A Bridge to the Past
Living history
Slow down Becky, you are making my head swirl. It is only a couple of hours’ drive to the Otter Lake campsite, and we need to slow down and make sure we have everything packed and ready to go. Then I want us to sit down for a comfortable breakfast and take off with happy bellies. You are right Joe; you know I always get so anxious to reach our destination without a thought of enjoying the trip.
It has been almost two years since we were able to coordinate our work schedules to take a full week vacation. Let’s take long deep breaths and savor every minute we have to surround ourselves with part of the Poconos where the world remains essentially unscathed by human destructive activities. Our clinical practices have been so demanding that we were lucky to carve out enough time during the work week to pay attention to each other to keep our relationship upright. It is time that we find more time to enjoy life outside of our work world.
Traffic inside Philly was heavy as usual as we left our condo, even at 10 am but as soon as we hit the outskirts of the city traffic thinned out and we sensed our tensions fade away with the anticipation of sleeping under the stars. Joe loved camping as a child with his family and had introduced Becky to the experience before they were married. Unfortunately, we only found the time to do it twice in the last five years since we married. All our equipment remained gathering dust in our storage closet, almost forgotten.
We got married in our final year of medical school and then plowed directly into our residencies. We were so lucky to both get accepted into residency programs in our different specialties at Penn. This allowed us to get a condo within walking distance of the hospital and often to take crazy times off for a meal together at the hospital. The first few years we spent 70–100 hours a week in the practice. We did well in our residency programs and were rewarded junior positions in our respective departments. We finally have more reasonable work schedules to start planning time off and plans for a family.
The first hour of the drive north was pretty much silent. Becky sat way back in her chair watching the countryside flow past as a variable continuum of fleeting images. She was barely aware of the hum of the wind racing past the speeding car and the almost imperceptible notes of the radio’s soft music. Joe always loved to drive when there was no time schedule to meet. His thoughts turned inward, miles away from the daily work responsibilities, and towards the sense of freedom that lay before them. Becky eventually withdrew from her mesmerized state. She broke through Joe’s mental wanderings when she asked him what he was thinking and what he was looking forward to.
Joe was an avid photographer and had long pinned for an opportunity to get back to nature where he could first compose visual paintings in his mind and then capture the image on his old digital Nikon camera. He replied that he had read about the virgin beauty of so many unspoiled areas in the Poconos and something about the Bushkill Falls. This was his first trip to the Poconos, and he hoped it would be as beautiful as the Blue Ridge mountains of his Virginia home state. Becky had visited the Poconos many times with her parents since it was a short trip from their Bucks County home. She assured Joe that he would love the area. She admitted having heard about the Bushkill falls but she had never seen them since her father was never one to spend much time in nature. When her family went to the Poconos, they always vacationed at one of the resorts to eat fine food and lay around the pool. The two were excited about the adventure that lay before them and talked the rest of the way to Otter Lake.
It seemed like it took no time at all to reach their campsite. The noonday sun reflected off the placid lake surface like a mirror with rays of light darting around every tree along the shoreline. It was a spectacular welcome that they surprisingly shared with a doe and her fawn leisurely munching on some leaves 100 yards from their campsite. They stood there for at least ten minutes soaking in the beauty of the moment fearing if they made too much noise the deer would run off and break the moment’s spell. With time the mother deer looked at the humans for a long moment; seemed to indicate that she was not threatened by them, but it was time to wander off with her baby and disappeared into the woods.
Becky and Joe unloaded the car and set up their tent. They had not used the tent for several years and it took what seemed like an eternity to get it put together correctly. Part of the problem was that they were laughing so hard that they had forgotten how to do it. When everything was set up, they decided to spend some time exploring the world around them. There was a fast-flowing stream with some deep pools and shallow runs that emptied into the lake not far from their site. Joe exclaimed that he was going to catch a trout in the stream for one of their dinners.
By the time they returned to their camp the sun was hiding behind the western mountains and the temperature was turning too cool for shirt sleeves. They set up a fire and Becky pulled out one of the few dinners she had prepared in Philly from a tightly sealed container in the trunk of the car. They knew full well to protect all their food from attracting bears to their campsite. These were visitors that they did not want to welcome. By the time they finished dinner and cleaned up, the sun had long gone to sleep and was replaced by the brilliant star-studded sky. They laid embraced on a blanket next to the fire drinking in the beauty of the moment and every so often screaming and pointing to a shooting star. They paid no attention to time but eventually, exhausted, they crawled into their tent and went to sleep unaware of the chirping sounds of the countless crickets around them.
The morning light pierced the tent’s fabric, marking a new day and the two sleeping beauties slowly welcomed its arrival. Becky started breakfast while Joe straightened up the tent. By the time they had finished a hearty breakfast the sun had burned off all the morning dew and the temperature had risen to an inviting warmth. They grabbed their towels, walked over to the deep pool of the nearby stream, stripped, and jumped in with total abandon. They shrieked as their naked bodies came in contact with the ice-cold water, and then embraced, in part out of love and in part to feel the warmth of another body. They remained in the pool for another moment, climbed out, wrapped themselves in their towels, and seemed to float back to their tent. They made love with a sense of freedom they had never experienced in their Philly condo. While they were not tired the sense of relaxation and happiness took hold of them and before they were aware of it, sleep overtook them. It was well after 12 o’clock that they awoke in each other’s arms, kissed passionately, dressed and went out to breathe in the crisp mountain air.
Becky took her book to read while Joe went fly fishing in the pool they had just climbed out of. It had been ages since he last went fly fishing with his late father and it took him several minutes and attempts to flick his wrist like his father taught him to make the fly skip over the water like a real insect. He was shocked and elated when he hooked a large rainbow trout within the first ten minutes of fishing. He triumphantly carried his trophy back to camp telling Becky as promised he was bringing her a fish to prepare for dinner. She bowed down and ceremonially accepted his offering saying she would clean and cook this mighty fish, post haste.
They sat around the fire after dinner and marveled at how simple life could be, at least for the moment. Talk turned to how native Americans had this all for themselves before the White man brutally stole it from them. They also knew full well that this time of non-responsibility, except to themselves, was an ephemeral gift they gave to themselves. Soon they would have to return to the real world, that did not depress them, but the dichotomy between the two worlds was striking. The knowledge that they could spend time in both worlds was rewarding and comforting. They decided that tomorrow would be set aside to explore the Bushkill Falls and they turned in for the evening.
The adventurous young couple had seen a picture of the Falls cascading down a precipitous stone wall. Their anticipation was that they would likely have to hike in about a mile from the road, stand by a fenced in ledge to watch the water plunge down into an awaiting river that would gather up the foamy fluid and carry it downstream. They pulled into a crowded parking lot right off the highway and could already hear the sound of crashing water at the entrance to the park store. Joe gave Becky a surprised look that the falls were close by, paid the entrance fees, and walked the 100 yards to the falls’ trails.
There were numerous falls of different sizes and shapes but in each case, it seemed that the water was bursting out of fissures like blood shooting out of many wounds of some unimaginably huge giant. The water was gyrating in every direction down cavernous stone walls that were much too steep for ordinary humans to navigate. The park service solved this problem by building staircases and pathways that seemed to flow in every which direction, much like an M.C. Escher drawing, to afford access to the very nadir of the chasm. People walking along the path at the very bottom of the falls appeared as ant-like figures drifting along the edge of the tumultuous river.
We thought we would visit the falls for half an hour and return to the camp for lunch. Instead, we spent hours exploring every pathway and every twist and turn of different falls. It was a photographer’s bonanza, and Joe kept his camera’s shutter clicking away like fingers flying over a typewriter. At some point while they were going up and down different stairways, they realized that noon had come, and they were hungry, so they returned to the visitors’ building for a lunch break. A few hours later they were on their way back to camp, elated by the sheer beauty of the falls and the incredible natural setting they were able to share.
Joe once again picked up his fly-fishing rod to try his luck at the stream while Becky settled down with her book. When he arrived at the brook, he decided to rest a few minutes along a shallow portion of the stream and just soak in the beauty of the woods surrounding him and the gentle babbling of the moving water, in contrast to the roaring waters at the falls. His eye caught sight of a magnificent arrowhead just a foot from the shore. He reached into the water with such excitement that his hand shook so much that he almost missed grasping hold of the prize.
He looked upon this work of art from times gone by and sensed a strange connection with the past. He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them, he found a young man about his own age sitting next to him. He was clearly a native American, bare-chested, who smiled warmly at Joe. For some reason Joe was not surprised or frightened by this young man’s magical appearance and instead both men embraced each other’s forearms in a wordless gesture of brotherhood. They held each other for a prolonged minute, bowed their heads in acknowledgement of a connection between them and then the young man disappeared. Joe opened his clenched fist and saw the arrowhead was gone; he smiled inwardly and thought, happy hunting brother.
