AUGUST 15, 2021 – (Cont.) The surrounding beauty was created by millions of years of geologic forces and biological evolution. We spent much of the day hiking through this dynamic painting, absorbing at every step, the dramatic scenery. As nimble as she is intrepid, the harpist who wins wild applause when she tames the most difficult repertoire in a concert hall, showed us the way to the lofty outcropping called Bear Hill and the adjacent formation that Tori calls, the “Lemon Squeeze.” The “Squeeze” offered a cool reprieve from the heat of the day. It’s a deep crevasse where you need to focus to negotiate your way safely. While focusing—especially while ducking under a huge, precariously hanging rock Tori calls the “Guillotine” because of its razor-sharp underside.—I hoped to hell the earth held its breath. (When I later mentioned “earthquake” to Tori, something one doesn’t associate with the Northeast, she told me about the tremor she’d experienced a few years ago—while at the house, not in the “Squeeze.”)
That evening, we assembled on the back deck of the showcase home of Tori and Lonnie’s dear friend and forever neighbor; a house and view that are best described as “classic country”—a painter’s paradise. We were joined by another close friend and neighbor, an amiable architect with Canadian roots, and Lonnie’s young work assistant from Gotham, who was nothing but patient and respectful toward the rest of us who were . . . well . . . quite a lot older.
However diverse our origins and paths in life, circumstances had brought us together to watch dusk dispense its magic over endless rows of old mountain ridges that rose and fell beyond our perch. A gentle breeze stirred around us, keeping at bay, the bugs—but not their prodigious chorus in adjoining woods. The accompaniment included the sudden commotion of a large mammal, doubtless one of the bears that frequents the area. A rising, waxing moon shone brightly in the fading light of the falling sun. To our mutual amusement, we took turns identifying animal shapes among the constantly changing clouds above the horizon. As stars appeared, we gawked at the Perseid meteor “shower”—occasional flashes between silhouetted boughs of nearby pine.
While dusk yielded to darkness, each of us remarked about the magic of our moments shared. I marveled as I pondered nature’s rule “back East” and the morrow’s journey west.
The next day we drove the length of the national recreation area that straddles the Delaware River, which forms the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. At Dingman’s Falls, we hiked deep into a mystical rainforest. Droplets of rain from the night before glistened in the patches of sunshine filtered by the old-growth hemlocks.
Faintly at first, then as a clarion call, I recalled the strains of Woody Guthrie’s famous song, “This land is your land and this land is my land.”
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
