Postcards From the Scotia Barrens: Forever Autumn

My world has been burning. And I mean that literally. Pennsylvania has been so dry this year; among the worst I've seen. The ponds in the Barrens that I love to visit and photograph reflections on have been dry for months.

And then on Monday, the Scotia Barrens burned, with the closest part of the fire burning less than a mile from our house. I told you that story in Monday's and Tuesday's blips.

On Tuesday, we smelled smoke again, and a posting on a local Facebook group informed us that it was a fire in a farm field on the other end of town, near where my husband drops me off when I do the Mahala walk. It was shortly contained.

But on Wednesday, oh, on Wednesday, Sandy Ridge burned. This is a place I have shown you quite a few times on these pages. It is one of the best places to go to see butterflies! In mid-October, it was a stunning scene featuring every beautiful autumn color you can imagine. It was SO BEAUTIFUL that day.

The news story said that it was a controlled burn that got out of hand. They were trying to burn 100 acres, and ended up burning 800 acres instead, with many fire trucks being called to the scene.

Now, I cannot even begin to fathom that amount of fire. It boggles the mind. I don't know if this says good or bad things about me as a person, but my first thought was: and what will happen now to my butterflies?

So the scent on the breeze, locally, this week, has been smoke from all of the fires. We continued to note the smell of smoke from the Barrens fire late into the week. Every time we went outside our house, we smelled it.

But the Sandy Ridge fire: well, that one felt personal. When we saw the news about it - I think it was on Thursday - we just couldn't believe it. There are a few places we go locally to hike. That's one of the oldest ones; my husband and I have gone to Sandy Ridge since I lived in State College and he lived in Philipsburg, way back in the 80s when we first started dating.

So all of this is a long way around of getting to my point, which is this: my world was burning, and we needed rain! So when the forecast said that we would be getting the remnants of Florida's hurricane on Friday, my first thought was: Praise Jesus! Let it stop all those fires from burning!!!!

And then it rained, and it rained, and it rained, and it rained. And on Saturday morning, between the rains (for more rain was coming Saturday afternoon), I went out to the Barrens to check things out. Do you want to know what I found? THERE IS WATER IN THE PONDS AGAIN!!!

Sure, it's just a little bit of water, but it's a good start! And now the reflections are back again, and I can play there with my camera, the way I always did. I checked out the first three ponds on my end of the Barrens: water in every single one, and leaves!

Now, I have been bemoaning the end of the foliage show, as it was a stunner this year. But almost all of the leaves are down now, and I guessed that was the end of things. How sad when the color show concludes, and all those leaves turn brown, and fall.

But I discovered that in the ponds, I can use the reflections to put the leaves back ON all those bare naked trees. It is the only decent thing I can do for them, so here we have it: in the gamelands ponds, I have captured the reflections with the leaves back on the trees, so it will be forever autumn there! And as far as we know now, all of those fires are out, put out by the rain!

I have gone up and had a first look at the Barrens fire damage on Tuesday (my husband has said he does not want to see it, but I have told him we must bear witness to this), but we also need to go and check out the devastation up on Sandy Ridge at some point.

I found some videos showing the flames trying to jump Fire Tower Road, which is at the other end of the Sandy Ridge, not where we go. Maybe it is selfish of me, but I am hopeful that when I get there, I will find that it is not "our" part of the ridge that burned. A girl can hope, can't she? CAN'T SHE?

I have TWO soundtrack songs for this picture and story. The first one is the one you might expect, which is to say, the Moody Blues, with Forever Autumn. The second one is for all those fires, which I had no part in setting, but whose smoke I breathed into my lungs for days: Billy Joel, with We Didn't Start the Fire.