Loving Ohio

I know I’m late with this weekly entry, but as a blogger who tries to post on Sunday or Monday, I was a bit occupied this past week beginning. On Sunday afternoon, late, I headed out for a solo camping retreat at John Bryan State Park near Yellow Springs, one of my favorite places in all the world.

Sure, I love the mountains and the shore, and JB surely isn’t any of that, but it is a geologically special place with Clifton Gorge and towering limestone cliffs protecting the Little Miami Wild & Scenic River below. And fall in Ohio? If you know Ohio and you don’t think fall is the best season around here, you have probably been watching way too much football or are too tied to your Wii gaming system.

Fall in Ohio is, and has been this season, just spectacular. When I got to John Bryan about 5 pm, I got a pretty good sweat going setting up the camper. It only takes a half hour or so to complete the task, but it was warm. Low 80s, I think. However, when I pulled up my lawn chair and popped a cold one, I dried off nicely, and frankly enjoyed the cool breeze coming through the campground. Just exceptional.

The sun was amazing, too. It surely has headed south from its overhead position on June 21, summer solstice. So, much of the afternoon had that golden tone of diagonal light. Emily Dickinson wrote of that ‘certain slant’ of winter light. We’re not there yet, with the sun being so sharply south for us northern hemisphere types, as it will be on those rare sunny January days. But now with the leaves just beginning to turn, the sunlight glowed through branches, the humidity wonderfully low, to combine for a mental image that has the potential to sustain a body through the greyest of Ohio winters. And the sky this day? As I like to say, ‘high blue’ without a cloud.

Sitting in my own private corner of the camp ground gave me the panorama of a nicely treed, rolling field with very few campers to enjoy the spectacular late afternoon. Trying to explain it now, I guess Sunday’s conditions could be considered intangible, sort of. Unless you know already how gorgeous Ohio’s falls can be, descriptions sound full of overused superlatives.

Heavens, but the squirrels sure were busy. As I sat in my chair for the first time, I was amazed at the dull thuds I’d hear every few minutes all around me. The campground is full of walnut trees, and trust me, this year was great for walnuts. The trees still looked fully freighted, yet there were plenty already on the ground. And I could see squirrels working the branches, knocking nuts off the already mostly leaf-free walnut branches. I’m glad I set-up the camper away from one of those monsters. I’d have dents on the ceiling, let alone doing damage to my little SUV.

Sitting in the JB campground brought back a good memory set here in verse:

When I was a boy

Perhaps it is this very place near Clifton

where my first memory of a state park resides:

I am not more than four. My parents

have taken the five of us for a picnic outing,

though I don’t remember the food at all.

What I do remember is my young mother

hurling her shoe into a tree aiming for walnuts

to lose their grip and thud earthward.

They became the day’s special prizes.

I learned that day, too, that handling

wounded walnuts, or trying to strip the epidermis

away to get into the sweet nut center, leads to

fingers and hands stained with markings

unwashable, a reminder of a good day

with Mom & Dad, Patty & Mike,

when we all were younger and perhaps

more able to laugh a little easier.

Still, Mother remembers even today,

still laughing.

Today’s elder idea: Here comes the sun / Here comes the sun / And I say, ‘It’s alright.‘

The Beatles

from Abbey Road

photo: Footbridge over the Little Miami River in John Bryan State Park, September 2009