I am privileged that my daily commute shadows Big Savage, even if the road travels the work side of that majestic mountain. Two different worlds, east and west.
First and last thing you’ll notice on Route 36 is the truck traffic: Coal trucks, dump trucks, log trucks, tractor trailers. A vita-veeta-vegemin of vehicular virility. Gotta figure the vast majority serves New Page, but coal runs a close second.
Behind every wheel is a job, and probably a family being supported, yet I can’t help but wonder at the rail that runs unused through the heart of Georges Creek basin.
Rusted and barely visible in places for all the weeds, the track long ago hauled coal in quantities that would dwarf today’s production. More than just Big Vein gold, though, the railroad was a people mover back in a day only the oldest among us can recall.
Before car and truck gained dominion, the line ran up from Cumberland, scaled Dan’s Mountain and then followed the Creek all the way to Westernport. Have to believe it went down to Keyser from there, then tracked the Potomac back to Cumberland. At the Queen City Station, riders boarded trolleys traversing the big city.
Mass transit like we can’t imagine.
Beyond universal disgust, people react to $3.95 a gallon in different ways. Trips to the pump get me waxing futuristic about roads that won’t be crowded at all when people can’t afford to drive. Which is the way things are headed; right off the cliff.
Financiers boast that the Depression can never reoccur because Wall Street has systems in place to prevent panic-trading and such. Fine, but man has yet to devise a machine that can corral greed.
Driven by the boundless appetites of an investment class that handsomely profits from ever-rising oil prices, the upward spiral gains in strength until the wizards will discover, all too late, that it can’t be checked. Like an engine throttled to red, the oil vaporizes, the pistons freeze and the economy seizes.
Driving 36 each day, I feel sort of like Reese, the good guy in The Terminator, sitting behind the wheel watching the machinery of today, and conjuring nightmares of a ghostly tomorrow.
Or maybe it was just the exhaust fumes, which are anathema to God’s Country, bordered in the east by the sunset face of Big Savage Mountain.
If you’re ever heading up 36 toward I-68 West, say toward a Mountaineer game (they bow their heads), take a left at the stoplight in Coney, go up the crumbling, pothole-filled, sorry excuse for a goat trail that is Allegany County’s portion of Lonaconing/Avilton Road – Douglas Avenue in town—and cross over to Garrett County.
The right shoulder falls away sharp and deep as you climb, then the road opens to a few houses in a clearing, and a chapel on the left; pass Swamp Road, duck a power line, then through Savage River State Forest, where the wild things are. Down a little dip then up a short clip, hit the brakes and pull to the left where a quarry carved a bodacious overlook.
It’s worth a stop, a walk and a long, slow pause to view as eagle does, the rolling hills and fields of Garrett heartland. And while you’re savoring the view, sneak a peak at your feet. They have some schweeeeeet flat rocks up there for patio-izing, lawn-accessorizing and other joyful labors, which they are all too happy to sell. Pretty red cast to the stones.
From the quarry, keep heading west for about a mile, then hang a right onto Old Frostburg Road. It skirts the western base of Big Savage and passes the entrance to the Savage River Lodge, gently coursing the rolling countryside you just looked down upon.
As busy as Route 36 is, the western traverse is sparsly populated by local traffic. Four miles or so, past homes, fields and woods, and you’re at the Finzel on-ramp, spiritual tank topped off with a peaceful, easy feeling.
I sneak a glance toward Big Savage every chance I get on my daylight commute. The Lancaster side of my family, which tends to appear in the police blotter, arose from the foothills of Avilton, going back to the 1800s. But it’s more than heritage, almost mystical.
It’s home.
The June National Geographic features its typical excellence, devoted this month to Stonehenge. They remain largely a mystery, the people who built it, 2,500 years before Christ. Rooted to the land, they found the spiritual in nature, and rendered magnificent monuments through selfless devotion.
Work on the various components of Stonehenge went on for at least 3,000 years. Generations labored on projects they would never live to see completed. But always and evermore, they labored toward an end, a legacy.
As with faded railroad lines, we can learn much from the ancients. Limited as our horizon is to the next quarterly profit report, this nation needs to start thinking mountains, not castles by the sea. Our worth is not in riches gifted, but rather in what we do with the blessings of liberty, for ourselves and our posterity.
Mostly the latter, of course. Just as we spare no effort for our own child, for the sake of America’s children and her children’s children, we the people are long past due to getting about the job of setting this nation right…