The mirage-like little hardwood ridges and knolls in the distance which seem to lose themselves in one another, the long empty soggy flats full of Sphagnum and Cranberries edged by carpets of Blueberry and Huckleberry bushes, and random groves of Trembling Aspen saplings and Mountain Ash. The grassy hillsides, the punctuation of Red Spruce and conglomerate boulders all over which give the countryside a rugged subarctic heroism, the always beating sun, and the unremitting northwesterly wind scouring and desiccating the country and misshaping everything in its path. The Borealness of it, the very strange expectation of spotting a Caribou herd in a valley or appearing suddenly over the crest of a hill, and the winter tinged silence, despite the wind, hanging over the whole land. For winter is never far away here. Its pall, its harshness, is everywhere.
People can very easily slip into ceremonies here.
Hugh and Ruth Rogers and some of their kin are folks who were apparently beckoned recently by the great ritual possibilities suggested in this windy and bright plain. Ruth told me that one of their sons was married at Bear Rocks on the edge of the Allegheny Front escarpment. Right there within sight of the unmistakable Dolly Sods flag trees Red Spruce with limbs bent round to the East by the implacable winds. As if the branches might be pointing to all the mysterious valleys and mountains in the sweep of view from these ledges. A visual metaphor perhaps for what will make up the life of a marriage.