Shifting Gears
It started with a phone call to the Heisey fuitlessly looking for LT. It was nice to hear Lou's voice though. I could picture him sitting in his office leaning forward in his chair to talk on the phone in my head, it made me smile.
"No LT today, bummer," I said to Ashley standing next to me in my house, "I guess it's just you and me adventuring."
Ashley was over at my house because we'd missed each other and wanted to hang out. Last time we hiked up in behind her house so this time we thought it might be nice to explore the woods behind mine. On the way out the door I explained to her why it had been so long since I had hiked up the mountain.
"People used to grow pot up there where it levels out a bit. My neightbor Stephen and I called it the Shale Pit and only went up there at the end of fall because they couldn't grow pot when it got colder and as kids we were kinda scared to be near them. Then a few years later First Quality trucked shale down to the old Hammermill plant they'd just bought. Stephen and I hated the noise so we just stopped going altogether years ago."
The climbing was hard going for the first 200 yards up. It was steep and thick with pointy little green things that loved to grope our bare ankles. Then we broke through the foliage to what looked like a atv path going both east and west near the top. "You pick," I said, "Left or right?"
Of course I ended up picking in the end because most times when we're together if it was up to Ashley or LT we'd just stand there all day. We followed the path right and after walking a ways stepped out on to the top of a clearing by a water tower, it was the Shale Pit. "Jeez this is huge and would be SO awesome for paintballing or fourwheelers!" It really was cool, I had no idea it still existed behind my house and I'd thought it was my imagination that made it so big in my memories. There were four roads leading in different directions in the clearing, we suddenly felt fresh and adventurous again so picked the one infront of us to go down. A few minutes later I spotted a house through the woods to the right. "We'll have to check that out on our way back up." I had thought it was another abandoned house. (sidenote: punch "abandoned" into google and the next search option is "abandoned places in pa" =3)
It would have been stupid however because not a moment later we were walking into civilization. "Did we just stumble into some alien incampment?..." I asked Ashley sacastically. It was so weird though! One second you're on a road in the woods and the next you're practically on main street... Joking aside, we headed back up after figuring out it was just Webwood, though truthfully it was kind of a let down. On the way back up I kept turning around thinking there was a car on the road behind us when I heard noises below and again when we were walking one of the other roads in that god awful heat.
"Haunna I think you're being paranoid..." Ashley told me a-matter-of-factly. I stared at her for a moment then glanced away. Yeah she didn't have to tell me, I knew I had been paranoid lately. It was why I was seeing red heads with green hoodies in cars driving away from the direction of my house and panicking. Ashley and I sat in the shade of a bush on the side of the road while I explained what was making me so jumpy. I didn't care if I had already talked about it once, it still helped me unwind.
We spent the next two hours exploring more paths, opening forgotten and rusting trailors, dodging vans on back roads, and sweating buckets in the insane heat just for the fun of it. It was nice when we finally got to jump in the pool later. Like everything was fine and worry was miles away.