The Magic of Rural Pennsylvania

My annual physicist camping trip this year was short a few physicists and mostly lacking the camping. We lost 1.5 families to ill timed COVID illness, and we decided to rest a shared house rather than stay in tents and cabins. Because we avoided state parks with strict reservation rules, we could plan our Pennsylvania trip for the warn month of June instead of the usual freezing early May weekend. The family farmhouse was lovely, surrounded by hay fields and gently bellowing cows.

As always, our trip included singing around the campfire, hikes, and communal dinners. A new experience for me was a bike ride through a tunnel on a decommissioned highway. The picture below doesn´t really do the tunnel justice. It was a gaping maw of darkness stretching 1.3 miles (2km). We pedaled for more than 15 minutes in the dark, by the light of a very dim phone flashlight before we made it out the other side. There were many jokes made about the literal light at the end of the tunnel. I was really impressed that the two kids in our bike group were pedaled fearlessly so long, even as I fought the feeling that a giant hole in the (poorly maintained) concrete would suddenly appear and swallow us.

I wish I could write a poem about the light of the fireflies. I have never seen such displays, which lasted hours and were dense with lights. We all agreed it was amazing, although I may have been laughed at when I suggested it was like a Disney World fireworks display.

I don´t know if the timing will work out for me to attend next year, but I certainly hope to come back to the US for more of these annual trips at some point. This decade-long tradition, with graduate school friends, and now their children, is one that I would like to continue sharing.