Juniata River, Early Spring

Sunday morning found us making a trek to visit my family in Juniata County, Pennsylvania, followed by a trip out the valley to a surprise birthday party for one of my nephews in late afternoon.

It was misty and beautiful along the Juniata. The river is sometimes referred to as "the blue Juniata," but on this day it was mostly gray, the water surface shiny and smooth. A hint of pink buds was just starting on the trees along the opposite bank. It could have been today, or a hundred years ago; the river is timeless.

I think of this as my family river. I have walked along it, swum in it, and inner-tubed on it (in late summer when it was so low in spots we had to get out of our inner-tubes and walk in the river, and on the railroad tracks along it - arriving home hours late, badly sunburned, and with sore feet, and facing the wrath of my extremely worried mother).

But mostly I have driven along it. The Juniata River, a tributary of the Susquehanna, runs along "the narrows" of route 322, a major east-west thoroughfare in Pennsylvania. Route 322 is the road I would take on weekends to go home to visit my family, after having gone away to Penn State. When I see the Juniata, I get that happy feeling that "I'm going home."

The river was the inspiration for a famous poem and song in the 1800s, that was a favorite of Charles Ingalls (father to the famous Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House on the Prairie books), part of which went like this. (There are several variations on this poem; below is the version quoted by Laura in one of her stories.)

"Wild roved an Indian maid,
Bright Alfarata,
Where flow the waters
Of the blue Juniata.

Strong and true my arrows are
In my painted quiver,
Swift goes my light canoe
A-down the rapid river."

- Marion Dix Sullivan

When I am standing along the banks of the Juniata River on a March morning, and the mist is rising into the endless undulating hills, I can almost imagine I see the shadowy figure of the beautiful warrior maiden standing on the other side with her bow and arrows. She seems to be waving and smiling: "Welcome home."