Pilgrimage

  A few post's back I mentioned how Lake Wallenpaupack is like my sacred place. Last night we finally had some free time and a vehicle so we made the pilgrimage north. I had checked the weather reports and things we're all clear. Cold, some clouds, and more cold. No problem that's what hats and gloves are for.

  We left the apartment and didn't really hit much traffic, but when we got to Mt. Pocono, we started noticing the streets were a little slick and there was a light dusting of snow on the ground. Not much, just enough to make it look pretty. San and I commented on it, and I mentioned I had checked the weather so maybe the snow was from the day before. 

  As we continued on it started flurrying, by the time we got to the lake it was full on snowing. Thing's were getting a little slick but still not to bad. It made the landscape unfamiliar enough that we thought we missed our turn even though we hadn't. When we finally got to the spot, the side roads were coated with snow. We slowly crept down the hill and parked the car.

  We only stayed for a little while at the lake. Most of the time we just looked out across the darkened lake and listened to the silence. It's a completely different place in the off season. No people, no boats, not even docks. I really didn't want to leave, but it was snowing pretty hard and I was worried we wouldn't make it off the mountain if we stayed much longer. 

  When we got to the car we noticed how different the snow was here. At home we get the standard wet flakes that quickly dissolve. Here the flakes looked more like rough cut salt crystals. Real big, chunky, and dry. The snow was so dry in fact that we didn't even need windshield wipers. It just didn't seem to stick to anything but the ground.

  We made our way very slowly up the hill and finally got out to a main road. We left just in time, if we had stayed much longer we would have gotten stuck. The snow was really coming down and road conditions were getting really sketchy. As we headed toward Greentown, there was one spot where the roads were horrible. 

  We were going really slow an still sliding a bit. On the left side of the street there was an emergency response vehicle and a girl with her car all smashed up in a ditch. About a hundred yards up, another car on the left was flipped, and on the right there were two vehicles smashed into poles. This was easily the scariest part of the whole excursion. 

  The snow never let up until we got past Mt. Pocono and even then we saw a few smalls bands. But for the most part it was a standard ride home after that. It was pretty crazy how fast all the snow had fallen. We were only at the lake for about a half hour. If I had known it was gonna snow I wouldn't have gone but I guess it's good we did because I think the next trip will have to wait until spring.

My Sacred Place

   Most people who know me would have no problem calling me a geek, nerd, shut in, or whatever the current fancy term is for 'guy who sits around playing with computers all day'. And for the most part they'd be right. There is another part of me however. As with almost everything in my life there is a polar opposite version of me. This part of me loves the outdoors. Hiking, camping, that kind of thing. I love forests, I love the way they look, I love the way they smell. I love the way you can feel the cool damp air crawling out a big forest when you stand at it's edge.
   The only thing I love more in the natural world than forests is water. Oceans, streams, creeks, ponds, hell, give me a big puddle and I'll just stare at for hours. Bodies of water have some kind of strange hold over me. I'm not sure what it is or why but it's there none the less. My favorite of all however is lakes, which brings us to my main point, Lake Wallenpaupack.

   Lake Wallenpaupack is located deep within the Poconos mountains of Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is a place of phenomenal beauty. People from all over come here to fish, camp, hike, boat, water ski, and much more. The lake itself is 13 miles long, has 52 miles of beautiful shoreline, and at it's deepest point is about 60ft. The lake is surrounded by large swaths of forests and smaller lakes, streams and tributaries.     When you see it first hand it's hard to believe that a place of such immense natural beauty could ever be created by man, but that's exactly how it happened.
   In 1926 PPL(pennsylavnia power & light) Corporation decided to build a hydro electric dam, over what was at time, the Wallenpaupack creek. They bought up a ton of land from local residents, and cleared the valley that held the creek. Houses, stores and everything else had to be demo'd and/or relocated. To this day there are still, some remnants under the lake of the small town that once stood. Not full houses mind you, but foundations and even some roads can still be seen by brave divers who venture below the lakes waters. At the time of  it's completion, Lake Wallenpaupack was considered a marvel of engineering and was the largest man made lake in the state.

   This is one of the places I grew up. Normal life was spent in the suburbs, but summers, and occasionally winters were always spent 'up at the lake'. We gathered at the lake house each weekend. Usually there were about 10 to 15 of us there at a time. Everyone would go out hiking or swimming all day, and then in the evening we'd have a huge communal meal. It's hard to describe the effect this had on me, but some of my fondest memories occurred here.

   Eventually, in my later teen years my mom and step-dad split up and I lost access to the lake. At first it didn't seem like that big of a deal. But after a year or so something strange started happening. I started thinking about the lake more and more. Simply reminiscing about all the good times I spent there. A little while longer and I was starting to have dreams about the lake. After that I'd start getting this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever I thought about. Eventually it gets to the point where I can think of nothing else but the lake.

   This happens at regular intervals, roughly every two years or so. I try to ignore it because I live an hour an a half away and I don't drive. But the only way to stop the obsession is to go there. To be at the lake. Once I get there all I have to do sit down next to it and the feelings start to disappear. Replaced with a sense of peace and calm that I rarely ever experience in my normal daily life, I'm ADD to the core and I don't handle anxiety very well.
   I'm not a religious person, and I'm not a hippy by any sense of the word. But I can't deny that somehow this place is a sacred spot for me. It holds power over me that I can not control and must obey. It is absolutely relentless. No other location has this kind of hold on me and no other place can replace it.
   Someday if I ever get my life in order, one of my dreams is to own a home on the lake. I would love to buy the exact property I grew up on, but even if that's not possible, a new home on Lake Wallenpaupack would be the perfect place to create new memories and bring peace to my twisted head.