Beaver Pond and Pines Near Dusk

There is a good-sized gamelands a short walk from my house, and my husband and I hike there often.

The gamelands is part of central Pennsylvania's Scotia Barrens, a pine barrens featuring lots of pitch pine and scrub oak trees.

In exploring the native American history of the barrens area shortly after I moved to a house nearby, I remember reading of a famous Medicine Man named Morning Star, who used the plants of the barrens to make strong medicines.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the area was mined heavily for iron ore; Andrew Carnegie bought much of the land and named the town he built there Scotia, or "Little Scotland," after his home.

Eventually Scotia became a ghost town, and little remains of it today. The area is home to birds, beavers, salamanders, lady's slipper, and a host of other plants and wildlife.

The Scotia Barrens plays an important role in refreshing the local groundwater; in fact, the barrens area recharges the groundwater for Bellefonte's Big Spring, about 20 miles away.

This photo shows one of the area's many little pine-lined beaver ponds. It has been cold the past few nights and so the water was frozen on top, but the ice didn't go very deep.

We had gotten a light skiff of snow the night before: not much, just enough to coat the ground (and ice). All afternoon, bits of blue sky were battling with the gray cloud cover; you can see the battle of light and dark taking place in the sky just behind that large tree in the middle of the shot.

Near dusk in the fading light, in a place like this devoid of any markers of time, you can imagine you are standing in just about any time in history.

And so, in the dusky edges of my imagination, we slip outside of time; and somewhere nearby, the Medicine Man Morning Star is quietly finishing up his work for the day: gathering plants for his next strong medicine amid the fading light.