Recent Life

Zolfyer says I don’t write enough about “normal” stuff (ie him, but he’s just being spoiled lol) so here I am! Currently our life is all over the place. Two weeks ago we went on a great vacation with our friends to the Pocono Mountains here in PA. We were out near the tiny town of Tioga (it is worth noting that there is a Tioga town, county and a Tioga neighborhood in Philly, we were in the second). It was really fun and much too short. We spent an entire day hiking by accident, we left the house at 2:30 and got back at 7 and that was after incurring a ride from a very nice gentlemen.

The hike started out going down the ridgeline behind the house to follow the creek up into the valley and after a couple miles of enjoying the water and rocks and forest our path became blocked by several fallen trees that would be unsafe to climb. I’ve rarely been so attuned to the feelings of flora before. I love plants and generally take the time to pay attention to their energy and what they are saying to my intuition, but usually it’s still a bit unsure and blurry, but not out there. It was extremely refreshing as well, the air was clear and smooth and chilled. I was worried that the exertion would set off my asthma, but it only got upset later in the hike after we were all tired and experiencing stress. But yeah, trees and cool air.

When we got blocked up by fallen trees we decided to climb the steep ridgeline because we were fairly certain that the field we could see was a landmark. It was not extremely challenging but it wasn’t easy either. We all ended up using a tree to help us get up because its roots were strong and stretched down the steepest part of the path. Grabbing that tree root was a little startling. I’ve rarely had such a clear communication from a plant, a sensation of “hold here, I’ll help, grab me, like your friends.” It was fairly baffling but very nice. Probably the nicest tree I’ve met so far. After climbing the ridge was when things started to become a little confusing.

We didn’t walk through the field because it was someone’s property, a cornfield still growing, but we walked along it. At a certain point the path naturally moved away from the creek and the ridgeline and we walked through brambles and berry plants. Those guys had thorns and they tried to bite me, probably for wishing that I could eat their berries safely. Nothing but crotchety plants from there on out. We ended up coming upon a meadow and it was amazing. I’ve never seen a meadow in real life, and the plants were so tall that we couldn’t reasonably cross through it. Going around it wasn’t easy, there wasn’t much of a path so it was rough going through the trees and such on the embankment around the meadow. Eventually we saw the creek again but the ridgeline was far too steep for us to safely climb down, so we did our best to skirt the meadow’s edge. Eventually we heard the sound of cars, which meant a road and went in that direction. Of course that meant walking through the meadow.

Now, the meadow was a little tamer where we were, but it still took us like thirty minutes to fight through the plants because they were still quite tall and very densely packed. Zolfyer has pictures on his blog of the meadow and in the meadow when we were halfway through it. On the other side of the meadow was more forest that was not easy to traverse. Low-hanging, sprawling branches and roots that can trip and twist ankles made it slow going to move safely. Two of us tripped and a lot of the branches were smacking and catching and slapping. We were still having fun, but it was still a bit frustrating and annoying. My friend and I are also fairly certain we walked through a faerie door. There were two trees making an amazingly perfect arch, like a church door and we walked in between it. When I walked through I had the matter of fact thought that I was pretty sure I walked through a faerie door.

We got a bit turned around after that, even seeing the meadow again. Eventually we made our way to a cornfield and we chose that direction based on the fact that we could see houses and telephone poles in the direction, meaning civilization and a road. Even the cornfield was a bit annoying. We had to follow a tractor trail in order to not walk through the actual corn and eventually made our way to the road. Then we had no idea which way down the road to go. Later we would find out which way was best and exactly how far we had gone. We had walked miles and all the way up the mountain and to the other side. It was spectacular and impressive just how far we’d walked. We were sore for the next three days lol Trying to figure out the direction for the road was when it stopped being fun. Only three people paid any attention to us calling out for help and direction and we don’t think they really knew what we were asking them to clarify. We ended up walking two miles the wrong direction and when we tried knocking on a few doors for help we were completely ignored. One woman even came out of her house and saw and heard us, but just called her dog back in and left us high and dry.

Eventually we managed to figure out on our own that we should probably go back and by then we were unhappy and tired, but an older gentlemen was outside as we made our way back and was able to help us. He gave us a ride too and we went to bed pretty early that night. It was fun and frustrating.

The rest of our week went pretty smoothly. I cooked some kickass mac and cheese, we made strawberry mojitos and had great fun with fire. We were kinda commanded by our friend’s parents to burn firewood and by proxy make smores. The smores were especially delicious with dark chocolate. We also watched Rock of Ages three times, all three tipsy or half drunk. All of us grew up on 80’s music so we sang loud and happily to the movie and enjoyed each other’s company. We also had a “gamer day” where we all sat around playing our video games in the same room. Overall it was very relaxing.

Well, except for the part where our car’s radiator blew up at the bottom of an exit ramp. Not literally of course, but there was a huge crack in it and the engine died from extreme overheating. Our friend ended up having to cover us for a nearly 500$ repair. Thank the gods that the headgasket didn’t go, otherwise the car would’ve essentially been totaled. Bob is 14 and a discontinued line at that, fixing the headgasket would’ve been more than his value. He’s doing alright now, so here’s hoping he continues doing alright until we can afford to fix him more or reincarnate him.