Category Archives: Blue Mountain

Well… the deal for a quick sale of the house fell through. And with it we’ve decided to stay put through the winter. Our house is cozy during that season, and we understand the quirks of the roads here in the snow and ice. Instead we’ll make it into the late winter or early spring before setting the house up for sale, probably through a realtor this time. And we plan to make some *repairs* to the house ourselves. Tomorrow I’m still going to work on the gutters as I had already planned. The deck can wait until late winter/early spring. We’re going to try to make it through another winter with that as well. We’re going to fix the downstairs bathroom up to make it usable again. We’re going to get more organized in terms of papers and books and such. We’re going to get new carpet — stain resistant because of the cats. And we’ll be *okay*. The House on The Hill may still be waiting for us in the spring. It’s sat there for a year already, unsold. And we have time to look at other houses, and get to know various neighborhoods around here better. We’ve looked at the outside of a number already, and haven’t been nearly as impressed with any of ’em in comparison to The House on The Hill. We’ll go visit it, and make sure it’s okay and gets through the winter for us. We know it’s there. We know we still want it. It’s just there was no shortcut to get from this place to that place. We had to take the normal route.

We have to sit down and start *planning* our retirement years. Expenses and shut.

In terms of creativity, I’m going to go ahead and start making it a priority to protect the carrcasses. I know that’s the best art I’ve done, along with perhaps the collages. But probably the carrcasses, since they’re such time capsules and summarize certain cultural patterns in unique ways through this “platinum style” tiling method I’ve refined down through the years now.

East AOL, with Leola Creek running across the photo northwest to northeast.

West AOL. This is also what I’ve been calling Peanuts in the Sunklands blog, an important location and perhaps home to several deer as well. Hemmed in by society as it were, in a pocket reality.

Still moving up Leola Creek, we now come to the meeting between it and Blue Mountain Creek (right), of about the same volume of water apiece. A true fork in reality. Below this point it could have just as easily been Blue Mountain Creek instead of Leola Creek. Can we visit this parallel world, ala a Fringe event? What would be the differences between the two, if so?

We keep moving up Leola past the important fork with Blue Mountain. We’ve reached what in former days was called the Maynard Jackson Mall (left), now just called the Town Mall. Why the change (I ask myself)? In the mid-1980s, I use to work for Maynard Jackson personally, although via an intermediate boss known as Roach. Now I find out that a piece of property actually in Roach, Missouri is supposedly for sale on a street just west of the mall, at least according to Zillow. Obviously this cannot be. Let’s examine that illogical situation more here LINK.

The larger rocky beach with one of the two mysterious spheres in the creek is almost dead center in the below photo. Again, I believe you can faintly see the reflection of this sphere in the photo as well. But like Uranus it’s hard to spot. LINK

The grassy area (center) containing Canine and Molar Pools from GoogleEarth. We are almost directly south of the photo just before this one. Hmmm… more collage possibilities?

And then we just keep continuing west along Leola Creek, reaching the geodesic domed church and the picnic areas across the stream from it that include the 6 sided table and also matching red and blue tables we’ve seen before in this blog.

In the center of this particular photo: Point-0, marked by a prominent Blue Mountain bridge spanning Leola Creek. We’re about a third of a mile east of AOL now, heading downstream on this waterway instead of upstream.

The greenway trail that starts just beyond the eastern border of AOL continues to parallel Leola downstream past Point-0. The pool in the lower right corner of the photo is pictured here LINK.

Mouth of Leola and an ending loop of the Blue Mountain greenway system.

I was also going to chat with Hucka D. about the house situation — *houses* — but I felt like I shouldn’t undercut Carrcassonnee’s own comments. So I’ll just chat with myself. Here’s the deal. We have a chance to sell our current house and then buy a new house we’ve had our eye on. The House on The Hill.

We’ll have to sell cheap. But we bought it cheap. We’re moving up. But then we can sell up. If we were smart we’d have sold about 10 years back. But where to move at the time? There’s another house in the neighborhood that might sell for close to twice what we get for ours, but with a similar floor plan. That’s what we’re looking at.

My “new” job and new office are stabilizing. Just have to catch on to my main new part of the job; I won’t describe it in any detail except to say that it’s an extension of what I do presently.

Is it worth working another year for, however? When we bought the present house I was a *contract* person, working year to year without any guarantees. Now it’s pretty clear sailing to the finish line. 5 1/2? Probably 6 1/2. Maybe more now? Edna is 7 1/2 years out.

We still plan to move to Middletown after retiring. We still own land there that we can build on.

Creativity: I’m very pleased with the Sunklands site. Must protect. Must build upon it. Protect the collages, the a/v synchs. Protect the writing.

This could be the last hurrah in Blue Mountain. We’ve both basically lived here since we were 17, subtract a couple of years here and there. This will be a way to sum it all up. The House on The Hill.

Before we bought the present house, Edna reinforced to me last night that we’ve never lived anywhere, after we came to college and left the home nest, for longer than 3 years. We’ve been in this place *18* plus years now. But this is the first house we’ve owned instead of rented.

What is the grand plan? Still to move to Middletown, of course. But there we want to build a *new* home, and probably a modular one. Low maintenance for our old age. The House on The Hill is, in contrast, a quite old house for Blue Mtn. 90 years old. Just the kind of house we’re *attracted* to, but we said we wouldn’t buy because of the maintenance costs. Yet here we are. On the brink of making an offer on one.

Is it a siren lure? We’ll be there 8-10 years, then hand off to someone else. We plan *minimal* repairs — only the necessities. The upstairs will remain unfinished except for that one room which will be *my study*.

We’ll have to rewire most of the house. We’re thinking of taking that off of the cost.

We still have some decisions to make.

“Carrcassonnee, you’ve been helping me a lot on recent projects and I thought I’d ask you about the potential new house. Do you have any ideas… well, let me ask some specific questions.”

Carr.:

Waste away. Goodnight!

bb:

Goodnight to you too!

Carr.:

!

bb:

Our house is wasting away?

Carr.:

Yes. Get out while you can. But don’t take less than what you’re presently thinking in your mind. It’s worth more than the one next door.

bb:

Excellent words tonight Carrcassonnee!

Carr.:

You’re welcome! I learn less bad words. I’m like Karl 50,000 years back.

bb:

And then the new house…

Carr.:

Buy. Buy buy buy!

bb:

150000?

Carr.:

Back.

And here’s Big Beach, a fairly impressive run of rounded rocks. A toy happening might be in the works for this place soon, or perhaps for all of Peanuts in a collective manner.

The start of a path on the northern end of this beach that quickly leads up to a rocky cliff.

A prominent rock of the rocky cliff can be seen in the background. This is taken from Big Beach.

Looming Peanuts trees. Probably taken from Big Beach as well.

Big Beach butterflies.

Big Beach smashed soda drink can. Maybe a Mountain Dew? Or perhaps a Sundrop.

Matching pipe and rock across the stream from the beach.

Big Beach from the south. Hard to tell from this picture but there’s definitely a storm brewing in the background! The skies would open up just as I got back into the car after my wade. I’m *such* a lucky boy!

We’re back downstream from Peanuts now with this photo of an old cinder block. As you can imagine from an urban landscape, many man-made objects are found in or near Leola Creek.

Unnamed Leola Creek rock in ALO.

And now a shot from near Point+1 in our Urban Landscape: merging culverts.

Before we get to the newest wading of Leola Creek, here’s one more picture from The Hill that I wanted to show because that rock I placed in the hole of this tree was *gone* upon a return trip. Now I’m not saying that kids didn’t remove it or something, but I’m just trying to note oddities as they happen. And they do happen. Could it be a communication directly from The Hill itself (whatever that means)??

Now to Leola Creek and the core of the Urban Landscape. I’m afraid that types of homeless people might at least stay in the Landscape sometimes, as witnessed by what seems to be a box of clothes, spied from the main trail as we look down at Leola Creek flowing below. Not that I don’t feel sorry for the homeless. Heck I was kind of one myself during periods of my youth. But there’s also a small danger factor involved. Good to be aware of possible natives.

Happy pink whale on a sign. Perhaps the town has had past trouble with people sleeping under this bridge, which would be at Point-0 in our Blue Mtn. Urban Landscape. We are at or near its heart, which would also include the neighboring ALO region.

The plants around the wetlands originally pictured here have been mowed. A shame.

Coral mushrooms have sprung up beneath a nearby grove of trees. Fungi are so peculiar!

We return now to that wider strip of land between commercial property and creek just north of ALO, or perhaps part of it — unsure still. Oh, I remember I call it Peanuts now, because of the actual owners of the land. Inside blog joke. I spotted 3 deer at the south end of this strip as I waded upstream in Leola Creek toward it. Amazing how animals adapted to their environment. I would not have guessed that there was enough wildland here to safely sustain them. I didn’t manage any pictures of ’em, however.

The tree pictured below, a willow I believe, lies instead toward the northern end of Peanuts (originally: Peanuts’, as in Peanuts’ land?).

This is what I call Small Beach, not far from the willow. Peanuts also contains a complementary Big Beach that I’ll get to in a moment.

Pipes — I still didn’t take any really satisfactory pictures of the numerous drainage type pipes marking Peanuts’ western border. But soon! I also want to craft a map of the place.

A path starting up a bank connects Peanuts to a narrower wooded area to the north. Obviously this is used by deer. I didn’t want to walk too far up it because I could possibly be spotted by fellow human beings from a flanking parking lot.

Yellow flowers growing on the stream bank between Peanuts’ Small Beach and Big Beach.

The miraculous top of The Hill. I didn’t expect *this* at all: some kind of old children’s fort or perhaps a squatter’s former home. Complex and also dilapidated enough that it’s difficult to tell exactly what it once was. I’ll let my overexposed pictures attempt to speak the story for now.

Angel lying in front of what appears to be a door. Front? Again I can’t really make much heads or tails of the structure.

Nearby rotting trunk with an old stick of deodorant.

There’s what appears to be some native rocks in the vicinity as well.

Back down at The Road.

And now further down at The House. Is this our yard???

The Hill in reference to the Blue Mountain Urban Landscape. Technically it is part of that landscape I would assume. ALO on Leola Creek is in the center of the background.

The Hill is a marvelous marvelous place in the center of Blue Mountain city. It’s clearly magical and has ways to protect itself from development. But for how long? That has become a key question. A key question indeed. 10 years out — well that’s probably okay. But if it starts to get developed next year then that’s more of a problem. Much more. Of course I’d rather not see it developed *ever* but this is a growing city and The Hill represents an improbable spot of leftover nature. It will be razed. Just a matter of time.

We start nearer the bottom of the hill at The House. The House? Is it our house? It is in a probable reality. More on that soon. The bricks here might become part of a New Monkey City. Have I mentioned Monkey City on this blog? A couple of time, especially in connection with “another” New Monkey City over in Frank park near Whitehead Crossing.

A pretty straight path goes in a northeast direction up the hill from the road below, reaching a point formerly called The Beach. The Beach on The Hill, ha. I haven’t visited this place in maybe 20 years. Maybe 30. And it’s really changed. I remember it to be covered with moss and lichen, which are nowhere to be seen now.

Before starting up The Path we detour to a bank (The Bank?) that gives us a nice view of a commercial strip below us and then ol’ Blue Mountain itself rearing up in the background.

After about the length of Blue Mountain State College’s football field, this path crosses the grassy remains of an old road that runs around the south and west side of the hill. I suppose this becomes, then, The Road. More capitals.

If you follow the old road northward from here you soon come back into civilization in the form of Blue Mtn. residents’ backyards on a bordering northern street. Here we see faux deer in one of those backyards. Didn’t come when called.

We jump to the top of The Hill now with this picture, or more specifically, the edge of a pretty steep bank marking its western side. I thought I’d include the photo because of possible light spirits involved. Spirits of The Hill. Probably not, but also probably worth a thought anyway.

Moss covered rock at the base of a tree passed as we approach the top from the other side.

Then following The Path *down* from the top soon brings us to The Beach. I suppose I’ll still call it that even though it has nothing of the appearance it did before that gave it a beach-y feel.

Purple mushroom on The Hill.

Red leaves on The Hill. Is it Fall already? Jees.

Picnic table near Point-1 is getting more rickity. Pizza time! Maybe they didn’t like their pizza and pitched a fit there. Put their foot down about it, ha.

There’s that deer again! And in the same exact spot. LINK I’ve seen quite a number of deer now in the Urban Landscape. Surprising since there’s so relatively little of the woods there. Deers adapt.

I believe this stringy yellow plant is called Golden Dodder, a parasite.

I took this picture beneath the Point-0 Bridge and didn’t realize the woman to the right (between columns) was sitting there beside the creek until a minute later. I’m not sure what she was doing, but later I spotted plants arranged on a rock near where she was sitting. Offering to the creek?

Green. Just green.

Canine Pool has been filled to the brim with recent rain. We’ve had some downpours lately.

It’s obvious that during heavy rain Canine Pool spills over into the road, perhaps flooding these apartment houses at times. Not wonderful.

And this day I was very excited because complementary Molar Pool was also filled with water. It’s shallower still of course. I’m not sure why one manhole cover in front of it is colored blue. Is this symbolic of the pools themselves which it’s positioned between? One blue (with water) and one not usually? Who knows what messages the Urban Landscape taunts in our face to recognize?

This is a car nearer Point+1 celebrating the life of a famous Blue Mtn. State College football coach. I’m not sure why the car is painted dark brown instead of blue. Oh… blue paint again (!).

And again! (picnic tables even nearer Point+1)