On Monday our friends the Dunns invited us to go tubing on Pine Creek. The Shilligs joined us and at noon we headed down to Pine Creek Outfitters, just outside of Wellsboro. Pine Creek is a tributary of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. It originates in Potter County on the Triple Divide hill right here in Gold. I’ve written about the Triple Divide before. It is where, on a hill near here, water flows into three different watersheds. One stream originating on the hill flows into the Middle Branch of the Genesee River which flows north into Lake Ontario and out the St. Lawrence into the North Atlantic. Another stream forms the headwaters of the Allegany River which flows down to Pittsburgh where it joins the Monongahela to form the Ohio River that then flows into the Mississippi and empties into the Gulf of Mexico. The third stream, Pine Creek, flows down through Pine Creek Gorge, known as the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon, and into the Susquehanna and then on southward to empty into the Chesapeake Bay. The part of Pine Creek we were on was a 1.25 mile stretch upstream from the Outfitters. They dropped us off and we floated back down to the Outfitters. It took us a couple of hours. The creek was pretty low, about two to three feet deep in most places, perfect for tubing. We had a great time. Afterward on our way home, we stopped to get ice cream in Galeton.
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| Monday's excursion down Pine Creek. |
If you’ll recall, last year we had to cut down all the pine and spruce trees on our property. They were all dead or dying. That left my woodland garden with only one big maple tree, a lot of little wild cherry saplings, and very little shade. I planted new trees this spring – an oak, a hickory, a redbud, and a smoke tree. They are small and it will be a while before the garden looks anything like a woodland again. In the meantime, it has become an extension of the meadow. Miriam decided she wanted a part of the woodland garden as her own project. She has made plans for a wisteria arbor, a fire pit and picnic area, a lawn glider, and a pond. The biggest part of her plan got underway last week when our neighbor Ziggy Dunn dug the pond for us. He came by on Monday evening and we marked out the perimeter. On Tuesday morning he came with his tractor and dug it out. It was pretty dramatic watching him work. It took him most of the day because of a buried tree trunk with stubborn roots he had to remove. In the process of digging he also found the grave of a dog I believe was my great aunts’ dog Roxy. You never know what you’ll find when you start digging here. This pond is a major alteration to the landscape of our yard. It is about 16 feet long and 12 feet wide and four feet deep at the deepest end. Next Miriam will get a liner for it. Then we will fill it with water and add aquatic plants and koi. We also have to work on distributing the soil, removing the many, many rocks, and landscaping around it. It will be nice when it is done.
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| The perimeter of the pond. |
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| Starting to dig. |
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| Hazel in the hole. |
Our property has changed a lot over the years. When we moved here in 2000, most of it was lawn. There was a small flower garden in the back yard and another at the front side of the house that was overrun with sumac. Over the years, the amount of lawn has decreased as I expanded the flowerbed into my long border, planted an acre in orchard, created various vegetable gardens and a meadow and the woodland garden, all of which I’ve expanded. I don’t have much lawn now, maybe an acre that I mow over all. I think of this three acre piece of land as my living space as much as the house is. Like the house, the property has its various rooms – a meadow room, a woodland room, an orchard room, a garden room – and I love tending them, keeping them tidy, and occasionally doing some major redecorating. The woodland garden is like a big room in disarray right now. I’ll be glad when it is tidy again.
As a lead up to my celebration of Independence Day, I sat down last week and read two of our nation’s founding documents. First I read The Declaration of Independence, a document dismissed by many now because its principal author was Thomas Jefferson. It is an astounding and world changing document. The objections to The Declaration are based on one aspect of Jefferson’s life – that he owned slaves. I’ve read many books and spent many hours studying the life of Jefferson and his ideas, something I’m sure most of his detractors have not done. He was flawed, but so are we all. He was a genius, which most of us are not. His ideas are what is important – self-evident truths that he clearly and eloquently stated in The Declaration of Independence. Statements that were revolutionary when he wrote them and still are today like “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” And “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” And “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” A new nation, the greatest republic the world has ever known, was created on the foundation of those truths. That nation has endured for two hundred and forty-four years, long enough for its people to become complacent about the liberties they take for granted and no longer value.
After reading The Declaration, I next read The Constitution of the United States of America – all seven articles and twenty-seven amendments. Again, it is a world changing document, nothing like it had ever existed before. Among its contributing authors were James Madison, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton – all of them geniuses and all of them fully and personally acquainted with governmental tyranny. In order to prevent tyranny in the new nation they were designing, they created a Constitution that established a republic with three branches of government. It set up a system of checks and balances designed to prevent the federal government from becoming too powerful. In the first ten amendments, The Bill of Rights, it secured protection of the unalienable rights of its citizens from infringement by the government – the right to free exercise of religion, freedom of speech and the press, the right to peaceably assemble, the right to bear arms, and many more. These rights were not granted to the citizens by the government, they were fundamental rights that the government, by law, could not remove. We have strayed far from the original intentions of the Founders. I think most of the men and women in government have not carefully studied The Constitution, many of them probably have never read it. Because we have neglected, forgotten, and misinterpreted The Constitution, we have a great imbalance in our government now. The Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches no longer function in the way the Founders intended. The resulting instability of society that follows is apparent. The more perfect union the Founders sought has fractured and our society is full of division. We are in many ways a house divided.
I love this nation. My ancestors fought to establish it and to preserve it. It grieves me to see our nation in turmoil. In our house we pray every day for God to protect this nation from those who would harm it and destroy our freedom. As we celebrated Independence Day, all this was weighing on my mind and heart.
In spite of that, we had a great celebration. The Thayns arrived on Thursday afternoon. The cousins spent the afternoon getting reacquainted and playing together. Kurt and Julie got little electric motorcycles in addition to the green Gator that the children loved to ride around. At dusk we were at Shillig’s where Uncle Kurt let each child select a firework from his cache to begin the festivities. That evening, Miriam made a big batch of sourdough bread that we’ve been feasting on through the whole weekend. Tabor went fishing on Friday morning and brought back some fish and had a fish cleaning/anatomy lesson for the children. The Fosters arrived on Friday afternoon. There were all sorts of things going on all day every day. Miriam had all sorts of fun activities planned. On Friday afternoon we went on a nature bingo scavenger hunt that she designed. After that, we went swimming. Rachel made a delicious almond shortbread as a treat. We had homemade pizza for dinner on Friday. That night we had an outdoor movie projected on a porch wall at the Shillig’s with fun refreshments.
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| Cousins on cycles. |
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| And in the green Gator. |
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| And on the swings. |
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| And playing ponies. |
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| Waiting for first night's fireworks. |
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| Miriam's sourdough. |
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| Tabor cleaning fish and giving an anatomy lesson. |
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| Mable doing nature bingo. |
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| Nature bingo, finding frogs. |
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| Porch movie time! |
On Saturday morning we went tubing on Pine Creek again. We were among the first on the creek. It was a warm, sunny morning and the scenery was beautiful. We made our way down the creek slowly, enjoying the water and being together. At the end, we played in the creek, caught crawdads, and skipped stones for a while. Then we came home and played games all afternoon.
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| Tubing on Pine Creek. |
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| On Pine Creek. |
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| Miriam taking a dip. |
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| Catching crawdads. |
In the late afternoon we gathered at the Shillig’s for the main part of our celebration. Most of it centered on excellent food, of course. There were hamburgers, hot dogs, and bratwurst with all the fixings. Sarah made a potato salad. Julie made several delicious salads. Hannah made a frog-eye salad. Kohl made cookies. We have a lot of good cooks in our family. I have the waistline to prove it. After eating, we sat around and talked and played games until it got dark. We had a great fireworks show sitting in the light of a huge, beautiful full moon. There were other fireworks from neighbors and fireflies blinking in the dark. It was a great way to end a great day.
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| Patriotic Thayn girls. |
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| Our feast. |
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| Feasting. |
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| Watching fireworks. |
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| Fireworks. |
Today we had church over at the Shillig’s house. We sang all the patriotic hymns in the hymnal – The Star-spangled Banner, America, the Beautiful, and My Country ‘Tis of Thee. I love those hymns. Stacey taught the lesson geared to the children complete with a homemade video she and Hazel made yesterday, and did a great job. Now church is over. The Shillig household is coming over here for lunch to eat leftovers from yesterday’s feast. This evening we’re going over there for our Sabbath Soiree. It’s a beautiful warm, summer Sabbath day. I feel blessed to have family here. I feel blessed to be free to worship as I please. I feel blessed to live in this great nation. I almost choked up as we sang these words this morning:
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine!
Good Sabbath and God Bless America!
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| This morning. |
