Juniata Hijinks

Nobody has to set an alarm when you're seven. Something about the thrill of a day in the life of a kid that age sets the engine on autopilot. Adrenaline takes control, jumping through the central nervous system of one intrepid wanderer setting out to tackle Tuesday in the heat of his first real summer break. Nobody has to dress you any more. You laid out your Thundercats T-shirt, your faded Pirates cap and your neon biker shorts on the chair by your Nikes last night. Nobody has to make sure you eat your lunch. You just grab a banana on your way out the door with the Handi-Snak, Fruit Roll-up and triangle-cut PB & J you packed in a brown paper bag the night before. Your green Army surplus canteen with the canvas strap is already chilling in the fridge waiting for you, so all that's left to do is get your butt in gear and get out that front door. After Mama's kiss on the cheek, of course. Then it's time to make tracks as you shout, "See ya later!"

Western Pennsylvania in the '80s was something poetic. For a kid barely accustomed to Catholic elementary school, looking back at that summer now seems like a potentially disastrous cocktail of stark negligent absentee parenting, borderline suicidal naivete, and a perilously unabashed reckless abandon. It's hard to envision my firsthand realities taking place in today's world except in the most remote locales and isolated communities where the omnipresent crush of modern society's bleakest advancements have yet to strip the majesty of wonder bare of its rudimentary imaginative fabric. That magical tapestry of childhood discovery wrapped in the raw and real uncharted "unknown" all but eludes the present state of American youth, unknowingly ignorant and unaware of its inherent nostalgia like whispers from a windswept calm following the most magnificent storm. You can tell something happened here, but there is no longing for that taste of what has been missed in never having experienced the sound and the fury of it.

There in my formative years, I learned of a beckoning, hearkening, almost threatening voice that compelled me to strike out into oblivion along paths of my own making, where Native American hunter-gatherer bands trekked through the Juniata river valleys for centuries before my youthful form stalked the tributaries whose clearings still bore evidence of a once thriving society of a fascinating people now long forgotten. There, heading out southwest at seven o'clock in the morning, sack lunch in hand, without so much as a thin sheen of sunscreen for protection from the elements, under the old Penn's Woods' canopy, my archaeological aspirations were born. Full days and solid weeks flew past in fast-forward as I zigzagged lengthy stretches of abandoned railroad tracks overrun by ragweed, chasing down birds and lizards with a Y-shaped stick-and-rubberband slingshot for kicks. Following the trail of the sun across the sky and the rumble in my little-boy tummy, I paced my summer days with learned skill and somehow "felt" the intuitive flow of nature around me as I developed a methodology for when and where to stop for lunch, coming to fully experience the beauty of rest.

Nobody taught me these rhythms and rituals. I felt like I had earned them. Familiarity with the unfamiliar became intoxicating to my young soul... Breaking into a jog through tangled undergrowth and stumbling upon massive termite mounds. Taking off my socks and shoes in an alluvial washout with the richest and silkiest mud, ankle-deep, squishing between my toes as I made up nonsense songs. "Black booties; give you traction for action; Black booties; ain't no way you can catch him!" Sitting on stone banks downhill, refilling my canteen with crystal cool mountain water runoff flowing through a smooth pebble-lined stream, rinsing my mud-blackened legs in the cleanest and clearest foot-deep channel with its sinewy meanderings. Following along that perfect natural canal until it died to a trickle that emptied into a sprawling swamp where dragonflies hovered and zoomed in staccato juttering bursts that sent creepy chills up my spine. Unsettling swaths of slimy pond scum plastering the surface of the murky green-brown brackish still waters interrupted by the thick trunks of submerged trees marooned in its expansive reaches. Every jaunt into the kingdom of my own curiosity rewarded me with treasures untold and unfathomable until my spry and skinny legs propelled me down new emerging turns, deeper into these unending gifts of summer's eternity.

One particularly memorable excursion found me sitting atop the second level of a dilapidated stone structure overrun with every shade and manner of green growing thing. If there had been a roof, it was probably a century plus since it had collapsed and become rotting compost fueling the ravenous hunger of dense foliage now tearing down the stone blocks weathering away from what was once the structure's sides. I could see, barely over the canopy from my lofty perch, a distant towering railroad implement my young mind could only imagine was meant to suspend tons of coal above a rail car to be dumped in a thunderous heap down into its cavernous depths. Coal transported to some distant industrial mill where hard steel was forged in the blazing fires that I'd heard this locally mined raw material would stoke. How could black rock burn? Finishing my PBJ and gulping down a cool drink of fresh spring water, I decided to go take a look. I'd stopped late for lunch that day and the sunlight was becoming increasingly shorter in duration as the fall school year approached. I roughly estimated a good three hours before dark and the plan was a simple one: there and back again. Go inspect the towering rust monument from a bygone era of wealth and prosperity my grandfather often relived over Sunday dinners and Steelers games, then straight home for dinner. The first part of my plan was executed effortlessly enough and I found myself staring up a rusted ladder at an unbelievably crafted rectangular receptacle that loomed massive, suspended on four powerful legs reaching impossibly high into the darkening cloud-covered sky above me. Dizzyingly aware of my infinite smallness, I walked along the grassy railroad planks, gazing overhead as the impressive framework spun me into a reverie beneath the graying clouds. As the rusted ladder beckoned from a foot overhead, I reluctantly marked the advancing darkness and made note in my mental map that this was a chapter I'd have to revisit and write closing observations upon another day.

Gathering my bearings and conjuring my recollections of where the setting sunlight had been heading, I set off between the sparsely wooded trunks of small birches, across a clearing vaguely familiar, and back through scattered ground shrubs in the general direction of where I surmised our apartments awaited in the unseen distance. Sticking to the tracks and previously explored trails had become less of a hard fast rule over the summer months, and before long I found myself a bit out of sorts and contending with an increasingly gloomy landscape unfolding uncertainly before me. Quickening my pace and straining my ears for a subtle note of civilization somewhere up ahead to spur my confidence advancing forward, I began to sense the faintest echoes of worry, fear and panic raise their soft voices. What must have been minutes sped by as mere seconds. The woods were darkening rapidly and I decided the best course was to stay straight and traverse as the undergrowth of the forest floor would allow me. Damp patches turned to muddy swaths at various intervals and my shoes began to accumulate a heavy plastering of mud and dead leaves caked around their scurrying soles as I sped through tufted weeds and around thorny bushes, catching only hints of the scratches and scrapes tattering my exposed legs with briars and brambles in what was now a frantic pace. Nearing the verge of tears, I paused atop one of a number of raised hillocks that had been increasing in size over the past hundred or so yards and strained my eyes and ears with the most innocent earnestness of little-boy prayers, hopes and wishes. I caught a faint glimmer of flickering illumination dancing through the far-off branches to the right up ahead. My little heart leapt in my radiating chest. "Headlights!" I could hear the growing thrum of tires on asphalt and the whoosh of wind as more vehicles cut through the road bordering the treeline. My pulse flew scattershot in my neck and temples and a great sense of relief and gratitude pinched out the lingering brink of tears that now streamed warmly down my cheeks as I tromped over the shadowy hillside that carried my weary spirit homeward.

Eclipsing the border between wilderness and refuge, I hopped the roadside ditch nonchalantly as I felt the growling hunger scrunching at my belly. Somehow I'd covered more ground eastward than expected and I found myself a good half mile up the road from our apartments. Registering little more than a fleeting acknowledgement, I skipped into the road looking left, anticipating a hot dinner plate awaiting my return, when I heard the most terrifyingly shrill scream of my too-short life. Suddenly, a fast-shrinking shadow of my eerily elongated figure along the roadway magnified in my vision and a clarifying moment paralyzed my entire body as I heard the car screeching to a deafening halt right before the menacing station wagon's chrome bumber clipped my knees. Everything stopped. Nothing registered for a long moment. I just died. I was dead. Blinked into oblivion...

The car's door opened. I felt the sharpness of my own deep gasping inhale. Someone's mother or grandmother or auntie was grasping at me, spinning me every which way around, holding me closer than any stranger ought to. She was crying hysterically. Brushing back my sweaty tangled long summer bangs and looking into my blank face agonizingly. "Oh my God, honey, are you alright? Oh, sweetie, I thought I hit you. Oh, thank God. Oh, my. Oh, no... Oh..." This went on for a while. I wasn't dead. Shaking. And shaken. Trembling with shock. Experiencing everything under the surreal haze of exhaustion, confusion, realization, and relief. I can't recall much after that crystallizing moment about that night. Just parting ways with teary-eyed Wood-Paneled Station Wagon Lady, passing the parking lot Dumpsters where snow would soon be plowed high enough to jump safely out of massive pine trees from exhilirating heights. I remember not daring to tell my parents I almost got ran over in the street. Somehow almost dying when you're seven seems like it would get you into a lot of trouble. I can't remember coming up with an explanation for the substantial newfound collection of cuts and scrapes and bruises peppering my frame. Come to think of it, I went back to that railroad fixture and climbed that ladder for lunch among the treetops the next day. This time I went earlier, and along charted routes. And breathing in that wild panorama, having come as close to death as I guess I'd yet done in my years as a backpacking Pennsylvania kid, I connected to a vastness and wonder still uncovered in the world. A growing voracity to unearth its splendor was born that summer, spurring me on toward a degree in archaeology, my fieldwork in the arid Southern Levant, a passport stamped in the colors of diverse cultural travels, and a career in linguistics which now thankfully allows me to support my family.

Who we are is sometimes hard to trace back to the definitive moments that deeply shape who we have become. For me, it's felt like countless bricks of "why and how" laid on the foundation of my "whens and wheres." And the pursuit of discovery points me back to those Juniata hijinks I was blessed to have experienced as a child. Those memories still inspire me to explore.