Looking For Pennsylvania Mountain Dreams Resources

I find myself in the position of not knowing a lot about the Pennsylvania Mountains.  In looking through my blogroll I was surprised by the few links I came across that were specific to this region. Here are a few folks living their Mountain Dreams…

From Roundtop Mountain

First there was this snippit from a few days back…

Snow dusted the mountain last evening, just enough to make walking slippery this morning. The new snow covers both ice and bare patches, so I can no longer tell one from the other. I step out smartly, only to slip and nearly fall when my boot finds the ice.

As cold as it has been for the past 10 days, I am surprised to still find some open water. The faster moving streams are still open and gurgling. ~ Roundtop Ruminations: Open water.

I have been reading Carolyn’s blog at Roundtop Ruminations for as long as I can remember. She helped identify one of my hawk photos a long time back and we travel in the same circle of blogs. She shares the sights, sounds, and feelings of living on the side of a mountain in SE Pennsylvania. Today she has posted a number of photos that are just beautiful…Roundtop Ruminations: An embarrassment of riches.

From Plummer’s Hollow

There is one other group of “bloggers” from Pennsylvania that I have followed for quite a while. They are the prolific Bonta’s of Plummer’s Hollow. I first began following Dave at via negativa, his site for poetry, nature observations, photography, video, and I am not sure how else you could categorize everything he does on the site…Here is today’s…

A sled ride down Plummer’s Hollow, January 13, 2010 from Dave Bonta on Vimeo.

My sledding video from last winter was such a success, I thought I’d try it again this year. The conditions were pretty icy and scary last winter, so I stopped at the half-way point, not wanting to risk the video camera any farther. (I hold it in my right hand as I ride — this isn’t a helmet cam.) But this winter, given all the wonderful cold weather and regular snow, sledding conditions have been exceptional, and with the January thaw imminent, yesterday afternoon I went ahead and shot this video of a sled ride clear to the bottom, a mile-and-a-half-long run. It isn’t quite non-stop, as you’ll see: there are two places, slight uphills on the way down, where I had to get out and walk for a few yards. (The first is the half-way spot where I stopped in last winter’s video.) ~  Sledding Plummer’s Hollow | Via Negativa.

Even though it would probably be my death…I’d love to make that ride down the mountain like Dave…Growing up in Texas, I have never seen snow on a hill that could be rode. I’d break my neck fersure.

Dave’s mother, Marcia Bonta, is a much published naturalist author. Her site contains many of her articles and links to other interesting sites. I want to thank her for the knowledge she shares about the natural world outside her door…Here is a sample of her latest…

The Iroquois called it the “Tree of Great Peace.” Its cluster of five needles to a bundle represented the five nations of the Iroquois and its spreading roots, reaching east, north, west, and south were the roots of peace that extended to all peoples.

We call this tree, more prosaically, eastern white pine — Pinus strobus — meaning “gum-yielding pine tree,” and “white” referring to its light-colored wood. It’s also been called sapling, pumpkin, soft, northern, and Weymouth pine, the latter name a tribute to Thomas Viscount Weymouth who, in 1605, had eastern white pine planted on his Longleat estate in England.

And what a tree it was then, providing towering, straight ships’ masts for the British Navy. ~  The Tree of Great Peace « Marcia Bonta.

Do yourself a favor, if you enjoy the mountains of Pennsylvania or just want to learn a bit about the world you live in…Go visit these folks websites and spend some time getting to know Pennsylvania…I know I have…and will again.

If you know of another blogger writing about the Pennsylvania Mountains, pleas, put the link in the comments of this post so I can check them out and add them to my blogroll on the site…Thanks