Out of Nowhere
Central Pennsylvania is some of the most beautiful country you have every seen. Except for a blemish to the southeast, the entire state is blanketed in a patchwork quilt of trees, cow pastures, and cornfields. A thousand thousand tiny mountain runs, streams, creeks, ponds, lakes, and rivers tie together the sometimes itchy, sometimes stinky quilt--there's no getting rid of the poison ivy or the manure spread. The quilt is usually green and always long. When you tell someone from out-of-state that you're from Pennsylvania, the two things they almost certainly reply are, first, that it is a beautiful state with so many trees, and, second, that it is a long state, "It took forever to drive through." The short of it is, they mostly likely experienced everything they've experienced of Pennsylvania only driving along Interstate Route Eighty--the mother of the land, the trail that carries us to and fro, there and home again, the place of possibilities, the beautiful path that always leads into the horizon, a never-ending horizon. It is a major east-west route across the United states, beginning at the George Washington Bridge in New York City, writhing through Pennsylvania, paving an open road through the Midwest, climbing the Rockies and landing in San Francisco. Wherever you want to go, it takes you there. It is the fast path out of nowhere, the high-speed train away from your local woes. Interstate Eighty is four lanes of solidarity, everyone's tax dollars at work. In Pennsylvania it is also un-tolled, a truly democratizing Roman Highway.
In Pennsylvania, the I-80 bisector is State Route 15. This road travels north and south in the middle of the state; so, it runs perpendicular to I-80, and pretty much splits the interstate into two halves. Route 15 is important for that reason, but also because it is a major tributary feeding into the Interstate Eighty, a preliminary step for those escaping nowhere before they make it to the fast-path away from local woes. Route 15 isn't the clear-cutting monolith that I-80 is, but it has been an important transit route for decades, ever since trucking overtook trains as the major means of distributing goods.
Some stretches of the sometimes green, sometimes itchy, sometimes stinky quilt are bright and fluffy, shining in the sun, hidden valleys scenes fit to be photographed and displayed on a bottle of Ranch salad dressing. Other stretches are worn thin. Decades of the PA earth giving up its vitality and nourishment int the onward lurch of America's industrialization. Central east Pennsylvania is coal country, now mined out, the obsidian nutrient barely separable from the slag that surrounds it. In another time, hopeful towns and would be cities sprung up offered a different vision of the future never considered by the long-time agriculture residents of the region. All of that is lost and gone, however, with towns shrinking to townships and the would-be cities diminishing to official municipal titles of village or hamlet.
In Pennsylvania, the I-80 bisector is State Route 15. This road travels north and south in the middle of the state; so, it runs perpendicular to I-80, and pretty much splits the interstate into two halves. Route 15 is important for that reason, but also because it is a major tributary feeding into the Interstate Eighty, a preliminary step for those escaping nowhere before they make it to the fast-path away from local woes. Route 15 isn't the clear-cutting monolith that I-80 is, but it has been an important transit route for decades, ever since trucking overtook trains as the major means of distributing goods.
Some stretches of the sometimes green, sometimes itchy, sometimes stinky quilt are bright and fluffy, shining in the sun, hidden valleys scenes fit to be photographed and displayed on a bottle of Ranch salad dressing. Other stretches are worn thin. Decades of the PA earth giving up its vitality and nourishment int the onward lurch of America's industrialization. Central east Pennsylvania is coal country, now mined out, the obsidian nutrient barely separable from the slag that surrounds it. In another time, hopeful towns and would be cities sprung up offered a different vision of the future never considered by the long-time agriculture residents of the region. All of that is lost and gone, however, with towns shrinking to townships and the would-be cities diminishing to official municipal titles of village or hamlet.
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