The Road Thrice Traveled.

The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus believed "You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you." He probably said a lot of other things but very few of them survived - which makes sense for someone who felt that everything and everyone was constantly changing.

I thought of this predecessor to Socrates last week as I walked alongside the banks of the stream running through Rocky Acre Farm in Mount Joy Pennsylvania. Mars and I were staying there at a Bed and Breakfast located in what used to be the farmhouse. We first visited the farmstead on two one-week vacations in 1981 and 1982 with our now thirty-eight year old son Bram.

The B&B is owned and operated by the Benner family. In the 80's Mr. & Mrs. Benner (Galen and Eileen) were also running the farm. Mr. Benner has since retired from the milking business and sold that enterprise to his son Arlen who along with his brother was a mid-teen farmhand on our earlier visits. Mr. B. now plays "camp Grandfather" to the hordes of children that are guests at the farm. Over those years the B&B has grown in the number of rooms, and notoriety - having appeared in the New York Times and on the NBC Today television program - but otherwise it and the farm have remained pretty much the same as when Mars first discovered it in our local paper's travel section. And coaxed me into giving it a try.




The Benners are Mennonites. In 1982 when Mars first mentioned vacationing on a local farm in Pennsylvania Dutch country my first thought was "What? No electricity! Horses not cars! Is there indoor plumbing?"

I was mistakenly thinking of the Amish "an Anabaptist Christian denomination in the United States and Canada that are known for their plain dress and limited use of modern conveniences such as automobiles and electricity." (according to Wikipedia) - not the Mennonites who, while also Anabaptists, pretty much freely embrace a lot of the technology in the modern world.

I knew the Amish for their distinctive beards (identical in mustache-less configuration to mine which was darker and fuller at that time), and their steadfast adherence to old-world ways in spite of their physical immersion within the perpetually modernizing twentieth century culture. Bearded men, women in long flowing skirts, communities living off of the land, pacifism - it sounded like the ideals of Woodstock come to life - without the music, but with the mud, albeit more fertile soil. I came of age in the sixties and in 1982 was a neophyte gardener. So, while I knew that I couldn't possibly embrace the austere Amish lifestyle, I expected nonetheless that I would ruefully admire some of their time-honored behaviors, in particular their relationship with the land, and wish that I could find a way to incorporate them into my own lifestyle

A little checking with the Pennsylvania state tourist organization assuaged my initial fears and I began to think that the Pennsylvania Dutch lifestyle might be a good one to take part in - as a guest outsider. Although I still did have a few reservations about the strict way of living, and extreme religiosity I feared we might be trapped within.

Not that I was then, or am now, spontaneous. Among other things, at that time, Mars and I were both doing regular recreational running - everyday for me, an occasional day off for her. And I did not intend to slack off in the slightest during our stay at the farm. Shortly after we checked in to the farmhouse apartment I changed into my running togs and went out to determine what our daily route would be.



I trotted down the driveway onto the road in front of the farm, turned left, ran to the top of a hill and checked my time. It was just about seven and one half minutes. I turned back, ran past the farm down the road alongside the stream up another hill and looked gain at my watch. Once again it was seven minutes and thirty seconds. I returned to the farm with an almost perfectly symmetrical running route, which Mars and I faithfully followed just about every day of our two one-week stays. Familiar routines quickly make the unusual into the everyday.

That evening on the front porch we met some others guests who, when they saw my beard, recognized me from my run that afternoon and had, they said, been quite surprised to learn that the Amish jogged. It was the only incident of such confusion on either of our trips, but being mistaken for a native did make me feel a little more like I belonged here.

The Benner farm turned out to be almost as non-Amish as we were. In addition to the electricity and the indoor facilities the cows were milked by machine, John Deere tractors roamed the farmland, Mr. Benner rode a golf cart around the acreage, and the Benner boys turned their mid-morning and mid-afternoon breaks into high-speed Harley rides through the cornfields. A boom box blasted rock music from the tool shed/garage in the center of the farm and pick-up basketball games developed with Mr. Benner (on break from his sixteen hour workday) joining in and banging bodies under the boards.

We did come in contact with several bearded or bonnet-capped members of the Amish on our drives through the countryside and at the local outdoor markets. Their farms were easily identified as having no electrical wiring leading up to them. And the people were recognizable by their black horse-drawn buggies, and their black untailored suits with collared shirts (mostly sky blue) for the males, and ankle-length, long sleeved dresses for the women. They do not want to be photographed.

The farms were, at least to my suburban eyes, enormous. As were the men who seemed like muscular outgrowths of the land that they worked - visibly separated from the brown and green landscape by their black and blue clothing yet seemingly attached to the earth by their solid stance. Images of the Muffler Man from the comic strip Zippy or the heads from Easter Island crowd into my mind alongside those of the sturdy, stolid Amish men who gave the strong impression of belonging wherever they were while the rest of the world seemed to float ephemerally around them.



The Benners likewise, while they dressed more like suburbanites on a weekend break (jeans and white tee shirts), seemed at home in all that they did - flowing seamlessly back and forth from their farmer role to their innkeeper role to their family role. Their world was the farm and the farm was their world.

Except for church - which, in addition to Sunday, they went to one week night while we were there and asked us to "please watch the cows". And we did just that as the black and white herd wandered one-by--one out of their pens, across the road, and off into the darkly invisible cornfields. Fortunately they later returned of their own accord, possibly from their own bovine worship-night, well before the Benners did. No harm, no foul.

One morning the veterinarian arrived in his Volvo station wagon to perform an operation on a cow with a badly twisted stomach. He bought with him, in addition to his black leather bag, a wooden and rope block-and-tackle device that was used to hover the ailing bovine a foot or so off the ground inside the July-hot-and-humid barn. Guests excitedly gathered around to watch the doctor reach up into the innards of the animal and mysteriously untangle the cow's digestive disability. Then he sewed her up, let her down, and left.

For the Benners, most of who were off working during the event, it was just another day on the farm. For our son Bram it has proven to be the most memorable vacation event of his lifetime and he still regales friends with the story and his fading photographs of the hoisted Holstein to this day.

At Mars' instigation we decided to revisit the farm last month after an Elderhostel that we attended in nearby Gettysburg. This time we were able to reserve our room via the B & B's own website but payment by credit card was not accepted over the web or in person - cash or check only. There also was no television at the farm. The Elderhostel was pretty busy with attention-requiring activities each day and on several evenings so, much as we were in the 1980's, we were looking for the farm to provide us with a little down time. We wandered the acreage, photographed the cows, and sat on the porch and read.




There are two multiple-story trees in front of the veranda. Each one has multiple trunks and branches, and multiple families of birds establishing their annual nests within them, just as they or their ancestors had done before - possibly for as long as the farm has existed.

We also drove deeper into Amish land on Route 30 which has changed from a relatively busy road into a display case for every chain restaurant and outlet store in America - stacked one top of each other with not even enough room to swing a trans-fatty French Fry without hitting an equally unhealthy thick-shake. We rushed back to the solitude of the farm.

We both still exercise pretty much every day but neither of us runs anymore. We do however walk a lot (along with weights, yoga, elliptical and other health club machines). One day Mars opted to rest and I went for a walk along the second half of our old running route.



Walking the road allowed me to be more consciously aware of the surroundings that twenty-five years earlier had been pretty much background noise to the sounds of running shoes and heavy breathing. But somewhere in my brain the old sights must have registered because, just as I experienced on our drive in through the farmlands to the farm, pictures of what was to come seemed to appear in my mind just nanoseconds before I saw them in real life. And, because (other than tree and bush growth) everything along that part of the route, up to and including the farm, basically remained the same, my precognitions and perceptions were always in sync - giving me the feeling that not only had I been here before but, if I chose to, I could be here again in the future.

Heraclitus also said "The road up and the road down is one and the same." This strikes me as possibly an exception to his more publicized "everything is changing" view of life. Maybe in addition to being a Pre-Socratic philosopher he was also a pre-Mennonite dairy farmer in his day job.

I mean who says that our ideas about him can't change too?



For more photos of the farm and other things, please check out the View From Mars.

Gettysburg

The normal tone of my essays is humorous (whether that's apparent or not) - but it is hard to find anything amusing to say about the Civil War battle of Gettysburg.

Mars and I just spent a week studying the conflict at an Elderhostel held at that Central Pennsylvania site. It was also the week during which thirty-two Virginia Tech students and faculty were killed on a day in which there were also seventy-five fatalities in Iraq (according to a fellow Elderhosteler who was staying in touch with one of his favorite political Blogs). The battle of Gettysburg, conducted over the first three days of July 1863, generated about 7,600 deaths and 38,000 other casualties. Ed, Gary and Chuck, our three instructors, justifiably reminded us again and again of that human cost. All in all a pretty somber overtone for an early spring vacation.

We are not Civil War enthusiasts. Mars and I came here to learn a little more about the deadliest conflict in our country's history because we had set up a website for our local historical society on the role of our town in that struggle. It is based upon the research and writing of a now-deceased member. In going through the materials we realized how little we knew about that nineteenth century clash. When our Elderhostel Catalog mentioned a week of study in a location that should be a few weeks ahead of ours in terms of warmth and Spring-ness we signed up, with me at least picturing warm afternoon rambles among the monuments and perhaps a sun-drenched reenactment of Pickett's Charge across the bright green farmland fields of Penn's country.

Then the Nor'easter of Spring 2007 arrived on the scene chilling the air and darkening the skies - along with a constant and then more constant wind that seemed intent on unfastening the various flags that tried to stand at half-staff. (It is some form of sad commentary, perhaps on myself, that I've become so used to seeing the American banner partially lowered that it took a day or two to realize why it was so configured.)

We had been to Gettysburg twice before (1981 and 1982) with our son Bram, who was twelve and then thirteen years of age at the time. On both years we visited the battlefield in early July on daytrips from a Mennonite Farm in nearby Mount Joy, at which we were vacationing. On our current trip Mars and I, having seen a write-up on the now farm/bed and breakfast in the New York Times a few years so ago, decided to revisit it for a few days after the Elderhostel was over.

I don't remember a lot about Gettysburg from the two earlier visits - but I do recall: (a) the intense heat (90) and humidity (90) - ten to fifteen degrees warmer than on the days of the battle, (b) walking on the path of Pickett's Charge led by a young Park Ranger who gesticulated loudly about the "arms and legs flying" as the Northern artillery shells fell onto the advancing Confederates, and (c) "One-legged Sickles".

(a) The weather, as mentioned above, was much colder this time - grossly atypical for this time of year in central PA as evidenced by the dried and shriveled magnolia blossoms that had come to fruition on schedule only to be bushwhacked by winter's guerilla backlash.



(b) We did not replicate Pickett's disastrous parade - although as we stood bundled in our jackets, hats and gloves at the "Copse of Trees" (the popularly touted target of the charge, the "High Water Mark of the Confederacy", and turning point of the battle) we were marched upon by a school group of pre-teens complete with flags, enthusiasm, and rebel yells. Our small group was not able to repulse them, even though we did hold the higher ground. At the Elderhostel we learned that about fifty percent of modern historians now believe that this might not have been the actual goal of the assault but rather a byproduct of several events that pushed the Confederate troops in that direction. The Battle of Gettysburg, due in part to its lack of concrete, conclusive descriptions of what actually happened and partially to our "talk-radio mentality" of arguing-to-death the smallest detail of disagreement, has apparently become something like a board game of alternate theories and strategies providing fodder for endless discussions and dissections of the events - many if not most of them with legitimate historical evidence.

Suffice it to say that once again in 2007, as in the 1860's - the North won the war, there were many instances of everyday courage and extraordinary heroism, and way too many people died in the process.

(c) "One legged Sickles", who had his lower appendage blown off at the battle after apparently deploying his unit in a foolhardy manner, was one of the major luminaries of our five day study, just as he was at our previous Gettysburg trips, and evidently for our son well beyond that time.

Shortly after he graduated from college and moved to Washington DC Bram called to tell us excitedly that he had actually seen the legendary limb at a museum in our nation's capitol. Immediatly after its publication in 2002 he gifted us with a hard copy of "American Scoundrel - The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles". Fortunately, while maintaining an abiding interest in this former Tammany Hall insider, our son shows none of his less than honorable traits.




Sickles seems to be one of those larger-than-life individuals who are so outrageous that if they didn't really exist you would want to invent them. Prior to the war, when he was a congressman from New York, Sickles shot and killed the son of Francis Scott key who was having an affair with his wife - an apparent tit for tat by Mrs. Sickles for her husband's widespread philandering. He was acquitted. Several years after his controversial maneuver at Gettysburg he basically nominated himself for and received a Congressional Medal of Honor for his part in winning the battle.

Sometimes people or events are just so appalling that all you can do is laugh.

During a couple of the nights at the Elderhostel I awoke wondering what the soldiers attempting to sleep the night before the third day of battle would have been thinking. And if they were able to get their minds to dwell upon something that gave them a moment of peace and maybe even a smile - like I was able to do with my thoughts and memories of "One-legged Sickles".

I hope so.

Travel Involved...But No Heavy Lifting

I just heard about the perfect volunteer job to help me pass the time during my retirement. It's got pretty much everything I could ask for: an exotic location, beautiful surroundings, a creative environment, and pleasant and appreciative co-workers. Plus it will allow me to utilize two of the talents that I've worked on since retirement - strength training and yoga.

In fact I was on my way to the health club when I heard about it. As usual I was listening to our favorite morning classical music station, Beethoven.com ("Classical Music Without The Attitude"), and their host at that time Nicole Marie. Since it was a Tuesday Mars was not with me. Instead she was en route to her once-a-week absence from the health club to attend her Gentle Yoga class. With no one to talk to I was actually paying attention when Nicole Marie started reading her 8:55 a.m. Classical Gossip segment - at least that's what I call it.



Today she was talking about the Sydney Australia Opera House. The management of that thirty-four year old performance centeris looking to do a good amount of redesign and reconstruction in order to resolve some apparently quite serious acoustic shortcomings. I was beginning to lose interest in the piece when she mentioned a serious non-sound issue that the architects were also hoping to address in this refurbishment effort - the problem of the crashing ballerinas.

It seems that in addition to a series of structural problems that reduce the audible quality of the musical performances, the stage exit through which the female dancers exit, often at high speeds, leads much too quickly to a cement wall into which the dancing divas frequently crash. (Picture for a moment the tutu-clad chorus of Swan Lake, en pointe and perfectly postured, careening like metal pinballs in the backstage of one the world's preeminent musical arts venues.)

But, unlike the acoustical situations, this dilemma does have a temporary fix - ballerina catchers.

Nicole Marie didn't say, but I assume that paid employees are currently performing the job. Now here in the United States most performing arts organizations rely on volunteers to do things like take tickets, show people to their seats, etc. Retired people, looking for an opportunity to "give back" to the community and, at the same time, minimize their entertainment expenses frequently fill these positions. Based on my observations, most of the time these volunteers are women. In my opinion this is not because the female gender are necessarily that much more appreciative of the arts, but simply because the organizations have not come up with job openings that require the skills that we guys want to use and which we still think that we have.

Now I admit that I'm not the biggest ballet fan. But, under the right circumstances, I could become one. As a former female coworker of mine who was an enthusiast used to tell me, "Lots of skin and lots of jumping. What's not to like?"



I do however kind of jealously admire the ability of the male dancers to lift and hold aloft the ballerinas. But, although Mars and I did do a Partners Yoga class wherein she was able to "fly" as I held her aloft with my legs and feet, at my age and with my musculature, no matter how much weight training I do, I am never going to be able to float anyone through a Pas de Deux, on stage or even in my dreams.

But ballerina catching I could probably handle, at least when its defined as acting as a buffer to prevent one of those out-of-control dancers from crashing into a wall. I am in relatively good physical shape. And at my age I really don't have that many lithe, young women throwing themselves at me. The least I could do would be to hold my ground if it did happen.

"Heh-heh-heh-HEH-heh!"

I hope that it's not the very first thing he does when he wakes up - although it probably is at least as effective as coffee for shaking the cobwebs out of your early morning brain.

It has been happening every day at about six fifteen a.m. for the past month or so - a fusillade of ferocious tapping followed by a few moments of silence, then another quick series of shots, then nothing, and so on. The noise is far enough away not to be my problem, and yet close enough to be my annoyance.

Lying in bed, trying to wake up my own brain without disturbing my body too much, I try unsuccessfully to count the number of taps, then failing at that to reckon the duration of each round and the down-time between them. I decide there is no consistency to that day's pattern and being unable to remember even vaguely what yesterday's was (I am after all trying to do this while not waking myself up) I give up and attempt to let my mind drift off into the state of somnambulance from which it only recently emerged. Then the doves "coo" from the roof outside my window, and the cardinals call back and forth to each other from trees at either side of the house, and my night is officially over.



According to Wildlife International "There are three main reasons why woodpeckers peck. The first is to find and capture food, such as insects, or to create access to tree sap. A second reason woodpeckers peck is to attract a mate and defend territory. In this case the bird will peck quickly and loudly - which is called 'drumming' - then pause, and then repeat the procedure many times. And, finally, woodpeckers peck in order to enlarge an existing hole and create a nest cavity."

Now I had assumed the noisy little knocker was searching for and finding breakfast - I mean the "early bird" and all that. Bugs, probably being in the same state of alertness as I am at that hour, are probably really easy targets. I remember from many years ago some friends of ours were having a similar early morning invasion of their roof and called the Audubon Society for advice. They were told to fix the top of their house and thereby eliminate the breakfast bounty that their demi-diurnal diners had discovered. They replaced the shingles and the problem and the birds both went away.

I also knew in the back of my mind about the home construction motive because a Downy Woodpecker is doing that very thing in the dying branches of the flowering crab tree outside of our family room. Apparently however this smallest and most common American woodpecker is also the only unionized one because our resident homebuilder never appears for work before eight a.m. and always leaves by five that afternoon. And if I do happen to see him before normal business hours he is only hanging out at our suet feeder having breakfast on his way to work. So I had ruled that out as a possibility.

But a bird attempting to attract a mate by beating his head against a wall was not something that I would have thought of - although there may be those out there for whom there is a meaningful analogy in there somewhere.

I mean what if, after several strenuous, ear-splitting seduction attempts, it finally works - and now you're the one with the headache.

Opening Day

We threw out the first trowel this past weekend and officially began the 2007 gardening season at our previously snowbound and then waterlogged homestead.

In previous years the opening day ceremony was the turning of the vegetable garden. This year it was the unveiling of the perennial beds.

The garden turning was at least partially gratuitous - or at least doing it on the first warm weekend in late March or early April was. I first started the activity, soon to be a ritual, during the spring of our first full year in our house. It was the second time I had tilled that earth. The first was the preceding Memorial day weekend when we created the plot with the guidance of my father-in-law - an inveterate gardener sharing his wisdom with his son-in-law of ten years who up until that time had shown not the slightest sign of interest in the subject.

I wasn't an exerciser at that time but my body was still young enough to believe that two hours of lifting dirt and sweating in the cool air was enough to make up for one hundred sixty-six hours of lethargy during the rest of the week - and in the process exorcise winter from the landscape. More importantly I enjoyed it and felt, as I looked at the hand tilled and hand raked pebbles of soil drying in the warm seasonal sun, that I had actually accomplished something good.

I continued to perform this ceremony annually for the next twenty-nine years - for about one third of that time sharing it with our now-deceased Labrador Retriever Nicole Marie who assisted by burrowing her nose into the cold soil at the start and rolling languorously in the lukewarm loam to wrap it up. I'll do it again this year before the warm weather comes. And will, as always, expect to see the imbedded outline of her muscular black back in the softened soil and feel her mud-coated snout resting in my hand.

But this spring, probably because Mars saw some new life on one of the bushes in front of our family room and decided that she wanted to trim away its dead branches, we chose to work together to cleanup the perennial beds first.

When we first moved in we had none of these plots. Now we have eight - two of them going into their third year, and just about all of them added to annually. Each of them had been left un-pruned and buried in a blanket of oak leaves over the winter. Now, in the drab days of early spring, with the snow gone and lawns and trees not yet burgeoning, the pale colored dead stalks sticking out of the partially decomposed foliage added to the picture of dormancy that was at odds with what should be the hope of the new season.



Our own landscape is too shady and our yard to wet to support the crocuses and daffodils that already decorate some of sunnier/drier yards in town. So we look for more modest signs of life. Even the most basic evidence that photosynthesis is occurring on our property is a cause for celebration - in this case a hamburger and black olive pizza for dinner.

In prior years, because they were opened up a little later in the season, there was more green to be uncovered. But most of the octet of beds were still able to provide a modest display of chlorophyll to soothe our desperately searching eyes: False Dragon stalks and sedum buds, iris tubers and fledgling ornamental grasses, daylily swellings and hosta tips, and a quintet of promising green leaves from the bulb mixture given to us several years ago by our friends the Oblaks.

It wasn't just a function of my aging that made me choose what might appear to be the easier of the two opening day tasks - although I actually had entertained in the back of my mind that I might attempt to till the garden after we had finished with the perennial beds. But two hours and thirty minutes of garden calisthenics (squatting, crouching, duck-walking, rising, raking, ripping, and mower mulching) turned out to be enough exercise to eliminate the need for an upper-body workout.

Our choice was actually the result of us now having enough of the multi-year blooming plants on our property to warrant a substantial cleanup effort on their behalf around this time of year. At this point in our horticultural life there are as many ongoing accomplishments that need nurturing as potential projects that will require the proper foundation.

Fortunately at this point in our chronological lives we have the time, energy and enthusiasm for both.