The Newtown Pentacle

Friday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Yes, we’re ending this week all ‘pastoral’ like.

For all the people who ask me ‘why Pittsburgh?,’ scenes like the one above are a part of ‘why.’ The name of this state I’m in means ‘Penn’s Woods’ after all, and it’s a not very long drive to leave behind the passive aggressive streets of the Paris of Appalachia to take a walk in a well manicured section of the ‘sylvania.’ If you wanted actual woods, that’s about another 25-30 minutes away in an any direction, this is a wooded corridor through an otherwise suburban area.

As described yesterday, a trailhead which I did not know existed was recently discovered as being about a 15 minute drive from HQ. The facility is called as the ‘Panhandle Trail.’ This particular trailhead, dubbed ‘Walkers Mill’ is found in Collier Township. There’s all sorts of indications that this area used to host a rock quarry, but I haven’t been able to find historic specifics. I’m am of the opinion that the ‘Walkers Mill’ nomen likely emanates from one of the legal founders of the town, in 1911, a fellow who was called J.J. Walker.

Saying that, I’m making broad inferences off of a scarce bit of research, so take that one with a grain of salt. I generally don’t ’deep dive’ these days unless I’m trying to prove a point.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One is always fascinated by the Appalachian layer cake you can observe here in Western Pennsylvania. One of the oldest mountain ranges on earth, the Appalachia are. Supposedly, these sort of rocks are heavily embedded with fossils of both a micro and macroscopic nature. They’re also valuable from a chemical perspective, having preserved climate data in their layers which go back as far as a billion years, and varying amounts of hydrocarbons can be found in the stack too. Coal, oils, gas. This trail has a feature called ‘Fossil Cliff’ which I’m intrigued by.

Unfortunately, I had a doctor’s appointment to get to, and the alarm on my phone chimed out (I’m currently using Black Flag’s ‘My War’ as the alarm tone) and that let me know it was time to go and get my 6 month in X-Ray for the busted ankle. An intention was to show the Doc what the ankle looked like after some exercise, instead of being all pink and fresh while directly out of a resting period. I offered the Doc my step count from the walk, and he seemed pleased with the orthopedic healing progress and my efforts. My exercise plan for the next six months was offered approval, as well.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It’s absolute Heaven for me to be able to do this sort of thing again, after my long autumn and winter of oft times extremely painful recovery from the injury to my ankle. The muscular atrophy in my upper things is a leave behind, which I’m assiduously attacking right now on a nearly daily basis. Just yesterday, I walked up a flight of stairs without clutching for dear life on the bannister, for instance.

The weather is also beginning to warm up here in Pittsburgh, now. My Doctor approved plan is to start up my old routine again, the one where there’s three short walks of about an hour splayed out during the week, and one long ass marathon scuttle on the weekends. Hopefully, by the end of the summer, I’ll be once again ‘turning the earth under my feet.’

Back next week with something different, at this, your Newtown Pentacle.

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“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.