Sunday, August 3, 2008
Sunday, August 3, 2008
The Pennsic War is an annual late summer 17 day camping event held by the Society for Creative Anachronism. The event centers on pre-17th century history and culture. Campers dress in appropriate clothing and generally act as one from medieval times.
It's located in Slippery Rock, PA -- you can see it from the highway (I-79). It's mostly a collection of mostly smelly (unless they bathe in the nude or nudeless ponds), hippy-flowery folk dancing, singing, bongo-playing, drinking, and whining about politics.
Then there are the ass-kickers who long to beat the snot out of the hippies who decide to try and don armor and amuse the masses with their feeble attempts at leg and head wraps. That's the main draw for me... watching fields of guys in armor sweating their asses off, smacking the crap out of one another. Steel gets bent, angers are raised, bruises are produced, and armor broken. Good times. Go Camp Shadowwolf (from NC).
I have video of the tents, as far as one's eye can see. I have yet to take the footage off the SD card, but plan to shortly.
Reunion.
The weather was pristine with weekend, and I attended a family reunion that was an incredible time. Polka band, horses, tons of food, a big tent, great weather, bonfire, Canadians drinking Canadian beer, and the fellowship of family. I flew into Pittsburgh and drove up to the reunion. I stopped for some Oil City water too, the best water in the world.
I listened to Lanny on the car radio broadcasting a Pirates game and it took me back to the living room of my Grandparents when I was growing up. I love the sound of the crowd in the background and Lanny's gentle mannerisms. They won the game too.
Eleven acres of pristine beauty, the forests in Pennsylvania are amazing -- and in my opinion not replicated anywhere. Their subtle defining characteristics make them so striking when totaled: delicate and thick ferns, the general density of the trunks, the types of moss, lack of birch, etc.
I spent an hour at Walnut Creek -- wading up to my hips in some spots, making my way to Buttermilk Falls. The water was still brisk, bubbling out of a fresh water spring to cascade over a gumdrop shaped eroded formation... and directly across from it on the bank the location where I spent so many nights growing up camped in a tent with campfire, listening to the falls loudly singing above the crackling of the maple.
I built a series of steps 21 years ago, and the same stick posts holding one of the stone slabs firmly in place within the dirt wall are STILL there. It would appear that I had done a decent job of shoring that stone up, allowing many who followed access to the bluff above the creek.
A monsigniour that taught at my Prep school said mass, which my parents and I attended together. After all of these years, he still knew my mother's first name and remembered that I attended Prep... graduating in 89. What a memory!
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