Overlooked is one word to describe Hickory Run State Park. Another word might be under-appreciated. In all honesty, I wish that more of Pennsylvania would get overlooked, ignored, and generally left alone.
This is one gorgeous state. Its natural beauty may very well be unparalleled. Each time a little bit of it gets gobbled up in the name of "progress" my stomach turns, my heart breaks. Hyperbole? Sadly, no, no, not at all.
Even what I've captured here has been tinkered with by man. Interfering with the natural order of things is an All-American past time. Baseball? Nah. The All-American pastime is not leaving well enough alone. In this particular case it was building dams. Yes, I would imagine you'll find some charm in this photo, charm coming from the fact that both of these dams are built of roughly hand-hewn and presumably native stone.
The charm wasn't lost on me. I stopped, set up my camera on tripod, and took dozens of long exposure shots of this scene and others within the park. There is considerable charm in the pretty pools and cascading waters created by those rocks placed one upon another.
Waterfalls need not be of our making, we've got plenty right here in NE PA left behind from the glacial scraping of the last Ice Age. Have you ever visited Rickett's Glen? Breathtaking.
Each time we build something for our pleasure or convenience, we interfere with how nature developed over millions of years. That incomprehensible time-line should alone be a pretty clear indicator that nature, however you define it, is a force not to be trifled with, not to be teased over and over again until there's a breaking point.
Nature will never break. We will. The planet may suffer countless indignities but will, in the end, prevail.
No matter the thousands of lessons hard learned down through the centuries, humans continue to believe we are masters and mistresses of all we survey.
Some say, "We plan, God laughs."
We plan, nature laughs. It's really one and the same.
