Daniel Boone: We Are Heroes


Humor me on a ridiculously endlessly hot Arizona day

One of the fun and interesting bloggers I follow just made a trip to Daniel Boone’s Homestead in PA. Check out the beautiful pictures.

I was thrilled because I wanted to see pictures of it again. My parents were lousy with cameras and almost never took pictures of wonderful historic sites we visited. I had gone as a child and had a very strong sense of someone in the room with me. I suppose any time you preserve an historic old site that has seen a lot of families come and go and has a lot of artifacts around, you’re bound to feel it. It was a most comforting feeling, as if I’d just visited a grandparent’s home.

I always felt a strange attraction to this historic figure. Of course, the hat was a complete and total fashion risk, but paid off. No one else but Danny could wear that cap. There was something about him blazing a trail past Appalachia and not knowing what the land held that made me see him as a huge hero. Heck, every time we visited relatives in West Virginia, I felt certain there couldn’t be anymore country past that. Little did I know that several years later I’d be moving REALLY west to Arizona.

Although I rode in the back of a Cadillac the thousands of miles, and passed many rest stops, truck cafes, and freak sideshows that are tourists spots along I-10 with only a CB radio to talk to strangers with the handle of “Cactus Flower,” I thought it was a brutal march towards hell.

I wasn’t too far off the mark (especially if you spent the last summer here). Growing up the gentle green, rolling hills, and seasons of Virginia, it was a brutal awakening. And, although I despise the desert, the weather, the endless sky, and the dryness and heat, I do realize something. It made me much stronger. Having to stick it out in this hellhole has made me realize that happiness is something you can create, even from itchy cloth, you can make it seem like silk.

My motto has been “you can be happy anywhere with anything.”

Come to think of it, in the long run, it might be Boone that takes me for a hero and a role model.

Comments

  1. that was neat! i'd miss the colors of ohio in the autumn, if i ever went west! ohio's flat, but, it's home...for better or worse..i choose to make it better...

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  2. Autumn, you poor thing, you really hate that desert! Any chance of you moving to a cooler climate in the near future?
    On anothernote, if you haven't seen this, check it out, it'll make you smile, hee hee
    http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/the_soup/index.html
    Scroll down to the Ghost Adventures bit.

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  3. Very well written. Thank you so much for your comment. It was my pleasure to see and photograph this Historic place, with you in mind. I have some other Images, which I just did not Post yet.

    My goodness, girl. You must hate that area you are in. How come you moved over there? Was it not better in Virgina or did your Husband get a better job and had to move?

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  4. Libby;
    You're a lucky person--you live in the very heart of the "haunted" lands with a rich history and geology that makes it ESPECIALLY haunted. Yeah, I'd kill for seasons again.

    Sandra;
    I've been riding my hubby for years to move to Oregon--my dream place. He adores his job here and it's a pretty neat one, so I'm staying put until our son finishes college and moves away. He wants to go to Oregon and I suspect that'll be enough to make hubby finally take the plunge. In the mean time, I set up a very green part of the yard with shade for me and have a swimming pool to survive, and then indoors I make it feel like I'm somewhere else. Oh my gosh! I told my son after Ghost Adventures that The Soup would go after Zak for talking about having an incubus come after him (these guys are worthless-it's hilarious--they don't even know anything about the paranormal). So, he's calling an incubus to take him. Well, I'd like to see that! I've often wondered with his whips and ridiculous biceps and pleasure going to abandoned prisons that maybe there's something he hasn't told us about himself... I nearly wet myself when I saw that episode on The Soup! "Scooby Douche" Hee hee hee hee

    Corker;
    Yeah, I've despised it since my family moved here in the late 70s. Hubby and I got together and finished college here and then went to California which was miserable in its own way--dirty, crowded, and couldn't buy a home, so we came back here to AZ so we could raise our kid around cousins and aunts/uncles/grandparents. It was a good decision for his upbringing but now that he's starting as a senior in college, I dream of getting away from here. The only thing I'd miss is Sedona. I am not a hot/dry/sunshine girl in the least, I'm a damp/windy/raining/foggy kind of girl. Must be the Viking/Highlander blood. :-)

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  5. Boy, Autumn, I'm with you. AZ is not my favorite place! I long for my green, green, Indiana.

    At least here in Flaggy we get seasons, LOL...but still...it's not the same!

    Good post! I haven't been around lately and I have a lot of catching up to do...!

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  6. Sounds like a great trip - good to see Daniel Boone is still celebrated

    Pioneering: The Videogame

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