Today, I went to the Seneca Nation in Salamanca, NY. To get there, we have to go through Route 219 which takes you through the Alleghany National Forest. I was hoping to elk or even a bear roam through the woods. Not lucky today.
We started back well after sunset. Bradford has a refinery and the smoke pours into the night sky. It is not as cool as the refinery in Chester where flames shoot from the tops of the stacks. The refinery is huge and they have a weird slogan? Principles? One of them is "have fun". I am not exactly sure why anyone should be having fun at a refinery. But it makes you think about before like how it was in the 60's and 70's. Except for the refinery and the Zippo factory, it seems forgotten.
The highway is smooth and mostly empty at 7:30 pm. Bradford disappears in the rear view mirror and there is nothing but blackness once the forest opens up. The Allegheny National Forest's sign has vintage yellow lettering from the 1950s with the dept of agriculture underneath on a brown background. Like stepping into another time. The half moon barely sheds light on the road, the white and yellow lines are faded into the salt-encrusted blacktop. But the mountains are a thicker black, silhouetted against the dark, starlit sky. Small little villages that have small little signs and you forget the name of it as soon as you leave. A radio station with a white hound comes out of nowhere and vanishes into the black mountains.
Ridgeway is long forgotten and maybe at one time, it was a great town to live in. I can see the people wandering downtown Ridgeway. Most of the brick buildings are empty and hold whispers of another time. I wonder what happens to towns when they die. Do they come back to life? What if they never do? These are things I think about when I am working on my apocalyptic mini stories.
Sometimes, I love the darkness of the forest. The silence of memories, of towns, the night sky. A place hiding in the forest.
Till next time...
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