again.  It gets even more confusing if you decide to take a trip to Southern California in the middle.  When we left, all systems were go for a plus or minus March 15 peak of the famous Washington, DC Cherry Blossoms, but alas they were nipped, literally, in the bud.  We returned to snow, ice, and biting winds, huddling and shivering at the pick-up lane of Dulles airport and, once finally transported to our parked car, forced to chip ice off the windshield without an ice scraper.

Oh, cruel March.  So, transporting one’s self back to sunny 80s SoCal, if only in one’s mind, is perhaps the way to go.  One highlight of the trip was the splendid Getty Villa.  Thank goodness for eccentric ultra-rich people like J. Paul Getty who get crazy notions like reconstructing an ancient Pompeii estate in which to display his (dubiously attained?) ancient art collection.  On top of a Malibu hillside no less.

Equally philanthropic,  Griffith J. Griffiths (does it get more Welsh than that?) bequeathed L.A. and the world a temple of another sort across town.  Griffith Observatory is a temple to science, more particularly to astronomy.  With a theater named after Leonard Nimoy.  The observatory has lately been featured in the film La La Land, where Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling dance suspended in gravity and reality in the planetarium dome.  Personally, we had fun playing with the Periodic Chart exhibit, and the night sky view is stunning.

Emma and Ryan also visited the Watts Towers, and so did we on this trip.  Simon Rodia, the Italian immigrant builder of this folk art installation made of salvaged materials, was not rich and famous like Getty and Griffiths.  His legacy doesn’t sprawl for acres or add to scientific and artistic discovery.  But, it is nonetheless impressive, and an important part of the L.A. story.

It’s thawing now in D.C., and the cherry blossoms might not be a total loss.  We’ll have to get out and visit sites in our own city.  Meanwhile, the L.A. memories will keep us warm.

 

Culture is Alive in Armenia

Armenia, culture, food, travel

P1060046I have been in Armenia on a work trip for the past week.  (Yes, I am only planning to go places that begin with “A” from now on.)  It’s been an amazing experience.  Since one of the focuses (foci?) of the project we are working on is food, eating has been a big part of the trip.  Since I am planning to write a work blog about “Armenian Snickers,” I will not mention them here, you will just have to wait for that.  But, we have been eating a lot of delicious food.  Yoghurt (madzoon) is a whole new experience here.  Each morning at breakfast at our hotel, I try another combination of nuts, jams, and honey (and even corn flakes) with this thick drained version of yoghurt – think the best Greek yoghurt with no sour “bite” to it.  Also, it is made into soup called “spas” with grains and a particular type of herb (it looks like tarragon in the soup, though I am sure people use different types of herbs.  This recipe calls for cilantro.)  Imagine our group of researchers in Areni, in the Vayots Dzor province, at a bed and breakfast which also serves lunch on its patio, eating this refreshing soup for a second course.  First course consisted of a variety of salads (one with horse sorrel is particularly good in my opinion).   Main course was a sort of chicken and wheat stew called “harissa.”  P1060047Then tea or strong Armenian coffee and “gata” (cake).  This was after visiting one of the most spectacularly situated historic monasteries in the country, called Noravank.  Good food, beautiful scenery, kind people, interesting (though sometimes tragic) history… Armenian culture is alive and lively, like its yoghurt.  P1060025